Skip to footer

Expert Q&A: Who is Hafiz Saeed and why the $10 million bounty?

For a clearer picture of who Mr. Saeed is, the Monitor talked with a noted scholar and author on the region.

4. Saeed gave a press conference near military headquarters. Why does Pakistan protect him?

  • By Ben Arnoldy Staff Writer

"To begin with, the Pakistani security establishment continues to view LeT as its most reliable proxy against India and the group also plays a small, but important, role in Afghanistan. LeT is also one of the few groups built up by Pakistan's military and its Inter-Service Intelligence Directorate (ISI) for use against India during the 1990s that has not splintered or turned against the Pakistani state.

Recently, the Pakistani military and ISI have begun using LeT in Afghanistan and against some of those insurgents attacking the state as well as employing the group in its traditional role as a proxy against India.

In addition to wanting to avoid losing the benefits LeT provides, there are significant concerns that attempting to dismantle the group could lead it to fragment and turn its guns on Pakistan.

The aim, instead, is to control LeT to the degree possible. Maintaining Saeed in a position of power is considered to be an essential component of doing so. He has led the organization since it was founded in 1986, commands respect from significant quarters within the group, and is viewed as generally reliable by the Pakistan military and ISI.

Finally, although JuD's favorability ratings are not high throughout Pakistan, it does possess a fair amount of suasion in Punjab Province where it has penetrated pockets of the population as a result of its provision of social welfare and the support it receives from the Pakistani establishment."

4 of 5
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.