A Portrait of Hafiz Muhammad Saeed: Lashkar-e-Taiba’s Unrepentant Leader

A Portrait of Hafiz Muhammad Saeed: Lashkar-e-Taiba’s Unrepentant Leader

Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, an anathema to the world’s security strategists, is the perfect embodiment of Pakistan’s infamous “Strategic Depth Doctrine.” Running one of the most feared jihadi organizations in the world, and perhaps the largest in terms of firm infrastructure and known membership, Saeed is being touted by many as the leader of a new al-Qaeda. This association comes in response to the global threat that the Lashker-e-Taiba (LeT) has posed over the last decade, climaxing with the Mumbai attack of November 2008. As the amir of Pakistan’s biggest charity foundation, as well as the most organized and massively supported jihadi network, Saeed has everything it takes to fulfill the longstanding wishes of Pakistan’s oft violence-prone Islamists in his attributed belief of the implementation of Salafi-inspired khilifah, or caliphate, initially in Pakistan, and later in the rest of South Asia.

Despite his much-proclaimed allegiance to the cause of Shari’a, paradoxically enough, this uncrowned king of terror is one of the very few remaining Islamists who stand between jihadists and their ambitious agenda of tearing down Pakistan’s parliamentary system of government. Currently being hunted by his former cadres for failing to launch jihad against Pakistan’s “immoral military” and “un-Islamic system of government,” Saeed is struggling to find a balance between the demands of Pakistan’s off-the-reservation jihadi community, and his role as benefactor of the Pakistani military. Saeed’s predicament highlights the widening gulf between the Deobandi groups like those comprising the Pakistani Taliban and the traditional Salafi-style proxy groups like the LeT that have been supported by the Pakistani state in years past.

With more than 50,000 registered members of his social welfare organization Jamaat ud Daawa (JuD), Hafiz Muhammad Saeed enjoys great respect and reach in sizable sections of Pakistan’s educated class and intelligentsia. His more than two decades old career as professor and later Chairman of the Islamic Studies Department in one of Pakistan’s premier engineering schools brought him close to thousands of young engineers, who would later become important members of the country’s scientific community (Express TV, February 28, 2010). [1] Patronized by then-military dictator Zia ul Haq during the Afghan war in the 1980s, Saeed was given the opportunity to promote his message of jihad among the highest cadres of Pakistan’s bureaucracy when he delivered lectures at the Civil Services Academy and National Institute of Public Administration—the country’s premier academies for training public officials. It was here that he established deep associations within Pakistan’s ruling elite both in the civil and armed bureaucracies, as well as in the judiciary.

Fearing the freezing of funds from the outside world in the wake of 9/11, Hafiz Saeed reorganized the structure of his jihadi setup by investing heavily in social welfare as well as Pakistan’s business sector for supposedly two reasons (The Friday Times, January 17-23, 2003). Firstly, investments in the domestic market would ensure continuous flow of finance for his jihad-related projects, and secondly, social work could win him support of the masses, which he can rely on in case his benefactors in Pakistan’s establishment yield to the international pressure and choose to go after him (Dawn, May 10, 2010; Dawn, May 14, 2010). Shifting the LeT training camps from Punjab to elsewhere in Pakistan as well as Azad Jammu & Kashmir was another such move to obfuscate Saeed’s actions from the international media and investigators.

Background

Born in Sargodha—a small, planned city in Punjab—in 1950, Hafiz Saeed comes from a family of conservative Islamic scholars and preachers. Attaining the title of hafiz by memorizing the Holy Quran by the age of 12, Saeed went on to attain two Masters degrees from Punjab University and secured a research position in the Islamic Ideology Council—an institution established to advise the parliament about Islamic principles and keep its legislation in line with Quranic teachings. Later, he joined the University of Engineering and Technology in Lahore, where he would remain until his forced retirement and detention in 2001. [2] Sent on a scholarship to Saudi Arabia by Zia ul Haq’s government in the 1980s, Saeed specialized in Arabic Language at King Saud University. The opportunity of a lifetime came when he was introduced to notable Arab leaders supporting and participating in the anti-Soviet Afghan jihad. According to Saeed, it was there that he learned the message of dawa, a call for the Muslims of the world to unite and fight against cruelty and injustice, which came from the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abd-ul-Aziz ibn-e-Baz (Express TV, op. cit.).

