Pakistan - Islamic Charities to the fore !

As Zardari tours Engkand, the country is suffering..Hard-Line Islam Fills Void in Pakistan’s Flood Response

As public anger rises over the government’s slow and chaotic response to Pakistan’s worst flooding in 80 years, hard-line Islamic charities have stepped into the breach with a grass-roots efficiency that is earning them new support among Pakistan’s beleaguered masses.

Victims of the floods and political observers say the disaster has provided yet another deeply painful reminder of the anemic health of the civilian government as it teeters between the ineffectual and neglectful.

The floods have opened a fresh opportunity for the Islamic charities to demonstrate that they can provide what the government cannot, much as the Islamists did during the earthquake in Kashmir in 2005, which helped them lure new recruits to banned militant groups through the charity wings that front for them.

In just two districts in this part of the northwest, three Islamic charities have provided shelter to thousands, collected tens of thousands in donations and served about 25,000 hot meals a day a since last Saturday — six full days before the government delivered cooked food.

“The West says we are terrorists and intolerant, but in time of need, we’re the ones serving the people,” said Maulana Yousaf Shah, the provincial leader of one of the groups, Jamiat-ulema-e-Islam.

Mian Adil, the vice chairman of another group, Falah-e-Insaniyat, said the aid he distributed at a center in one of the districts, Nowshera, came with a message attached — “not to trust the government” and its Western allies.

Falah-e-Insaniyat is the charity wing and the latest front for Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group behind the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India.

The very visible presence of such groups shows they continue to operate openly from their strongholds in Punjab Province, the nation’s heartland, to far-flung corners of the northeast, where they are expanding their legitimacy, and by extension, their ideology.

Their gains come as the United States continues to struggle to win support in the region, despite lavishing billions of dollars in military and civilian aid on Pakistan since 2001 to encourage its help in fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Some experts predicted that the public resentment of the government generated by the floods could erode support from the military’s campaign against the militants, and give a boost to Pakistan’s Islamic parties, which remain small but influential.

A 30-year-old tobacco dealer, Gohar Aman, said he got a taste of the nearly complete absence of the government’s response when he got in his car on Thursday to search for a relief post he could entrust with an $80 donation.

For 25 miles all he could find were centers run by hard-line Islamic groups, an unsettling option for a man whose brothers are elected leaders of the governing secular party.

Source: New York Times