Lashkar-e-Taiba contemplating next move after U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, expert says

Lashkar-e Taiba was blamed for terror attack in Mumbai in 2008, including this attack on the Taj Mahal hotel.  (David Guttenfelder/Associated press File photo)

Lashkar-e-Taiba's well-organized attacks in 2008 on Mumbai temporarily seemed to paralyze the Indian security forces, riveted the world's attention, and put the venerable militant group back on the map.

In the five years since LeT extremists stormed the streets of Mumbai, killing 166 and holding India's commercial capital hostage, LeT has been relatively quiet. But that doesn't mean it's disappeared, argues an expert on the group.

Stephen Tankel testified Wednesday before the House Homeland Security Committee, and explained LeT's operational capabilities and the prospects for an LeT attack in North America.

Tankel, a professor at American University, non-resident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of the 2011 book Storming the World Stage: The Story of Lashkar-e-Taiba, told The Star in an interview that U.S. lawmakers are keeping tabs on LeT, which considered Mumbai an operational success, since it bolstered the group's recruiting and fundraising efforts and gave LeT a measure of prestige.

"This a group that is patient, that is calculated," Tankel said, adding it's likely based on open source evidence that LeT is continuing its recruitment efforts in North America.

In January, Pakistani-born Canadian Tahawwur Rana was sentenced to 14 years in prison for providing material support to overseas terrorism, including LeT. During the same month, American David Headley, who confessed to helping plan the  2008  attacks in Mumbai, was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

"LeT leaders saw the value in having someone like David Headley and it's fair to surmise that they are even more keen now to have more like him," Tankel said.

He said Canada and the U.S. likely remain potential LeT targets.

"Ideologically both countries remain within LeT's target set," he said. "The U.S. more so than Canada. LeT sees itself as a pan-islamist organization that defends and avenges violence against Muslims. But "they're also worried about taking steps that would endanger their privileged status within Pakistan," Tankel said.

One of the questions being posed in security circles, Tankel said, is what LeT will do after the U.S. withdraws its troops from Afghanistan next year.

It's possible that the group has been directed not to be too active in Kashmir because Pakistan's western border with Afghanistan is chock-a-block with militant activity.

Pakistan's murky Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate established Lashkar-e-Taiba in 1989 to help attack Indian resources in the disputed Kashmir region. LeT head Hafiz Muhammad Saeed currently lives in the open in Lahore, even though the U.S. has placed a $10 million bounty on his head and the United Nations has placed him on a terrorist list.

When the U.S. leaves Afghanistan, LeT may enjoy a more free hand to target Indian officials in Kashmir. Tankel said it's widely believed that LeT is active in Kashmir on a small-scale directly and indirectly through a domestic militant group know as Hizbul Mujahidin.

But it's similarly possible that Pakistan's western border won't become more peaceful in 2014.

That’s because neither the insurgency Pakistan supports in Afghanistan, nor the one it is facing at home, are likely to end.

And so the beat goes on.

U.S. and Canadians should not become complacent, said Tankel, who has interviewed numerous LeT leaders.

While LeT has resisted attacking North American targets to this point out of strategic calculation, "they could determine that they could get away with it, even if that determination is wrong. They could think 'this won't be traced back to us.' Or they could think ‘Pakistan is too weak and the U.S. is not in a position to punish us.’

"They don't always weigh cost and benefits the way we do. While keeping the threat in perspective and not overreacting, we need to be aware of the fact that it's not their ideology that is stopping LeT from attacking here."

Rick Westhead is a foreign affairs writer at The Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

Driving mad: The world's most dangerous roads

Afraid of flying? Terrorist attacks? The thief lurking under your bed? Well, you should actually be afraid of driving. Especially if you live in, say, the Dominican Republic.

The World Health Organization has a released report on the world's most dangerous roads, taking into account the number of motor vehicle-related deaths per 100,000 people. Top of the list is Dominican Republic, followed by Thailand, Venezuela and Iran. Safest? Iceland.

Max Fisher, a Foreign Affairs blogger at the Washington Post, notes that there is no single thread that joining the most dangerous countries, but medical care "both in terms of its quality and the physical nearness of hospitals seems to play a major role." 

Ask any foreign correspondent to share their scariest moments and a driving story is bound to be among the top five. Kenya's roads frighten me. Photographer Lucas Oleniuk says he has never felt closer to death (keep in mind he has been shot at in Bahrain and Haiti, among other locales) than when we tracked a shipment of khat, a popular leafy stimulant, from the trees in Maua, Kenya, to a parking lot north of Toronto last year.

