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COVER STORY: TERRORISM
Overseas Accounts
There is also fresh
evidence on the common financial sources of JeM and Al Qaida. According
to intelligence sources, the JeM has three known accounts in Islamabad
and two at a multinational bank in Rawalpindi. It has been collecting
funds in the name of jehad through the Zarb-e-Momin and Dhurb-e-Momin
magazines and the Al Rashid Trust, which launders money for the Jaish
as well as Al Qaida. It operates three accounts-one in local currency,
the other in US dollars and the third in British pounds-in the Habib Bank
in Karachi. While the US has banned the Al Rashid Trust, it has asked
the Saudi authorities to take action on key accounts in the state-owned
National Commercial Bank and the Faisal Islamic Bank that is run by Turki
Al Faisal.
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CATCHING THEM YOUNG: A graduation ceremony
at a madarsa in Peshawar. Such schools are the recruiting grounds
for jehadis.
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Still, for the US, in spite of President George
W. Bush's initial rhetoric on a war against terrorism and its promoters,
it is an American war for an American cause, and India is not on the radar.
The grand endorsement Washington is mobilising with a marathon diplomatic
blitzkrieg in West Asia and Europe seems to be for a purely national cause.
And the most useful Bush ally is a blatant negation of proclaimed morality.
For Pakistan is the patron saint of terrorism in the Indian subcontinent.
Does an honourable cause legitimise dishonourable allies? In terms of
democracy and freedom and victimhood, India should be the natural ally
of America at this moment. But America seems to prefer evil in its fight
against the so-called evil.
Not that India is not trying to be on the right
side of history, what with the pilgrimage of Foreign Minister Jaswant
Singh, with bottled civilisational symbolism, to the site of Islamic savagery
in America. As if he was repenting in retrospect for that trip to Kandahar
on December 31, 1999. But the performance was more bathetic and less nationalistic.
For instance, this from his interview with the CNN: "We do not wish
to do anything to further complicate the challenge that the US has to
meet." What magnanimity, what national pride!
Has India as a nation gone frozen in its loneliness?
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METRO TODAY
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