Pakistan's Sindh fast becoming a terrorist safe haven: report

Washington: Pakistan's Sindh province is fast becoming a terrorist safe haven with jihadi outfits running a large number of madrasas and the country's leadership lacking a political will to take actions against them, a report released by a US-based Sindhi organisation claimed on Wednesday.

"There is no likelihood of terrorist militancy being rooted out and containing religious extremism in Sindh. Hafez Saeed and his Jamaat Ud Dawa is one example among several who are operating openly and with total impunity not only in Sindh but exporting terrorism abroad," the report titled 'Rise of Religious Extremism in Sindh' said.

Released by the Washington-based Sindhi Foundation, the report says that the Mumbai terrorist attack was being monitored by its perpetrators from a control room set up in Sindh.

"As long as Pakistan's military are engaged with enforcing involuntary disappearances of Sindhi nationalists under their 'Kill and Dump' policy, the religious militant outfits will remain busy attacking worship places of Sindhi Hindus and forced conversions of their daughters to Islam," the report alleged.

"Terrorism seems to be far from being culled in Sindh. And the government and military establishment in Pakistan seem to be in no mood to stop such outfits and crackdown against their leaders," it said.

According to the report, the provincial government of Sindh's Home Department says there are 4,021 madrasas in Sindh.

The report said that government report recognizes only "two dozens" of madrasas connected with terrorism.

"Though independent international organizations, including the International Crisis Group, revealed the presence of thousands of madrassas in Karachi alone," it said.

The report said that Hafiz Saeed had been addressing crowds of thousands in Sindh inviting Hindus to be converted into Islam and asking the Muslim Sindhi youths to join the Jihad in Kashmir.

"93 per cent of Hindus who live in Sindh live in Thar. At University of Sindh, Jamshro mullahs give sermons preaching to Sindhi youths under the guard of Pakistani Rangers, para-military whose primary duty was to secure borders," it said.

"The madrasa phenomenon is giving birth to new waves of religious and sectarian hatred that has always been intertwined with outside influx of population into Sindh," it said, adding that the administrators of these seminariers are from outside the Sindh.