After the US having designated Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) a terrorist organization based in Pakistan, the LeT had changed the nomenclature of its affiliates facilitating it to function as a terrorist organization and receive funds without hindrance. The US has amended LeT designations and added as many as four or five aliases as its affiliates.
Lashkar-e-Toiba is one of the largest and most proficient of the Kashmir-focused militant groups. LeT was formed in the early 1990s as the military wing of Markaz-ud-Dawa-wal-Irshad, a Pakistan-based Islamic fundamentalist missionary organization founded in the 1980s to oppose the Soviets in Afghanistan. Since 1993, LeT has conducted numerous attacks against Indian troops and civilian targets in Jammu and Kashmir State, as well as several high-profile attacks inside India itself. Concern over new LeT attacks in India remains high. The United States and United Nations have designated LeT an international terrorist organization. The Pakistani Government banned it and froze its assets in 2002. In 2008 the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on four senior LeT leaders, and in April 2012 two senior LeT leaders were placed on the US State Department Rewards for Justice List.
The Indian Government has charged LeT with committing the 26 November 2008 attacks in Mumbai, in which gunmen using automatic weapons and grenades attacked several sites, killing more than 160 people. Pakistani authorities say they have detained and are prosecuting several LeT leaders for the Mumbai attacks. David Headley, an American citizen who acknowledged attending LeT training camps, pleaded guilty in March 2010 to scouting targets for the Mumbai attacks. On 21 November 2012, India executed the lone surviving Mumbai attacker, Pakistani Ajmal Kasab, after the Indian Supreme Court upheld his death sentence. India accused LeT of involvement in other high-profile attacks, including the 11 July 2006 attack on multiple Mumbai commuter trains that killed more than 180 people, and the December 2001 armed assault on the Indian Parliament building that left 12 dead. Indian authorities have speculated that LeT also may have contributed surveillance and planning for the 13 February 2010 bombing of a German Bakery in Pune, India.
LeT’s exact size is unknown, but the group probably has several thousand members, predominantly Pakistani nationals seeking a united Kashmir under Pakistani rule. Elements of LeT are active in Afghanistan and the group also recruits internationally, as evidenced by the arrest in the United States of Jubair Ahmed in 2011, Headley’s arrest in 2009, and the indictment of 11 LeT terrorists in Virginia in 2003. LeT maintains facilities in Pakistan, including training camps, schools, and medical clinics. In March 2002, senior Al-Qaida lieutenant Abu Zubaydah was captured at a LeT hideout in Faisalabad, suggesting that some LeT members assist the group.
LeT coordinates its charitable activities through its front organization, Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), which spearheaded humanitarian relief to the victims of the October 2005 earthquake in Kashmir. JuD activities, however, have been limited since December 2008 by the UN’s designation of the group as an alias for LeT. But now that the US has included Jamaat-ud-Dawa as an affiliate of LeT, it will not be easy for this outfit to pursue its activities under the mask of a social organization which the LeT leadership claims.
With the designation directive coming from the US, all property and interests in the United States or in the possession or control of US persons in which Ahmad and Gill, the two nominated activists of LeT/JuD have an interest are blocked and US persons are prohibited from engaging in transactions with them.
LeT has become very powerful and influential in Pakistan and Islamabad has not been able to exert control on its terrorist activities. This terrorist organization has been openly propagating jihad against India and has vowed to “liberate” Kashmir through the use of gun. It is the prime organization operating against Indian interests and based on Pakistani soil. Despite several promises and assurances given by Pakistani leadership from time to time of not allowing terrorists use Pakistani soil against India, there has been no change on the ground of volatile situation along the LoC.
With the fresh action taken by the American authorities against LeT of including its affiliates in the designated terrorist list, India’s allegations that LeT is behind some of the major terrorist attacks in India is vindicated. As such India should bring pressure on the US to ask Pakistan to hand over the culprits of Mumbai attack including the leader Hafiz Sayeed to India for prosecuting them under India law. If Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif really wants to initiate an era of friendship and peace with India, it will be in fitness of things that he hands over the wanted terrorists to New Delhi who have taken safe haven in Pakistan. The US decision has come belatedly. Nevertheless, it is satisfying to note that the US has taken this decision primarily to cut the funding sources of this terrorist organization as it was receiving huge monies through aliases it had crated. That will be stopped to some extent.
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