New Delhi: Pakistan based terror group Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) is recruiting Baloch people from the restive region of Balochistan and sending them to Kashmir to carry out terror operations, local sources and government officials have said.
According to information, Hafiz Saeed, the chief of LeT, in the last six months has twice gone to Gwadar, Balochistan, accompanied by officials of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), to encourage individuals to join (LeT) and carry out jihadi activities in Kashmir.
The LeT, according to sources, has successfully been able to recruit at least three people from the region in the last few months, who have been sent to Kashmir. Their names are Javed Ali, Naseem Ahmed and Ahmir Aizaz. LeT recruiters who function as religious teachers in the region have been asked to indoctrinate local youth so that they can join the Lashkar cadre that is active in the Kashmir Valley.
“Mulla Ilyas, Mullah Ghulam Ullah, Haji Abdullah and Mufti Shahmeer, who are engaged in religious preaching in the region, are well-known associates of Hafiz Saeed and were hosted by him when he had gone to Balochistan. Saeed was accompanied by officials from the Pakistan army who arranged for the funds that were given to these local preachers,” a local source told The Sunday Guardian.
Last year, senior Baloch leader Dr Allah Nazar Balcoh had told The Sunday Guardian that at least two small Lashkar affiliated camps were running in the region.
According to Delhi-based security officials, involving Baloch nationals for its terror activity in Kashmir would achieve two objectives for the Lashkar and the ISI—getting fresh recruits and discrediting the Baloch National Movement.
“Imagine the negative response it will generate among Indians and the government, which are fiercely pro-Baloch now, if it emerges that the next suicide bomber is a Baloch. The support for the Baloch struggle will be greatly impacted in such case. Pakistan is a rogue state, but it has time and again proved that it is very much capable of out-of-the-box thinking,” a senior intelligence officer said.
Officials said that Pakistan’s gun induced control over Balochistan was rapidly weakening due to which it has resorted to mass killing amounting to genocide in the region.
“Due to clampdown on media in the region, the news of these killings is not coming out in the open. In the last 10 years, more than 2,500 Baloch people, whose name and identity is well-documented and can be proved to any international agency, most of them who were journalists (at least 20 including senior journalist Irshad Mastoi), political workers, students, teachers and professors, have been killed by the Pakistani army. Despite this, Balochistan is on the verge of slipping away from the hands of Pakistan as we have inflicted such heavy losses on them for so many years now, as a result of which Pakistan has been forced to use its entire army, including air force to kill the Baloch struggle,” a senior Baloch activist said.