 

You'll see the insanity of khat "drivers" at the end of his video here:

 

My colleague Hamida Ghafour, who was a recent resident in the United Arab Emirates, was dismayed the UAE didn't make the WHO's top 10 list. She writes:

Could the United Arab Emirates’ infamous Sheikh Zayed, which links Dubai and Abu Dhabi, really not be the worst highway in the world? I spent nearly two years commuting on that six-lane highway, trying to share the road with the Maseratis, Rolls Royces, and Lamborghinis favoured by Emiratis. (For the record I was in a modest Volvo.) 

Swapping horror stories about surviving the Sheikh Zayed was a dinner party perennial, kind of like moaning about property prices in Toronto. My favourite was a near miss with a South Asian driver who was driving erratically in the lane next to me one late Thursday afternoon as I headed home to Dubai.  I thought he was drunk until I looked closer – he was holding the Qur'an in one hand and reading it, while holding the steering wheel with the other.

The Sheikh Zayed also represents the tragic equalities in that society. The camps where the poor South Asian labourers who work mostly on construction sites lived were situated in the desert, cut off from population centres. If they missed the last bus home the only way back was crossing the Sheikh Zayed, which is like trying to dart across the 401. The worst hazard was anxiously watching for day labourers on that highway. On two occasions I saw the bodies of two men lying on the hard shoulder, covered with white sheets.

Somalia didn't participate in the WHO survey and driving conditions are likely pretty low on the country's To Do list. Here's a glimpse of what driving Mogadishu is like. (Videographer Randy Risling just let the GoPro on our car roll in 2011 and cut this oddly mesmerizing video):

 

Here's another fun video in case you wondered what Yemen's "streets" look like in the rainy season? Maybe not dangerous, but a rather damp experience. Star photojournalist (full disclosure: and husband) Jim Rankin cut this from our rather rainy reporting trip last year:

 

With apologies to Max Fisher for ending this blog the same way he ended his, here's the driving video everyone has been talking about since it was uploaded on YouTube May 31. It's reportedly from Makkah Road in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and features a very interesting Ford Crown Victoria hood ornament:

 

 

Michelle Shephard is the Star's National Security correspondent and author of "Decade of Fear: Reporting from Terrorism's Grey Zone." She is a three-time recipient of Canada's National Newspaper Award. Follow her on Twitter @shephardm

Qusair, a broken and empty town

A baby's stroller lies broken and empty on a street in Qusair as an army pick up drives by. The bell tower of a church is bullet riddled. 

The stories behind these sad images are unknown but the brutality and violence is clear. Qusair was taken by the Syrian army with the help of Lebanese Hezbollah fighters after a three week battle with rebels.

The rebels have fled and so have most of the residents, to Lebanon or the Syrian countryside. Many are dead. The ones who remain are waving Syrian or Hezbollah flags. Some no doubt, out of a self-preservation instinct.  

The Red Cross has no information yet on how many people have been killed, injured, or how many people remain there. The organization and the Red Crescent are trying to convince the Syrian authorities to give their staff access to the town so they can deliver aid, especially medical supplies. But on Twitter an activist inside gave a sense of the tragedy.  Yesterday as the town was taken, Rifaie Tammas tweeted: "Qusair makeshift hospital which is packed with wounded civilians is under sniper fire."

(REUTERS/Rami Bleibel)

(REUTERS/Rami Bleibel)

(REUTERS/Rami Bleibel)

(REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir)

Hamida Ghafour is a foreign affairs reporter at the Star. She has lived and worked in the Middle East and Asia for more than 10 years and is the author of a book on Afghanistan. Follow her on Twitter @HamidaGhafour

Boston Marathon 'bag men' sue New York Post for libel, invasion of privacy

(Image of Yassine Zaimi and Salaheddin Barhoum on NYPost.com)

 Yassine Zaimi arrived in the U.S. four years ago from Morocco with a dream of pursuing his education and joining a running club.

On the day of the Boston Marathon, Zaimi and his friend Salaheddin Barhoum made their way to the marathon finish line. They had believed the finish line was actually the starting line, and after talking with a few Kenyans and Ethiopian fans who were there to cheer on their countrymen, Zaimi and Barhoum left -- two hours before the bombs exploded.

Three days later, with authorities conducting one of the largest investigations in U.S. history, the New York Post dropped a figurative bombshell on the immigrants. It ran a photo of Zaimi and Barhoum on its front page under the headline, "Bag Men."