In the early 1980s, inspired by the global mission of uniting the disparate global Muslim community and spreading Islam throughout the world, Hafiz Saeed, along with the late radical Palestinian preacher Abdullah Azzam, founded Markaz-al-Daawa-w’al-Irshad (MDI), the predecessor organization to Jamaat-ud-Daawa (JuD). MDI was founded in 1985 at Muridke, a commercial city in eastern Punjab Province on the outskirts of Lahore. MDI created the armed wing Lashkar-e-Taiba in 1989 (Dawn, December 3, 2008). The LeT was principally designed to provide Pakistan’s military with a proxy force of recruited fighters to augment the Islamic insurgency in Indian Kashmir. However, by the late 1990s, the LeT was also engaged in training Islamic militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan who traveled from countries ranging from Egypt to the Philippines. In 2001, the MDI became the JuD and the following year, after the LeT was officially proscribed by Islamabad, it supposedly dissolved, leaving only the newly named charitable organization (Dawn, December 3, 2008). India, the United States and the United Nations, however, allege that the JuD is the front group for the LeT which, they charge, carried out the attacks in December 2008 that killed at least 166 people in Mumbai—an incident which almost brought the two countries to the brink of war (Dawn, February 24, 2010).

Asset or Liability?

Despite international pressure to reign in Saeed, Pakistan continues to consider him a “strategic asset”—a tool which can bring India in on negotiating terms over issues which have been poisoning the relations of the two countries since their violent, bitter partition in 1947. Saeed’s most recent release from detention has, on the one hand, baffled India; on the other hand it has reassured Pakistan’s jihadi community of the continued support from the state of militancy so long as it is externally focused (Hindustan Times, May 28, 2010; Dawn, May 26, 2010). With his social work projects back on track and the jihadi organization (the LeT) relocated elsewhere, Saeed is trying a different approach this time to mobilize his followers against India’s economic and military hegemony in the region. At a rally in Lahore earlier this year, he vowed to wage war against India over the issue of water security. In a resolution passed at the rally, Saeed proposed to “build unity among various religious, political and civil society groups so that [we] stand solid behind the Pakistan Army as India is, in fact, preparing to impose war on Pakistan… by constructing illegal dams and diverting water of Pakistani rivers” (The News International [Karachi], March 8, 2010). Saeed is now apparently a militant environmentalist.

Those who have met Saeed depict him as a man of average intellect and a rather humble demeanor. This seemingly jovial personality, however, has an imperceptible quality of connecting with the public and youth in particular. Always surrounded by young students and associates, Saeed has the unique ability to marshal his associates into harm’s way and be humorous with them at the same time. His wide support among the Pakistani masses and establishment, as well as a strong network in the country’s educated middle class (many of whom are members of the scientific community that he cultivated during his university tenure) is something which gives him an edge over other more nebulous jihadi organizations including al-Qaeda. By today’s standards, Saeed is an old school jihadi due to his state linkages and he is someone over whom, many analysts believe, handlers in the ISI still have a good degree of leverage in contrast to many newer North Waziristan-based and sheltered jihadi groups, such as the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, who have their spears pointed at Pakistan’s throat. Saeed continues to vocally point his finger at Delhi which, although it has often suited Pakistani governments in the past, makes Saeed a tremendous liability for Pakistan both in the South Asian realm and in the greater international community seeking to sanction him.

Conclusion

This icon of Pakistan’s deeply flawed national security policy is facing unprecedented heat from his fellow jihadis. Blame it on his condemnation of suicide attacks and jihad against the State of Pakistan, or his strong linkages with ISI and Pakistan’s military, the numbers of those now vehemently opposing him within militant circles are steadily increasing. The arrest of al-Qaeda’s top leaders, including Abu Zubaydah, in 2002 from LeT safe houses in Faisalabad have already raised red flags about his trustworthiness in the eyes of al-Qaeda (Dawn, April 4, 2002). Now his once jihadis-in-arms are also demanding his death (The News International [Karachi], May 18, 2010). A debate has been simmering in radical circles of Pakistan about Hafiz Saeed and his responsibilities as a leading jihadi. Chanting slogans on the streets of Lahore against what he termed India’s “water aggression,” Saeed may be trying to send a clever message to his colleagues using the Pakistani street: that the threat from a relatively strong India is still more imminent (and thus makes it a more worthwhile enemy at which to direct Pakistani rage) than the internal jihad against the Islamic Republic of Pakistan which would, in turn, greatly threaten Saeed’s own position vis-à-vis his traditional patrons. Seemingly, despite all his eloquence and religious authority, Saeed’s justification is not resonating very well with his growingly impatient peers who would not settle for anything less than the promulgation of Shari’a across all of Pakistan.

Notes

1. For the original Urdu-language interview, see Front Line: Interview with Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, Express TV, February 28, 2010, Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVgHyUmV1WQ&feature=related.
2. Hafiz Saeed has been detained at least 3 times since 2001 and each time was later released by the Pakistani courts on account of lack of evidence against him. His alleged involvement in terror attack on Indian Parliament in 2001, the Mumbai train bombings in 2006, and most recently in attacks on Mumbai’s five star hotels has brought Pakistan and India to the brink of war several times.