New Delhi, Dec 14: Despite repeated claims by Pervez Musharraf regime on controlling the `jihadis`, it is business as usual for the banned outfits in Pakistan who are openly collecting funds and distributing literature while their leaders are touring the country for recruitment, media reports said. On the other hand, Taliban militants were using Baluchistan as their refuge and preparing "ground for operations in Afghanistan", reports appearing in some local newspapers said.
A Lahore-datelined report in one of the dailies said the jihadi leaders were continuously touring the country and delivering sermons, even as the outfits continued "to publish their journals with impunity and on a regular basis to attract new recruits".
The Pakistani weekly said Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khaleel, chief of the banned Jamait-ul-Ansar, recently visited north west frontier province and issued "jihadi sermons" in various mosques and madrassas to evolve "a strategy of operations" in the aftermath of the ban.
The report said while the Jamait-ul-Ansar had cancelled its convention in Islamabad earlier this month, similar programmes in districts and provinces were continuing as scheduled.
"The banned Millat-e-Islamia is now using the Sunni action committee platform to continue its activities ... While the Tehrik-e-Islami was using the platform of the international Shia front much in the same way," it said.
Banned al-Rasheed trust`s daily `Islam` and weekly `Zerb-e-Momin` continue to be published, projecting the militant views of the defunct Millat-e-Islamia leaders.
Similarly, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which was put under observation by the Musharraf regime, "is oblivious to the official ban and collecting funds ... at important and busy places in Lahore". Its chief, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, in his Id sermon "plainly declared that some hurdles would not stop our jihad", the report said.
Large number of jihadi publications were "easily available" at Lahore`s mall, Anarkali, Akhbar market and other prominent places.
A US journal and a Pakistani daily in English described baluchistan as a "second home" for Taliban.
They reported that the Taliban extremists were "still getting financial support from the banned al-Rasheed and al-Akhtar trusts, besides collecting huge amounts of donations from rich and influential traders in Karachi. Many of these traders donate to the Taliban on a monthly basis.
"In Baluchistan itself, Taliban fighters enjoy vocal support from the ruling alliance of religious extremist parties and easily mingle with afghan refugees, mostly ethnic Pashtuns, settled here during the last two decades of turmoil in Afghanistan," the journals said.
"So much at home the Taliban leaders are said to be in Quetta that one of them who lives in the province felt comfortable enough to arrange his own flight schedule at the Quetta branch of Pakistan International Airlines," they reported. Bureau Report