The Hindu : Lashkar-e-Taiba activists arrested near Baghdad

3 The Hindu : Lashkar-e-Taiba activists arrested near Baghdad

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Apr 01, 2004

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Lashkar-e-Taiba activists arrested near Baghdad

By Praveen Swami

SRINAGAR, MARCH 31. Arrests made earlier this month near Baghdad have blown the lid off the links between the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Islamist groups fighting the United States military. Hard evidence has emerged for the first time that terrorist groups operating in Jammu and Kashmir — groups still indulged by the Pakistani military establishment — have spread their theatre of operations to Iraq.

Earlier this month, U.S. forces in Iraq arrested a Pakistani national, Dilshad Ahmad, a long-time Lashkar operative hailing from the Bhawalpur area of the province of Punjab. Ahmad had played a key role in the Lashkar's trans-Line of Control operations, serving between 1997 and 2001 as the organisation's commander of the forward camps from where infiltrating groups of terrorists are launched into Jammu and Kashmir. Sources here told The Hindu that Ahmad had made at least six secret visits to Lashkar groups operating in Jammu and Kashmir during this period.

A close associate of Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi, second-in-command in the Lashkar hierarchy, Ahmad had a key role in shaping the organisation's ideological and military agenda. In 1998, he addressed a major Lashkar conference in Muridke, arguing for the need to extend the organisation's activities outside Jammu and Kashmir. Ahmad is believed to have played a key role in building the infrastructure for the dozens of Lashkar cells, which have since carried out bombings in several major Indian cities.

U.S. officials have until now managed to keep a tight lid on the news of Ahmad's arrest, and diplomats at the American Embassy in New Delhi said they had no comments to offer. At least four other Lashkar operatives, however, are known to have been arrested in the intelligence-led operation that ended in Ahmad's arrest. It is not known, however, just what the group was doing in Iraq, or if the arrests had anything to do with Monday's apprehension of British nationals of Pakistani origin in London on charges of planning to execute a terrorist act.

For the U.S., the arrests are a potentially embarrassing election-time reminder that the Lashkar, proscribed by all major western capitals, including Washington, continues to operate freely in Pakistan. Although Pakistan formally banned the Lashkar in the wake of the 2001-2002 near-war with India, it allows the organisation to operate under a new label, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa. The Jamaat-ud-Dawa is on a terrorism watch-list in Pakistan, but publicly collects funds and recruits cadre for its operations.

While the U.S. has placed great pressure on Pakistan to act against terrorists it considers a major threat to its interests, such as the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, it has tolerated the continuing activity of terrorist groups that appear mainly India-focussed. Washington's course of action seems to be driven by the Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf's claims that he cannot take on the entire religious right without provoking a major backlash. As a result, Pakistan's military establishment has been able to keep the infrastructure of anti-India terrorism intact — even though U.S. pressure has ensured that the actual use of this military asset has been limited since the 2002 crisis.

Jihadi groups seem to have respected the unspoken U.S.-Pakistan deal; although the Lashkar cadre were in the past believed to have fought in northern Afghanistan and Chechnya, no similar global activity was noticed until the recent arrests. The Lashkar's house journal, Majallah al-Dawa, has been relatively restrained in its criticism of the U.S.' occupation of Iraq. In the current issue of the magazine, the Lashkar chief, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, calls on believers to "never to make friends with Jews and Christians." There is, however, no express call for jihad directed at the U.S.

By contrast, Majallah al-Dawa's position on India is more aggressive. One article claims that Indian Muslims have come to realise that "without migration and jihad there is no future."

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