Pakistan bans Ahle Sunnah Wal Jamaat Islamist group

Pakistan’s government has issued orders banning the country’s largest Islamic extremist group.

Ahle Sunnah Wal Jamaat was first banned in 2002 by then Pakistani leader Gen Pervez Musharraf.

Activists from the pro al Qaeda group formerly known as the Sipah e Sahaba (SSP), or Soldiers of the Companions of the Prophet, have been convicted of killing hundreds of Shia Muslims.

The head of the group described the ban as preposterous. Other minorities, security targets and embassies have also been targeted by members of the group.

The group has also recently been in the forefront of an alliance of extremist groups calling for an end to the country’s relationship with the US, the Defence of Pakistan Council (Difa).

The notification ordering the ban was issued to relevant security departments two weeks ago but no public announcement has yet been made.

The interior ministry’s order says the organisation has been banned for what it calls its “concerns in terrorism”, according to a copy of the order obtained by the BBC.

Despite repeated attempts to contact Rahman Malik, the country’s interior minister, he was unavailable for comment.

But the head of the Ahle Sunnah Wal Jamaat group, Maulana Mohammad Ahmed Ludhianvi, told the BBC that the group intended to challenge the order in court.

“It’s taken us so long so rein in our activists it will become very difficult to control their emotions if the ban is enforced,” he said.

After the last ban, many of the organisation’s activists went underground and allied themselves with other militant groups to carry out attacks across Pakistan.

The SSP has always maintained that these activists joined a splinter faction of the group called Lashkar e Jhangvi. But security officials in Pakistan and beyond maintain that the groups are one and the same.

They allege that beneath the guise of Lashkar e Jhangvi, the SSP has been behind most of the major militants attacks in Pakistan, including the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

The group is also said to be responsible for the continuing killing of members of the country’s minority communities, particularly Shia, across Pakistan.

Recently, however, the group has attempted a kind of rehabilitation renaming itself Ahle Sunnah Wal Jamaat and trying to act like a mainstream political party.

As part of the Defence of Pakistan Council, it has held rallies in all of the country’s major cities including Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi and calling on the government to cut off all ties with the US and the West.

The largest rally was recently held in Karachi. Afterwards, the US State Department called on the Pakistan government to implement bans on such groups, in particular Jamaat ud Dawa.

It said the group was a front for Lashkar e Taiba, which was held responsible for the November 2008 attacks on India’s business capital, Mumbai.

Although the Jamaat ud Dawa remains absent from the order, it appears some of the US pressure has paid off.

“American and pro American elements are afraid of the Difa and have orchestrated this ban,” Maulana Ludhianvi says. “In essence, whoever enforces the ban is enforcing their will on Pakistan,” he added, pledging that he would never allow that to happen.

Greece ‘meets bailout conditions’ after debt swap

Greece took an important step towards its second bailout after it managed to win a crucial debt swap, European leaders have said. The Greek deal with banks and other lenders is the largest restructuring of government debt in history. Some lenders who lost money as a result of the debt swap will be compensated. That is after the International Swaps and Derivatives Association classified the deal as a “credit event”, triggering insurance payments.

Under the debt swap, banks and other financial institutions have agreed to exchange their existing Greek government debt for new bonds, which are worth much less and pay a lower rate of interest.

Some investors bought a type of insurance against that happening. Those payouts could be worth in total up to $3.2bn, only a small fraction of the 105bn euros ($138bn, £88bn) wiped-off Greece’s debt burden.

The credit ratings agency, Moody’s declared Greece in default on its debt on Friday.

It said the terms of the debt swap met its definition of a default. The company says it will assess the affect of the latest bailout before it assigns Greece a new rating.

Eurozone finance ministers said the conditions were now in place for the country to receive its new 130bn-euro (£110bn; $173bn) bailout.

“Today the problem is solved,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy said.Greek Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos hailed the swap as an “exceptional success”.

In a statement after a conference call of finance ministers, Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the 17-nation eurogroup, said “the necessary conditions are in place to launch the relevant national procedures required for the final approval” of its bailout. Finance ministers from the eurozone nations meet on Monday and are expected to officially sign off on Greece’s second bailout. Mr Sarkozy, who faces an election next month, added: “I would like to say how happy I am that a solution to the Greek crisis, which has weighed on the economic and financial situation in Europe and the world for months, has been found.”

Holders of 85.8% of debt who are subject to Greek law and 69% of its international debt holders agreed a debt swap, according to the finance ministry.

Athens needed to get 75% to push through the deal. The European Union and International Monetary Fund (IMF) said that if the debt swap did not go through Greece would not get its latest bailout. EU economic affairs commissioner Oli Rehn said he was pleased with the deal but expected Greece to maintain its focus on austerity. “I am very satisfied by the large positive turnout of the voluntary debt exchange in Greece,” he said.And a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said take-up was “encouraging”.