Kashmir crisis: what is Lashkar-e-Taiba and is it supported by Pakistan?

As India launches missile strikes on what it says are camps associated with militant groups inside Pakistan in retaliation for last month’s massacre in Kashmir, attention has once again focused on India’s claimed relationship between Islamabad and armed groups involved in attacks in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, most prominently Lashkar-e-Taiba. What is Lashkar-e-Taiba? Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) is a long-established Islamic salafist militant group founded in 1986 in Pakistan and designated as a terrorist group by many countries. Its 2008 attack on Mumbai killed 166 people, including a number of foreign nationals. Founded as the armed wing of the Markaz Dawat-ul Irshad, the centre for proselytisation and preaching, LeT emerged during the period of the then Pakistani leader Zia-ul-Haq’s policy of “Islamisation”, which aimed to turn Pakistan into a global centre for political Islam. Ideologically, LeT expounds a vision of a global Islamic caliphate including the reclamation of “lost” Islamic lands through the twin efforts of preaching and armed struggle. The UN security council says LeT has conducted “numerous terrorist operations” against military and civilian targets since 1993, including attacks on Mumbai commuter trains in July 2006 and a December 2001 attack on India’s parliament. While the group has focused much of its militant activity in the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir, largely because of its proximity to India, LeT has a broader hostility to India. LeT’s emir, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, who was arrested in 2019 and imprisoned in Pakistan for 31 years for financing terrorism, has long insisted the group’s international struggle goes far beyond Kashmir and is aimed at the breakup of India, including a strong element of violent antisemitism as shown in its attack on a Jewish centre during the Mumbai attack. What is Jaish e-Mohammed? Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) was founded by Masood Azhar on his release from prison in India in 1999. Pakistan banned the group in 2002 after it, along with LeT, was blamed for the 2001 attack on India’s parliament. The group had links with al-Qaida, founded by Osama bin Laden, and the Taliban, the UN security council has said. Are Lashkar-e-Taiba and other groups supported by Pakistan? The relationship between LeT and other Islamist groups and Pakistani institutions, not least the army and Inter-Services Intelligence agency [ISI], is complicated and murky. While Islamabad has backed armed Islamic groups as proxies in Kashmir and Afghanistan in the past, the present links are more opaque. Historically, Pakistan saw support for armed groups in the 1980s and 1990s as a successful strategy, not least over the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. In a 2012 essay for the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, Ashley Tellis, an international security expert, wrote: “From the very beginning, LeT became a favoured ward of the Pakistani state because its local interests – fighting in Afghanistan and warring against India – dovetailed with the Pakistan army’s own ambitions: controlling Afghanistan in the west while keeping India off balance in the east. “For over two decades … the ISI maintained strong institutional, albeit subterranean, links with LeT and has supported its operations through generous financing and, as required, combat training.” While LeT’s emir denied being behind the Mumbai attack, the jailed US-Pakistani citizen and LeT operative David Headley, who conducted reconnaissance for the 2008 attack, has said he coordinated with Pakistani intelligence officers over the Mumbai attack. What is less clear is the extent of Pakistani official involvement: whether LeT has been given a long rope to operate without sharing precise details. While Pakistan strongly denies India’s claims, Pakistan’s tolerance for groups associated with LeT, despite the jailing of Saeed, undermines its assurances including LeT’s “rebranding” as a charity, Jamaat ud-Dawa (JuD), which the Australian government among others described as indistinguishable from LeT. “Lashkar-e-Taiba has also operated under the alias Jamaat ud-Dawa (JuD), which was ostensibly created as a charitable organisation by the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba founder Hafiz Muhammad Saeed immediately prior to Lashkar-e-Tayyiba being banned by the Pakistani government in 2002,” it wrote. In 2018, on the 10th anniversary of the Mumbai attacks, Stephen Tankel of the Center for a New American Security, said: “Pakistan makes a cosmetic distinction between Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jamaat-ud-Dawa, but the United States and the United Nations consider them to be the same organization and have designated it as a terrorist group.” What about today? Experts are less clear about the level of formal Pakistani support for groups such as LeT and Jaish e-Mohammed. Some have suggested the recent political turmoil in Pakistan may have led some members of the army and ISI into a more active role with militant groups, as has previously occurred during times of political instability when state security institutions have felt under threat. Tankel, however, noted a more complex, long-term dynamic. “Close observers of Pakistan have recognised for years now there is another reason: Lashkar-e-Taiba not only abjures launching attacks in Pakistan, but also helps combat groups that do. “It has not only gathered intelligence about anti-state militants – jihadists, as well as separatists in Balochistan – but also helped to neutralise them at times. Lashkar-e-Taiba has also promoted an ideological and theological counter-narrative condemning militant groups that attack the Pakistani state.”