The Pahalgam terror attack has brought the focus back on Pakistan’s patronage of terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), whose proxy front, The Resistance Front (TRF), claimed responsibility for the targeted killings of tourists in the Baisaran meadows on April 22.
A case is point is the Al-Aziz Hospital, located within the Muridke complex of Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), the parent organisation of LeT. The activities of the hospital, under the benevolent eyes of Pakistan’s Punjab province government, show how terror network continues to thrive there in the garb of charity.
Renaming to escape grey list
Al-Aziz Hospital started as a dispensary in 1994. Today, it has progressed to a 32-bed hospital with OPD services in morning and evening.
In 2019, the Pakistani Punjab government declared it as a “taken over health facility”. It has been renamed the “Government Al-Aziz Hospital & College of Paramedical Sciences”, but an analysis of its online footprint shows how it is still under the control of the JuD.
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The renaming was done by Pakistan to escape sanctions under the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which had put Islamabad in the grey list to indicate that it was not compliant with anti-money-laundering and terror-financing laws.
By renaming facilities like the Al-Aziz Hospital and putting JuD chief Hafiz Saeed in jail, Pakistan managed to get itself removed from the grey list.
The “jugular vein” rhetoric
But the online footprint of the hospital clearly shows whose writ runs there. The YouTube channel of the hospital has 75 subscribers, and various videos in both short and long form have been uploaded on it. The YouTube channel was started in October 2023.
A short video uploaded in February this year is titled “Kashmir Conference-2025” with the hashtags “al-aziz_hospital”, “hospital” and “government”. The subtitle says, “Kashmir humari shah rag hai” (Kashmir is our jugular vein).
Interestingly, Pakistan Army chief Asim Munir, too, expressed the same sentiment recently. In the video, a song — “Kashmir humara hai” — plays in the background with pictures running on it showing bearded men addressing a gathering.
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Two visitors
Another short video shows the visit of the Deputy Commissioner of Sheikhupura to the hospital. Muridke town is under the Sheikhupura district of Pakistan’s Punjab. But there is yet another video of a “visitor” which shows who runs the show there.
The video is named the “Chairman Khidmat-e-Khalk PMML” and shared on the hospital’s YouTube channel. The man in the video is Muhammad Sarwar Chaudhary, who, according to the YouTube channel of Hafiz Saeed’s political party Pakistan Markazi Muslim League (PMML), is also its chairman of the Department of Welfare and Service.
LeT’s fund-collection front
Way back in 2006, the Khidmat-e-Khalk, a so-called public welfare organisation, was identified by the US State Department as a front of the JuD/LeT to collect funds.
“The Department of State announces the addition of the aliases Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JUD) and Idara Khidmat-e-Khalq (IKK) to the Specially Designated Global Terrorist Designation (SDGT) of Lashkhar-e-Tayyiba (LET),” the US State Department had announced in a press statement on April 28, 2006.
The general secretary of the PMML, Saifullah Khalid alias Saifullah Kasuri, is widely believed to be in charge of the LeT’s terror infrastructure and is also being probed by Indian agencies for his involvement in the conspiracy behind the Pahalgam attack.
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From MML to PMML
Even before the PMML, the LeT had floated another political party, the Milli Muslim League (MML). But the US Treasury Department had sanctioned the party and designated its seven office bearers as “Global Terrorists”. One of the office bearers was its current general secretary, Saifullah Kasuri.
Kasui was not only the head of the MML, but was also heading the Peshawar headquarters of the LeT and served on the JuD’s coordination committee for Punjab, according to the US authorities.
Following the US sanctions, the MML changed renamed itself as PMML. It started its YouTube channel in January 2023 and fielded candidates in the February 2024 general elections in Pakistan. Its candidates included Hafiz Saeed’s son Talha, who contested Lahore’s NA-122 constituency. But he lost by a huge margin.