Zaimi and Barhoum would subsequently be cleared by investigators, but two months on, they say their lives have been changed forever -- and they want the Post to pay for it.

Zaimi and Barhoum have filed a lawsuit against the Post in Suffolk Superior Court, the Boston Globe reports.

In the complaint, lawyers for Barhoum, a 16-year-old Revere High School student, and Zaimi, a part-time college student from Malden, allege the New York Post has libelled them inflicted emotional distress and invaded their privacy. They are seeking damages, including unspecified monetary compensation.

“The front page would lead a reasonable reader to believe that plaintiffs had bombs in their bags, that they were involved in causing the Boston Marathon bombing,"  the court complaint says, according to The Globe. The lawsuit asserts the newspaper subjected the friends to “scorn, hatred, ridicule, or contempt in the minds of a considerable and respectable segment of the community.”

The  Post declined to comment to The Globe on Wednesday, but editor Col Allan defended the coverage in April. He told the Associated Press that his paper accurately reported that the image of Zaimi and Barhoum was emailed to law enforcement officials seeking information about the men. “We did not identify them as suspects,” Allan said at the time.

On April 17, two nights after the bombing, friends told  Zaimi and Barhoum that their photos were online, their lawyers say. They went to police, were questioned, and were told they were not suspects.

Even so, lawyers said the Post's coverage implied Zaimi and Barhoum were suspects.

“They’re saying these are the guys with the bombs in the bag,” William Barrett, one of Zaimi’s lawyers, told The Globe.

The Boston Marathon bombings marked a sour week for news organizations. Perhaps the low point was when CNN was forced to backtrack on an April 17 report from reporter John King that authorities had a "dark-skinned male" in custody who was a suspect. Both Fox News and the Associated Press confirmed CNN's wrong report.

Rick Westhead is a foreign affairs writer at the Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

Gitmo gobbledygook: You say 'enterally feeding,' I say 'force-feeding'

The tube used for “enterally feedings” at Guantanamo. (MICHELLE SHEPHARD/TORONTO STAR)

“We don’t force-feed right now at Gitmo.”

That's what U.S. Marine Gen. John Kelly said Tuesday, according to a Miami Herald report by Carol Rosenberg. 

Kelly is the chief of the U.S. Southern Command and was in Guantanamo this weekend, where more than 100 detainees are on a hunger strike demanding release and closure of the detention centre.

His comments may be news to Kelly's commander-in-chief, President Barack Obama, who said in a national security address last month that he wanted Guantanamo closed and worried about its impact on the U.S.'s reputation. “Look at the current situation, where we are force-feeding detainees who are holding a hunger strike. Is that who we are?” Obama said. “Is that something that our Founders foresaw? Is that the America we want to leave to our children?”

So there's that term: force-feed.

Back to Kelly. What did he mean?

Rosenberg explains:

Hunger strikers who fall below a certain body weight are taken twice a day to a feeding chair and given a choice — eat or have a tube snaked up your nostril, down the back of your throat and have a can of Ensure pumped inside.

“They’re all eating something,” Kelly said, adding that some detainees in the prison supervised by Southcom will drink a dose of Ensure through a straw rather than by the tube.

He called Guantanamo’s current protest a “Hunger Strike Lite.”

Is Kelly saying that detainees are willingly sipping Ensure? Their lawyers would disagree. Journalists can't verify exactly what is going on because access to the base is limited. It's a story, of course, if detainees are actually taking nutritional supplements without being restrained.

But read further into his comments and perhaps Kelly is talking semantics. It's not force-feeding, but he says what they are doing at Guantanamo is "enterally feeding," hunger striking detainees, using the military term for the procedure.

Ah, Gitmo's war on words. Over the years this has been an issue raised repeatedly in our reporting on Guantanamo. Do not call it a prison, journalists have been told, because it's a "detention centre." Do not write that there are interrogations, because in fact questioning detainees is called "reservations." (That one was one of my favourites.) Suicides are "asymmetric warfare."

As George Orwell wrote in his 1946 essay, Politics and the English Language, "political language—and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists—is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."

So without evidence to show otherwise, this is what we know. The Pentagon reports that as of this morning, 39 detainees are being tube fed, call it what you will. Was the hunger strike an effort by the detainees to put Guantanamo back on the agenda? Undoubtedly so. Has it worked? Yes. Is Guantanamo closing? No, not in the near future. None of the detainees cleared for transfer have left the base since Obama's May 23 speech.

