Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT)

Aliases: Army of the Pure, Army of the Righteous, Army of the Pure and Righteous, al Monsooreen, al-Mansoorian. Sometimes spelled Lashkar-e-Taiba or Lashkar-e-Tayyiba.

Summary: Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) is a Pakistani Islamist fundamentalist organization dedicated to bringing the Indian province of Jammu and Kashmir (generally shortened to simply "Kashmir") under control of Pakistan. It may also have ambitions stretching beyond Kashmir, including terrorist attacks elsewhere in India and countering Indian influence in neighboring Afghanistan. LeT was founded in the mid-to-late 1980s with the help of Pakistan's military intelligence organization, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI). Among the most dramatic incidents linked to LeT are an attempted attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001, attacks on commuter trains in Mumbai, India, in July 2006, and a raid on five Mumbai landmarks in November 2008 that killed 163 people. In July 2009, the sole surviving attacker in the Mumbai incident confessed to having ties to LeT and being trained in Pakistan. LeT has also been accused of leading three significant attacks against Indian government sites or private contractors in Afghanistan. India's decision to release the leader of LeT following the 2008 Mumbai attack appeared to derail efforts to renew talks between Pakistan and India aimed at decreasing tensions over the Kashmir issue and, as a result, may have discouraged Pakistan's army from directing more attention to defeating Afghan Taliban terrorists operating on its northern border region.

Territory: Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, especially in the Kashmir valley, with affiliates throughout Pakistan.

Religious affiliation or political orientation: Islamist.

Founded: 1990.

Stated goal: Islamist rule over Kashmir—and over all of India.

Key leader: Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, nominally the head of the Islamic charity Jamaat-ud-Dawa, is widely described as a front organization for Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Alliances: LeT is the armed wing of the Pakistan-based, anti-US Sunni missionary organization Markaz-ud-Dawa-wal-Irshad (MDI), organized in 1989. It is also associated with a charitable group, Jamaat-ud-Dawa. LeT has been accused of facilitating the movement of Al Qaeda members in and out of Pakistan.

Activities:

• The group has been blamed for scores of terrorist-style attacks against Indian security forces in the besieged state of Jammu and Kashmir.
• December 2000: Admits responsibility for the attack on landmark Red Fort in Delhi, India, that killed three.
• December 2001: The group is accused of complicity in a terrorist attack against the Indian parliament but denies involvement. Pakistan freezes LeT accounts and arrests its leader, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, who is released six days later. The group is designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the US State Department.
• August 2003: India accuses LeT of bombings in Mumbai that kills fifty-five and injures 180.
• October 2005: LeT is accused of bomb attacks in New Delhi that kills more than sixty.
• July 2006: Indian police suspect LeT's involvement in bombing Mumbai, India, commuter trains in a coordinated attack that kills 184 people. LeT denies responsibility.
• November 2008: The group is blamed for organizing a raid by ten gunmen on sites in Mumbai, India, over sixty hours, resulting in 163 deaths. Pakistan arrests seven alleged members of LeT for having ties to the Mumbai attack, including the alleged mastermind Hammad Amin Sadiq.
• October 2009: US officials accuse American David Headley of plotting to attack a Danish newspaper in retaliation for a cartoon publication deemed by many Muslims to disrespect the Prophet Mohammad, suggesting that LeT has expanded its horizons beyond Pakistan and Kashmir. Headley is accused two months later of helping LeT plan attacks on Mumbai a year earlier.
• 2011: The LeT organizes a group, Difa-e-Pakistan Council, of Islamist groups opposed to Western political practices.
• September 2015: Twelve Lashkar-e-Taiba militants are convicted of involvement in the 2006 train bombings.
• 2017: The group changes its name to Tehreek-e-Azadi-e Kashmir (TAJK), attempting to avoid sanctions.

Last known status: LeT was relatively inactive in 2015, but the following year, suicide bombers attacked the Indian military headquarters in Uri, Jammu and Kashmir, India, in the name of LeT. More than twenty were killed. LeT’s political group, Milli Muslim League (MML), nominated candidates in the 2018 Pakistani parliament elections but were denied entry. They proposed the same candidates under another political front, but they did not receive any votes. A February 2010 suicide bomb attack on two guesthouses frequented by Indians in Kabul, Afghanistan, and earlier attacks in January were blamed on LeT and led some analysts to suggest that LeT had become an active threat in Afghanistan comparable to Al Qaeda.

Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) is one of the three main terrorist groups combating the Indian occupation of Kashmir, the long-disputed, religiously divided area of northwest India that adjoins Pakistan. LeT has a history of targeting the Indian military. India has accused it of launching terrorist attacks inside India, including an attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001, attacks on commuter trains in Mumbai, India, in 2006, and a sixty-hour-long series of attacks in Mumbai in November 2008. In addition to the highly publicized attacks in Mumbai and Delhi, Indian authorities have blamed LeT for over 300 terrorist incidents that caused the deaths of several hundred Indian security personnel in Kashmir.

In 2010, LeT was blamed for attacks against Indian targets in Afghanistan, where India and Pakistan had long competed for influence. Some news reports suggested LeT played a role similar to that of Al Qaeda—an outside group responsible for organizing terrorist attacks in Afghanistan.

Long-standing ties between Pakistan's military Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) and Lashkar have resulted in decades of strained relations between India and Pakistan, which both have nuclear weapons. In September 2009, the two countries tried, but failed, to resume talks aimed at easing tensions; India's accusation of Pakistani involvement with, or refusal to crack down on, the senior leadership of LeT in the wake of the attack on Mumbai in 2008 was the main reason for the failed talks. In turn, American diplomats feared that renewed tensions with India would dilute Pakistan's efforts to combat the Taliban in northern Pakistan on the border with Afghanistan.

Pakistan said it severed official contacts with LeT after the Al Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001, and banned the group in 2002 after it was linked to an attack on the Indian parliament. After that, an organization named Jamaat-ud-Dawa emerged, nominally as a charity but actually as a front for the militant wing of LeT, according to US and Indian officials. Jamaat-ud-Dawa was put on a United Nations list of terrorist organizations after the attacks in Mumbai in November 2008, and Pakistan ordered that the organization be closed.

Nevertheless, according to a report by the New York Times in September 2009, LeT remained functional and capable of training and fielding terrorists at short notice. The report quoted a "mid-level" source in Pakistan's ISI intelligence organization as saying LeT had about 150,000 members in Pakistan. Most of its members are believed to be Pakistani or Afghani veterans of the Islamist guerrilla war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan during the 1980s. LeT is also thought to have had training and logistical support from the Pakistani military intelligence organization ISI in a long-running effort to subvert India's sovereignty over Kashmir.

LeT's stated goal is restoring Islamic rule over all parts of India, not just the region of Kashmir, which has a majority Muslim population but whose sovereign, a Hindu, chose to join India instead of Pakistan a few months after the dissolution of British India in 1947. India and Pakistan fought three wars over Kashmir, and some analysts believe LeT was organized to act as a proxy for the Pakistan military, allowing it to continue the campaign for Kashmir by different means. The fact that both India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons adds to international anxiety over the seeming intransigence of the dispute.

Origins. LeT was an outgrowth of the Islamist campaign against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. It originated in 1990 as the military wing of Markaz-ud-Dawa-wal-Irshad (MDI), a fundamentalist Islamist organization of Pakistan's Ahle-Hadith sect. MDI's leader was an engineering professor, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, who was also the official leader of LeT. (During the November 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India, Pakistani authorities placed Saeed under house arrest on December 12, 2008, but freed him the following July, saying there was insufficient evidence tying him to the attacks. Indian officials strongly objected, insisting they had supplied Pakistan with telephone transcripts showing Saeed offering specific advice and instruction to the Mumbai terrorists.)

The Markaz-ud-Dawa-wal-Irshad was known for preaching hard-line views on Islamist fundamentalism. It eventually attracted 100,000 people to its annual conventions, which called for jihad (holy war).

