Dozens of members of militant groups have been locked up in a new security crackdown, including close relatives of the leader of the banned outfit claiming last month’s Kashmir bombing, Pakistan said. Pakistan’s interior ministry said 44 members of proscribed organisations, including a brother and son of the Jaish-e-Mohammad leader Masood Azhar, were “taken into protective custody”. The announcement came a week after India launched air strikes against what it said was a JeM training camp inside Pakistan plotting an imminent attack. The strike and a later jet dogfight brought the neighbours to their worst military confrontation in two decades. Pakistan is widely accused of harbouring and sponsoring militant groups to project power in India and Afghanistan. Western officials have judged previous crackdowns to be mainly for show. JeM has been banned in Pakistan since 2002, but according to a US State Department assessment last year, it was still able to recruit, fundraise and train freely. At least 40 paramilitary police were killed in a February 14 suicide bombing claimed by Jaish-e-Mohammad A statement released on Tuesday said Pakistan had “decided to speed up action against all proscribed organisations”. Gen Talat Masood, a former senior military officer, said he believed this crackdown would be serious, because the government and military had come to view the groups as a liability. He said: “Even if they had any utility at one point, now they don’t and they are a drag.” Threats to put Pakistan on a terrorist financing blacklist unless it takes more action have also weighed on the government and powerful military establishment, he said. Pakistan’s economy is already groaning under a balance of payments crisis and can ill afford international sanctions. “I think this time it will be more effective,” he said. JeM claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing of a paramilitary police convoy in Pulwama in Indian-controlled Kashmir on February 14. At least 40 died. Azhar’s brother, Mufti Abdul Rauf, and his son, Hamad Azhar, were among those detained. Azhar himself is “unwell to the extent that he can’t leave his house, because he’s really unwell”, Pakistan’s foreign minister said last week.