But Kelly's comments also raise another issue about where Gitmo will go from here. Aside from the concern that a detainee may soon die, is the fact that Guantanamo is a dangerous place now in ways it wasn't before. Prisoners are locked down, even the 86 (out of 166), who have been cleared by the Pentagon but remain trapped. Guards are at risk as relations with prisoners deteriorate.

Kelly, who called the situation "Hunger Strike Lite," says the current crisis is entirely in the hands of the detainees. In other words, he can't close Gitmo, or release them (neither could Obama's Gitmo Czar once Congress stepped in) so they have to start eating, or not.

But lawyers for the men say otherwise. It's reported that the hunger strike began in February to protest what detainees allege was an aggressive search of their cells, whereby guards seized personal property, such as photos, and mishandled their Qu'rans.

There may be some concessions that can be made, short of releasing the prisoners who the Obama administration has said should no longer be there.

But it doesn't sound like those discussions are ongoing - or even that everyone is speaking the same language.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/06/04/3433333/southcom-general-has-nothing-to.html#storylink=cpy

Michelle Shephard is the Star's National Security correspondent and author of"Decade of Fear: Reporting from Terrorism's Grey Zone." She is a three-time recepient of Canada's National Newspaper Award. Follow her on Twitter @shephardm

Guantanamo, Afghanistan and the mysterious Mauritanian

Guantanamo Bay's Camp Delta, October 24, 2010.  (MICHELLE SHEPHARD/TORONTO STAR )

When news first broke Friday that the U.S. had transfered detainees to Mauritania, the local Nouakchott press reported they were from Guantanamo.

One of the detainees, the report stated, was former Montreal imam, Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian who has been in Guantanamo Bay since 2002. (Wall Street Journal reporter Jess Bravin has a fascinating account of Slahi and a Guantanamo prosecutor in an Atlantic Monthly excerpt of his book The Terror Courts. Slate Magazine also recently featured a diary written by Slahi).

Was this U.S. President Barack Obama making good on his recent pledge to start closing Guantanamo? Well, Guantanamo-watchers were wary of the news, especially since Slahi is not one of the 86 detainees (out of 166 remaining) that the Pentagon has cleared for transfer. The report ended up being incorrect. Slahi's lawyer confirms her client is still in Gitmo.

A detainee had been transfered it seems, just not from Guantanamo. According to Reuters, Abderhamane Ould Mohammed Al-Hussein, better known as Younis Al Mauritani, had been transfered from Afghanistan. The story seemed to die there.

But the transfer raises a few interesting questions. Who is he, why was he transfered and is he in custody in Mauritania? Younis Al Mauritania was reportedly captured in a joint operation between Pakistan and the U.S. in September 2011. A White House spokesperson called him a "senior Al Qaeda operative."

Aside from the significance of the transfer, it is interesting to note the difference as to how things operate and the level of scrutiny (and politics) in Afghanistan, as opposed to Guantanamo. Andrea Prasow, Human Rights Watch's senior counterterrorism counsel, argues that this case highlights the double standard. Why, she asked in an email to the Star, does Congress restrict Guantanamo transfers, when commanders in Afghanistan are "exercising their traditional authority to decide to release someone?"

States Prasow: "The fact that Congress has attempted to limit that authority with respect to detainees, some of whom have been held for over a decade and who have no battlefield to return to, demonstrates how political and removed from reality Guantanamo has become."

Michelle Shephard is the Star's National Security correspondent and author of"Decade of Fear: Reporting from Terrorism's Grey Zone." She is a three-time recepient of Canada's National Newspaper Award. Follow her on Twitter @shephardm

Rapes and the brave women who report it

Watch Outlawed in Pakistan on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

 

 

 

Often it takes the courage of one woman -- and her family -- to expose the greater issue of sexual violence.

In India, it was the rape and death of Jyoti Singh Pandey. She was the 23-year-old student attacked Dec. 16 after boarding the bus with her fiancé (they were on their way home from watching the movie the Life of Pi). She was gang raped, assaulted with an iron bar and dumped naked on the side of the road. She died 13 days later in a Singapore hospital. 

Her name wasn't public until her father made it so.

“We want the world to know her real name,” Badri Singh Pandey, told The People, a Sunday paper in London. "My daughter didn’t do anything wrong. She died while protecting herself. I am proud of her. Revealing her name will give courage to other women who have survived these attacks. They will find strength from my daughter.”

In Somalia, it was 27-year-old Lul Ali Osman Barake, who went to prison briefly for reporting her rape. Thanks to the international outcry of her story she was released and the government forced to confront the issue of rape conducted by its forces. 