In a larger sense, LeT and other Islamist terrorist organizations operating in Kashmir are a continuation of a struggle that began with the withdrawal of Britain from the Indian subcontinent after World War II and the creation of two independent states, Pakistan and India, along religious lines. The principality of Jammu and Kashmir, with a population comprising about 70 percent Muslims and the balance of Hindus or Buddhists, was one of several similar quasi-independent states that existed under British rule and whose maharaja (king) was given the choice of joining either Pakistan or India, although he preferred independence from both. After Pakistani troops invaded the region, the Kashmiri leader appealed for help and became a state of India, sparking a long-standing conflict with Pakistan. Eventually, India controlled about three-quarters of the former principality, with Pakistan controlling the northeast quadrant. Indian and Pakistani troops have long faced each other along an uneasy Line of Control. Since 2001, India has accused Lashkar-e-Taiba of orchestrating or participating in several significant actions inside India, including:

• An attack against the Indian parliament in December 2001; LeT denies involvement. Pakistan froze LeT accounts and arrested its leader, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, but released him six days later. The State Department designated Lashkar as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
• Bombings in Mumbai, India's financial center, killed fifty-five and injured 180 in August 2003.
• Bomb attacks in New Delhi killed more than sixty in October 2005. Afterward, Lashkar-e-Taiba was placed on a list of banned organizations for its links to Al Qaeda under UN Resolution 1267, which obligates UN member states to seize its assets and prevent members from crossing borders.
• Bombs on commuter trains in Mumbai killed 184 in July 2006.
• Gunmen stage a sixty-hour rampage in Mumbai, including attacks on two hotels and a train station, killing 163. Pakistan placed Lashkar-e-Taiba's leader under house arrest for seven months but released him in July 2009 because there was insufficient evidence linking him to the attacks.
• Three attacks in January and February 2010 on targets in Kabul, Afghanistan, including the suicide bombing of a guesthouse frequented by Indians, were blamed on LeT. The attacks underscored Pakistan's long involvement with the Afghan Taliban and its continuing competition with India for influence in Afghanistan.

India alleges that Pakistan's ISI military intelligence organization was instrumental in forming LeT and providing training and support to its terrorists, who are blamed for more than 300 attacks inside Kashmir since 1996. Characteristically, LeT has organized small-scale attacks on Indian security forces. Although no single attack grabbed world headlines, there has been a steady stream of incidents in which several hundred Indian police and soldiers have died.

LeT and Al Qaeda. In January 2002, Pakistan's then-President Pervez Musharraf banned Lashkar-e-Taiba and four other groups, acting under pressure from the United States, stemming from the September 11, 2001 attacks. Before then, LeT operated openly inside Pakistan, recruiting members and raising funds, typically through collection boxes placed in most retail shops in Pakistan. LeT's reputation was linked solely to attacks in Kashmir. After 9/11, however, some LeT members participated in attacks inside Pakistan to express disagreement with Musharraf's decision to cooperate with the US war on terrorism. In March 2002, a senior Al Qaeda operative, Abu Zubaydah, was captured in a LeT safehouse in Faisalabad, Pakistan, suggesting cooperation between LeT and Al Qaeda in the region.

Eight alleged LeT leaders were arrested near Washington, DC, in June 2003 on an indictment charging them with preparing and engaging in attacks in Kashmir, the Philippines, and Chechnya. Some news reports have quoted LeT members as saying ties to ISI cooled after 2001 as both the United States and India pressured the government in Islamabad to crack down on terrorist organizations. These reports have also said that retired ISI officers continued contacts with Lashkar, providing at least a nominal "hair's breadth" distance between LeT and the government.

Bibliography

Burke, Paul, et al. Global Jihadist Terrorism: Terrorist Groups Zones of Armed Conflict and National Counter-Terrorism Strategies. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 2021.

“Lashkar-e-Taiba.” Stanford University, Mapping Militant Organizations, Nov. 2018, cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/mappingmilitants/profiles/lashkar-e-taiba. Accessed 10 Oct. 2023.

Polgreen, Lydia and Souad Mekhennet. "Militant Network Is Intact Long After Mumbai Siege." New York Times, 30 Sept. 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/world/asia/30mumbai.html. Accesed 10 Oct. 2023.

Unni, Upasana. "Militant Complex." Harvard International Review, vol. 30, no. 2, 2008, p. 2. search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tsh&AN=34162461&site=isc-live

Wolfgang, Simon. “Samina Yasmeen: Jihad and Dawah. Evolving Narratives of Lashkar-E- Taiba and Jamat Ud Dawah.” Everyday Security Practices in Asia, vol. 49, no. 1-2, 2019. doi.org/10.11588/iqas.2018.1-2.8712.