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Jaish-e-Muhammad builds huge base in Bahawalpur

* Inscriptions on walls imply New Delhi, Jews, Hindus being targeted by Jaish
* Security officer describes new compound ‘second centre’ of terrorism

Daily Times Monitor

LAHORE: The Jaish-e-Muhammad has walled off a 4.5-acre compound outside Bahawalpur, according to a report published in The Telegraph on Sunday. However, it added, authorities have ignored the construction despite reports the compound might be a radical madrassa or training camp.

While world attention has been focused on the menace of the Taliban in the northwest of the country, Jaish bases and a string of similar groups in southern Punjab have gone largely unnoticed. Yet Punjabi extremist groups send thousands of recruits to fight British soldiers in Afghanistan, The Telegraph claimed. It said Bahawalpur is a backwater, poor town that is able to function as a centre for ideological indoctrination and terrorist planning due to its isolation.

In Bahawalpur alone, there might be as many as 1,000 madrassas, many of which teach a violent version of Islam to children, who are mostly too poor to go to regular school. Jaish has its headquarters in Bahawalpur and openly runs an imposing madrassa, Usman-o-Ali, in the centre of the town, where it teaches its extremist interpretation of Islam to hundreds of children every year. The group was banned by Pakistan in 2002 and designated a “foreign terrorist organisation” by the US.

Targets: Jaish's new site, about 5km out of Bahawalpur at Chowk Azam, on the main road to Karachi, is much larger, The Telegraph has reported. It said there is evidence it could contain underground bunkers or tunnels, adding it has a fully-tiled swimming pool, stabling for over a dozen horses, an ornamental fountain and even swings and a slide for children – contradicting claims by the group and Pakistani officials that the facility is simply a small farm to keep cattle. On the inside walls, extremist inscriptions are painted, including a warning to “Hindus and Jews”, with a picture of Delhi's historic Red Fort, suggesting the city has been targeted by the group.

A man at the site, who gave his name as Abdul Jabbar and wore a visible ammunition vest under his shirt, would not allow The Telegraph to enter, and suggested it was time for the newspaper to leave. "We're not hiding anything. Nothing happens here. We have just kept some cattle for our milk," he said. The report noted the new facility was known to the regional administration and, with a hefty army cantonment in Bahawalpur, the military would also be aware.

Second centre: The move has, meanwhile, worried some security personnel. One described it as a “second centre of terrorism” designed to complement the existing Jaish madrassa in the middle of town. The officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Jaish should never have been allowed to buy the land. "It's big enough for training purposes," he added.

Publicly, Pakistani officials insisted the new compound was innocuous and there was no extremist threat in Bahawalpur. Mushtaq Sukhera, the regional police officer (RPO) for Bahawalpur, admitted the Usman-o-Ali madrassa in Bahawalpur “belongs to Jaish”. He said Jaish also owned the facility out of town. “But there's nothing over there except a few cows and horses," he said. "No militancy, no military training is being imparted to students (at Usman-o-Ali)," he said, adding, “There is no problem with militancy (in south Punjab), there's no problem with Talibanisation. It's just media hype.”

However, somewhere between 3,000 and 8,000 men from southern Punjab are currently fighting jihad in Afghanistan or Pakistan's northwestern tribal area, according to independent estimates, said Ayesha Siddiqa, an analyst who has studied the area. Jaish members have also been implicated in the murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl and the bombing of the London transport system in 2005.