With so much news out of Pakistan, rape is not an topic that has been widely covered, and like India, Somalia and elsewhere, it is considered a taboo subject. Even those who defend survivors of sexual violence are at risk, as are sometimes the journalists who cover their stories.

Kainat Soomro is a brave teenager. When she was just 13, she accused four men of gang raping her. Speaking of a rape at all -- the admission of lost virginity outside of marriage -- could be a death sentence to some. But Soomro's family refused to carry out a so-called "honour killing." 

For four years, filmmakers Habiba Nosheen and Hilke Schellmann followed her story for a PBS Frontline film, "Outlawed in Pakistan." 

The filmmakers joined New York Times correspondent Declan Walsh for a live chat about the complex case and how it provides a window into the greater problem of Pakistan's sexual violence -- and the stigma of reporting it. 

The whole series can be found here.

Michelle Shephard is the Star's National Security correspondent and author of"Decade of Fear: Reporting from Terrorism's Grey Zone." She is a three-time recepient of Canada's National Newspaper Award. Follow her on Twitter @shephardm

Terrorism, expense forms and other bothers

(Courtesy Reuters)

Who doesn't hate expense forms? All that accountability and trying to read ripped and faded receipts from places you can't remember and oh, the currency exchange? Nightmare, right?

Apparently, international terrorist Moktar Belmoktar, the one-eyed Algerian leader nicknamed "Mr. Marlboro" for his cigarette smuggling business, felt the same way. 

Rukmini Callimachi, the West Africa Bureau Chief for The Associated Press, found a 10-page letter in a Timbuktu building once occupied by members of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and wrote this amazing tale about Belomoktar.

It begins:

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — After years of trying to discipline him, the leaders of Al Qaeda's North African branch sent one final letter to their most difficult employee. In page after scathing page, they described how he didn't answer his phone when they called, failed to turn in his expense reports, ignored meetings and refused time and again to carry out orders.

Most of all, they claimed he had failed to carry out a single spectacular operation, despite the resources at his disposal.

The employee, international terrorist Moktar Belmoktar, responded the way talented employees with bruised egos have in corporations the world over: He quit and formed his own competing group. And within months, he carried out two lethal operations that killed 101 people in all: one of the largest hostage-takings in history at a BP-operated gas plant in Algeria in January, and simultaneous bombings at a military base and a French uranium mine in Niger just last week.

Beyond the fact that apparently AQIM has expense forms, there is some good intelligence in the document, such as the discussion about ransom for kidnapped Canadian diplomats Robert Fowler and Louis Guay.

When the pair was released by AQIM in 2009, after four months of captivity, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper denied any ransom was paid. Fowler has always said he doesn't know. But the document obtained by The AP claims nearly $1 million was handed over -- a "meagre" sum that Belmoktar negotiated himself. 

In general, the document confirms the importance of the group's kidnapping operations -- approximately $89 million it states. It also explains why Belmoktar broke off relations with AQIM to form his own group, which reportedly led the January attack against an Algerian gas oil facility, with the help of two Canadians.

But let's face it.. it's the expense forms that are most talked about. It's like a perverse US Weekly magazine feature of "Stars Are Just Like Us." (Just in: Pregnant Reese Witherspoon had a tough time balancing her cell phone and grocery store purchases - Ciao Bella gelato squares and Palapa Azul fruit bars. She shops! She has babies! She eats fruit bars!). 

But maybe understanding this strange normalcy of the "corporate" side of the terrorist group is important too. We've had other glimpses into Al Qaeda's operations (and in-fighting) in the documents uncovered in Osama bin Laden's Abbottabad compound, or discovered when the former leader of Al Qaeda in East Africa was killed in Somalia.

We know the group and its franchises have grappled with branding issues and there are even reports that they've had to adhere to the sex sells adage by trying to recruit on porn sites.

Getting inside the group -- even the business side -- may help counter its operations.

So beyond the ridicule, knowing that AQIM has some form of accounting department could help, in, uh, downsizing.

Michelle Shephard is the Toronto Star's National Security correspondent and author of "Decade of Fear: Reporting from Terrorism's Grey Zone." She is a three-time recepient of Canada's National Newspaper Award. Follow her on Twitter @shephardm

Obama's speech: drones, Gitmo and transparency U.S.-style.

(Photo by John Gurzinski/Getty Images)

Drones will used -- but the program scaled back. Guantanamo will stay open -- but steps taken to close it. And the war on terror that is no longer called the war on terror will some day be over.

