Posted on 02/07/2004 5:04:04 PM PST by Land_of_Lincoln_John
LAHORE, Feb 6 (OneWorld) - Donating skins of sacrificed animals for charity is big in Pakistan, where over three million animals were sacrificed during the Islamic festival of Eid, but jehadi groups are cornering a large number of the hides and selling them to bankroll the "holy war."
Despite a ban on seeking donations for jehad, several organizations display banners and posters across the country, asking citizens to donate hides so that the "holy war" in Kashmir and Afghanis can continue.
Many of the groups involved in the hides-for-money campaign are nongovernmental organizations and Islamic charities and at least two of them - the Al-Akhtar Trust and the Al-Rashid Trust - were recently designated terrorist groups by the US.
Workers of several jehadi outfits, including banned groups such as the Tehrik-e-Khuddam-ul-Islam (formerly the Jaish-e-Muhammad), which is believed to have launched the suicide attacks on Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, also collected skins from sympathizers on Eid.
The hides of the three million animals sacrificed are estimated to be worth US $250 million. In the past, much of these donations went to militant groups in Kashmir and Afghanistan.
Last year, in the southern city of Karachi alone, 750,000 sheep, goats, cows and camels were sacrificed, while this year the figure touched the million mark.
Meanwhile, the authorities are cracking down on the outfits. Says senior police officer Shoab Cheema, "No outlawed or jehadi organization was allowed to set up camps to collect animal skins and the police are keeping a strict watch on them."
Officially, only some groups are allowed to collect hides. But, he adds, it is difficult to stop jehadis from collecting hides door-to-door or if people themselves provide them.
The Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JD), which is suspected to have militant links and is on a government watch list, collected 1.2 million hides worth an estimated US $70 million last year. The group sent workers to people's houses with pamphlets, asking for hides.
This year, the JD set a target of two million hides. "We are confident that we will achieve this target. People were very generous with donations during the Islamic festival of Ramadan last year and the response is encouraging now," says JD spokesman Abu Mujahid Nadim.
Nadim claims the JD is doing it for charity. "We run three dispensaries and an ambulance service in Karachi alone. We need donations and for this purpose we will collect hides," he asserts.
The Al-Rasheed Trust, a welfare organization not banned in Pakistan but on the US "terror list," collected about US $500,000 worth of hides last year. This year, the collection hasn't been bad at all, says an official.
A leader of the right-wing Jamaat-e-Islami party, Liaquat Baloch, says the government ban has not affected their campaign much. "We are not banned from collecting hides, but because of the fuss over jehadi groups, some people thought we, too, are banned," he explains.
Baloch says the Al-Khidmat Foundation, a subsidiary of the Jamaat, set up as many as 800 camps in the eastern city of Lahore where people donated hides. "I hope we will meet our target," he says.
Social worker Abdul Sattar Edhi points out that the involvement of religious and political parties in animal-skin collection has weakened in Pakistan in recent years.
"Just seven years ago, we used to collect more than 45,000 hides of sacrificed animals during Eid in Karachi alone. Now we collect 3,000," points out Edhi.
Edhi believes the government's ban on collection of hides by jehadi groups won't work. He says people who donate them have contacts in the upper echelons of the government.
Just as Pakistan is unable to act against feudal lords and tribal chief, it can do little against the hide collectors, says Edhi.
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