Aid agencies laud LeT's parent outfit

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October 26, 2005 21:58 IST

Despite its name figuring in Pakistan government's 'watch list', several international organisations like WHO and UNICEF have closely worked with Jamat-ud-Dawa, an outfit linked with banned militant group Laskar-e-Toeba, in providing relief to quake victims in PoK. 

Various international relief organisations, including Red Cross, WHO, UNICEF, World Food  Programme, UN Organisation for Refugees, Sikh welfare organisation Khalsa Aid and Singapore-based MCTH Association  had been working with Dawa in quake-hit areas of PoK, Pakistani daily Nawai Waqt reported.

These international agencies were 'very impressed' with the 'strong, well-linked and organised' network of Dawa and provided 'huge relief goods' to it, the report said.

Turkish and Indonesian doctors also presented their services to medical camps run by Dawa, it said, adding that World Food Programme handed over two additional containers of relief goods to it.

A WFP official told the in-charge of Dawa relief operation, Haji Javedul Hasan, that since his distribution method was better than others, the relief goods were handed over to him, the newspaper claimed.

Jamat-ud-Dawa was the new organisation floated by its founder Hafeez Sayed after dissolving Markaz Dawa, the parent outfit of Lashkar-e-Toeba in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in the US and the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001.

A spokesman of Dawa was earlier quoted in the media as saying that a number of camps run by it in PoK were destroyed in the quake and the outfit had suffered heavy casualties.

While the Pakistan government banned Lashkar along with some other outfits, the Interior Ministry put Jamat-ud-Dawa under 'watch list'.

President Pervez Musharraf, in a recent interview to CNN, had said that no banned outfit was being permitted to carry out the quake relief work but there were no curbs imposed on those put under watch list.

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