Anti-India jehadi rally held in Pakistani Kashmir

NEW DELHI/SRINAGAR - An anti-India jehadi rally to express “solidarity with Kashmir” was organised Thursday in Pakistan-administered Kashmir by the Jama’at-ud-Dawaah (JuD), a banned frontal organisation of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terror outfit.

New Delhi is keeping a close watch on the Muzaffarabad meeting Yakjehti-e-Kashmir (Solidarity with Kashmir) the JuD held after lying low for over a year following the Mumbai terror attacks. The gathering began Thursday and is likely to go on for a couple of days.

“Let us see the resolutions they adopt after this meeting,” said a home ministry official.

The meeting is expected to be attended by top jehadi leaders including Hizbul Mujahideen commander Syed Salahuddin and JuD leader Abdul Rehman Makki.

To be addressed by LeT commander and JuD’s chief of the Pakistan-administered Kashmir chapter Abdul Aziz Alvi, it is seen as the terror outfit’s stepped up approach to shift its focus back on Jammu and Kashmir.

LeT chief Haafiz Saeed, blamed by India as one of the main conspirators of the 26/11 attacks, is expected to address a similar rally in Islamabad Friday, an official said.

Former chief of Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) Hamid Gul, an invitee to the conference, said the Pakistan government was aware about the jehadi rally and India’s unhappiness did not matter.

If India is feeling unhappy, let them (be), Gul told news channel Times Now. He said the meeting was an important human cause and India should face the reality in Kashmir.

Denying that the JuD, banned by the UN, was a terror outfit, Gul said: India and Pakistan should make clear the distinction between terrorists and freedom fighters.

The meeting comes as foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan are likely to meet after Home Minister P. Chidambaram’s expected visit to Islamabad later this month, brightening the chances of resumption of the composite dialogue that stalled after the 26/11 terror attacks.