Why the World must have a renewed focus on Lashkar-e-Toiba?

Pakistan is now spreading the anti-India terror umbrella further to Indonesia, Thailand and Sharjah. Some anti-India jihadi modules have, of late, been operating from Indonesia and Thailand. This gives Pakistan a higher deniability quotient and helps Islamabad claim that anti-India elements are everywhere, not just in Pakistan. The terror modules have further linkages in Sharjah from where the operators stay in touch with Pakistan.

Besides, certain Pakistani-sponsored jihadi groups have been rearing their head once again. On December 23, the Mumbai police announced that four Laskhar-e-Toiba (LeT) terrorists had sneaked into the city. This was a direct result of installing special listening devices on lighthouses. The instruments have a range of over 10 nautical miles. Indian efforts at closing the gaps in coastal surveillance seem to be paying off. There also seems to be better coordination among agencies, as can be gauged from this very specific input from the Mumbai police.

However, the jihadi virus refuses to be stemmed, easily, as terror elements shift loyalty and merge themselves into the wider jihadi networks. It is quite likely that the four LeT men whose names and pictures were released by Mumbai Police are most likely former SIMI (Student’s Islamic Movemenet of India) cadres. Of late, SIMI activists have been known to have deserted the weakened outfit and joined other terror groups. SIMI cadres shifting to the LeT is indeed an alarming development. A global terrorist group, the LeT’s deep and abiding relationship with the Pakistan Army and its intelligence wing, ISI, has been underscored by the spate of confidential documents from the US State Department made public by WikiLeaks recently.

The diplomatic cables drafted by US Ambassador to Pakistan, Ms Anne Patterson, and detailed notes prepared by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in December 2009, a year after the Mumbai attacks, reveal the proximity of the terrorist group with the Pakistan military establishment. These documents show the power and influence of LeT in Pakistan and its value to the military in achieving various short term and long term objectives.
 
The Clinton memo revealed how some ISI officials “continue to maintain ties with a wide array of extremist organisations, in particular the Taliban, LeT and other extremist organisations”. Other cables and notes have shown that Hafiz Saeed continues to head the terrorist organisation despite global sanctions and runs a flourishing jihadi industry. He has not only addressed Friday prayers in Lahore but has been quite active in recruitment and gathering funds for his terrorist cause.

Some of the cables have warned that funds collected in the name of charity were being utilised to train new recruits and establish new training centres in different parts of Pakistan. Not only was Saeed free but even his deputy, Zaki-ur Rahman Lakvhi, the key accused in the Mumbai attack and undergoing trial in Islamabad, has been actively promoting and monitoring the group’s terrorist agenda. A recent news report said several hundred students from Punjab and other parts of Pakistan along with a handful of foreign recruits, were being trained in various terrorist activities in LeT’s camps in Pakistan occupied Kashmir. The recruits are trained to carry out terrorist activities in India.

The facts revealed by the leaked documents, however, have not come as a surprise for India. India has been for over two decades now spoken of the LeT’s global agenda. There are volumes of evidence to show that LeT works both as a proxy for al Qaida and ISI, cleverly camouflaging its own global agenda of establishing a Caliphate. The group has kept a low profile, avoiding any military action from the international community so far, and thereby managing to strengthen its resource base, public support and its political linkages. This has been a deliberate plan, helped in no less measure by the Pakistan Army which has always used jihadi elements as a weapon against India.

As the leaked cables have shown, the Pakistan Army has no intention to give up on its strategic assets created and sustained for over half a century. The linkage between the so-called professional military and a terrorist group is much more than operational. They share the same enemy, similar strategies and objectives. Over and above, the senior leadership in the military and intelligence have for long been more than sympathetic to the LeT leadership, particularly Hafiz Saeed who has never deviated from the line set by the ISI. Saeed is today the only jihadi leader who has obeyed ISI’s command to the last dot and has been eager to please his masters. Other terrorist groups spawned by ISI in the years since the Afghan Jihad have either disintegrated or splintered, forming smaller groups with inadequate capability and resources to carry out the terror missions planned by ISI in India and other places. LeT, on the other hand, has remained more or less united and has gained enormous resources and infrastructure across Pakistan, particularly in Punjab. By any account, LeT is today the world’s most resourceful terrorist group.
 
The Americans are not unaware of these facts. The quoted WikiLeaks cables clearly show that the American hesitation in taking a direct action against terrorist groups like LeT is not because of any lack of information or understanding of the threat such groups pose but their own short term interests. For the US, the Pakistan Army remains the key to untangle themselves from Afghanistan. Therefore they are not willing to push the Pakistan military leadership beyond a point. Till some Americans were killed in the Mumbai attack, the US had viewed LeT as a regional threat, mostly to India, and not as a global threat. It remains one of the gravest miscalculations on the part of successive US administrations.

The writer is a New Delhi-based journalist-author and commentator on foreign policy, international relations, terrorism and security issues. He has authored five books on these subjects, the last being “Global Jihad: Current Patterns and Future Trends”.

(Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the views either of the Editorial Committee or the Centre for Land Warfare Studies).