US Officials Accidentally Deliver Aid To Jamaat’ud Dawa Relief Camp

SUKKUR (Reuters) – The United States will divert $50 million from a development package for Pakistan towards relief funds, the top US aid official said on Wednesday after touring a flood victims camp run by a religious charity, suspected of linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba and its humanitarian wing Jamaat-ud-Dawa.

“Let me be clear: This disaster represents a major logistics challenge. We are committed to supporting this significant relief effort as much as possible,” US Agency for International Development head Rajiv Shah told reporters.
After touring a camp for flood victims set up in a school, Shah told a news conference that $50 million would be diverted from a five-year, $7.5 billion development package for Pakistan to help the flood relief effort.
The camp is touted by U.S. officials as being run by Save the Children and the U.N. World Food Program, which receive USAID funding.
But another visible presence at the operation Wednesday was the Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation, a charity wing of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which is blamed by India for the deadly 2008 attacks in Mumbai. Charges against the organisation and its chief Hafiz Saeed have twice been thrown out of court in Pakistan due to lack of evidence to support India’s claims.
Shah was in Pakistan to see the destruction caused by the floods, which was apparent as his plane descended into this hardscrabble city in the southern province of Sindh, one of the hardest-hit areas. Below, a sea of opaque brown water, broken only by treetops, stretched to the horizon. It cloaked the sugarcane and wheat fields that sustain the region in normal times.
Under a raging sun, homeless families and their livestock sought shade along roadsides. Thousands of others were staying at a squalid tent camp, where aid workers briefed Shah on the numbers of sick children and their efforts to teach the brightly garbed women there about health and hygiene.
“Everything, everything was destroyed by the flood,” said Baboo Shaikh, 65, who left his village near the city of Jacobabad 22 days before, a day before the water came and swept much of it away. Shaikh sat with his family of 15 in a low-slung, fly-infested tent, which he described as “congested.”
U.S. officials said after Shah’s visit that they had not been aware of the Islamist charity’s role at the camp and that they have no control over which organizations helped when and where.
The government has been accused of moving too slowly in the crisis and could face unrest because anger is rising. Religious charities have moved in quickly to fill the vacuum.
The camp Shah toured is run by Falah-e-Insaniyat, a charity with suspected ties to Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and its humanitarian wing Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), both blacklisted by the United Nations.
Food and other logistics at the camp are provided by Western aid agencies, said an American official. A spokesman for JuD said Falah-e-Insaniyat runs the camp.
A banner, which read, “Relief Camp Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation,” hung at the entrance to the camp.
Asked if USAID knew the camp was run by the group, Rebecca Gustafson, press officer for the agency’s disaster assistance response team, said: “We work with our international partners to identify locations that reach flood affected populations.”