Arrest how many terrorists?

Dec 8th 2008 | DELHI
From Economist.com

Pakistan offers a small sop to Indians demanding justice for the Mumbai attacks

INDIA has shown laudable restraint since accusing Pakistan of harbouring the terrorists who killed over 170 people in Mumbai during three days of violence in late November. It has not, as previously, threatened Pakistan with military action. Yet there are signs that the pressure India has been applying, principally through America, has told on its neighbour. On Sunday December 7th Pakistan was reported to have arrested one of the men accused by India of masterminding the Mumbai attack, a leader of a well-known Islamist terrorist group, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET).

Pakistani soldiers were said to have nabbed Zaki ur-Rehman Lakhvi, LET’s alleged operations commander, in a raid on a compound belonging to a charity, Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JUD), which is considered to be a front for the terrorist group. The compound, which the troops were reported to have stormed by helicopter, in a burst of gunfire, is near Muzzafarabad, in Pakistan-held Kashmir. Close by the frontline with India, the area has long been a base for jihadist insurgents fighting in Kashmir. A JUD spokesman said that a total of four or five men, including Mr Lakhvi, had been arrested.

This is slightly encouraging for India. But it is much less than it has demanded of Pakistan, which still denies there is any evidence of a Pakistani link to the attack. India has insisted, for a start, that Pakistan hand over 20 people, including Mr Lakhvi, who it suspects of carrying out a range of atrocities on its territory, including several in Mumbai. Set against this demand, the meagre arrest of Mr Lakhvi seems sadly true to Pakistani form.

LET, which was formed to fight Indian troops in Kashmir, with support from Pakistan’s army-run Inter-Services Intelligence agency, was banned by Pakistan’s former ruler, Pervez Musharraf, in 2002, after America demanded that it should be. But this seems not to have hindered it much. The group’s founder, a bearded engineer called Hafiz Saeed, who runs a jihadist citadel outside the Punjabi city of Lahore, proceeded to found JUD; which Pakistan has repeatedly refused to ban. The charity rose to prominence in 2005 when it led the relief operation for survivors of an earthquake that devastated Pakistani-held Kashmir. At least LET has meanwhile been receiving much less support from Pakistan’s army, which has turned its attention to fighting Islamist militants in the country’s north-west. But the group's training camps have not been dismantled, despite repeated demands from India and America that they should be.

(More here.)