That's the Coles Notes (American translation: CliffsNotes) on what is expected in President Barack Obama's speech a 2 p.m. today -- the first major national security speech in his second term. My Washington colleague Mitch Potter outlined some of the anticpated issues, as details began to leak last night.

Most significant was the admission that the U.S. has killed four American citizens in drone strikes. Critics of the CIA-led drone program -- which according to the New York Times will soon transfer authority to the military -- have long demanded answers on this issue.

The deaths in Yemen were no secret. We tracked the story of 15-year-old American Abdulrahman al Awlaki last year in Sanaa. Jeremy Scahill's latest book Dirty Wars, covers their deaths in incredible detail.

A woman adjusts a sign attached to a mock drone at the gates of Fort McNair at the National Defense University in Washington on Thursday. (REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque)

What will be interesting is if Obama ends the so-called "signature strikes." These constitute what Charlie Savage and Peter Baker describe in the Times as "attacks on groups of unknown men based only on their presumed status as members of Al Qaeda or some other enemy group -- an approach that administration critics say has resulted in many civilian casualties."

 

The other major issue addressed will be the stalled closure of Guantanamo. Will, as the Wall Street Journal has reported, the ban on returning detainees to Yemen be lifted?

There are rumours too that Obama will appoint a new Gitmo Czar. Curious, since he removed the last one who was widely believed to be the best man in Washington for the job. Here's a long profile on Daniel Fried in Foreign Policy ("Gitmo's Fall Czar." ) While he wouldn't say this to me, it was clear Washington had lost the political will to close Guantanamo. Has it come back?

While there are likely to be national security questions that still go unanswered even though word is Obama plans to talk for a "long" time, Canadians will find the transparency refreshing. We've been wrapped up in speeches from our own politicians -- a mayor accused of smoking crack and a Prime Minister in the midst of a scandal.

We're still waiting for those speeches.

As the CBC's Neil MacDonald so wonderfully laid out last night, politicians here don't say much.

Michelle Shephard is the Star's National Security correspondent and author of "Decade of Fear: Reporting from Terrorism's Grey Zone." She is a three-time recepient of Canada's National Newspaper Award. Follow her on Twitter @shephardm

Pakistan’s most famous tiger still roaring

A supporter of Nawaz Sharif chants slogans during an election campaign rally in Punjab province during last week's election campaign. The tiger is the election symbol of PML-N. Picture taken May 4.  (Reuters/Mani Rana )

Hold that tiger obit.

The tiger that campaigned for Pakistan poll winner Nawaz Sharif – whose party mascot is also a tiger – was rumoured to have died of its exertions in the sizzling heat of Lahore.

But after the story went viral on the Internet  BBC reporter Owen Bennett-Jones confirmed that it is alive and in “rude good health,” as is the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, which won the majority of seats in the weekend election.

And unlike many voters in electrically-challenged and impoverished Pakistan, where the average wage is $1,200 a month -- and many earn much less -- the toothy beast lives in an air-conditioned den.

“It’s my baby,” said indignant owner Idrees Ahmed, a Sharif supporter who took the tiger to campaign rallies, where it was showered with rose petals as it reclined on the hood of a moving car. “If someone told you your baby had died how would you feel?”

The World Wide Fund for Nature, which defends endangered species, earlier challenged Ahmed to prove the white tigress, named Sandy, was still alive.

It followed reports that a tiger had been brought “unconscious” to a university veterinary department. Local TV news channels reported that it had died of dehydration. Actress Faryal Gohar planned to petition the Lahore High Court against the illegal use of animals at election rallies. Sharif's daughter, Maryam Nawaz, tweeted that the reports were "lies." 

Confusion continued when the owner of the "dead" tiger was named as Ahmed Ali, not Idrees Ahmed -- raising questions about the reports and the tiger's fate.

The media sensation made Sandy the most popular party animal in Pakistan during a particularly bloody election campaign that saw more than 100 people die in militant bombings.

Tiger images were hoisted by crowds, cuddly tiger toys were sold in shops and stands, and fluffy stuffed tigers were propped on car hoods as a sign of solidarity with Sharif. Enthusiasts even had tigers painted on their faces.

In spite of the violence, and complaints of vote rigging, the election was a roaring success. At least for Sandy, who has retired from politics and won't have to form a government, or fight tooth and claw with political foes.

Olivia Ward has covered politics, human rights and conflicts from the former Soviet Union to South Asia, winning national and international awards.