WikiLeaks: Pakistan continues to support Mumbai terror attack group

The Telegraph ^ | Wednesday 01 December 2010 | The Telegraph

[James C. Bennett]

In a review of Washington's strategy on Pakistan and Afghanistan, its ambassador to Islamabad, Anne Patterson, said Pakistan was supporting four militant groups, including the Taliban's Haqqani network and the Lashkar e Taiba (LeT) terror group, and could not be persuaded to abandon them.

The Haqqani network is based in North Waziristan, from where it launches attacks on NATO forces over the border in Afghanistan. The LeT has been nurtured by Pakistan's ISI intelligence service to carry out proxy attacks on India to put pressure on New Delhi to negotiate the future of Kashmir.

Pakistan has denied Indian claims that elements in its security forces trained and funded the ten Lashkar e Taiba 'fedayeen' commandos who killed 166 in their three day attack on Mumbai in 2008. Under international pressure following the attack it arrested several senior LeT leaders and put its founder Hafiz Saeed under house arrest.

But in a cable to Washington in September last year, the ambassador said "no amount of money" could persuade Islamabad to turn its back on these terrorist groups. "There is no chance that Pakistan will view enhanced assistance levels in any field as sufficient compensation for abandoning support to these groups, which it sees as an important part of its national security apparatus against India. The only way to achieve a cessation of such support is to change the Pakistan government's own perception of its security requirements," she wrote. She said Washington should reconsider its support for Indian aid in Afghanistan which causes anxiety within Pakistan's military and reinforces its relationship with terrorist groups.

The Pakistan government has previously denied it now supports Lashkar-e-Taiba.

[James C. Bennett]

Ten Lashkar e Taiba 'fedayeen' commandos killed 166 in a three day attack on Mumbai (India) in 2008

[swarthyguy]

America is still under the impression that we can wean the PakArmy off its support for Jihad.

Those cables really show the tunnelvision groupthink syndrome.

Maybe if we give ‘em more money, they’ll cease to look at India as their primary threat.

It’d be funny if it wasn’t so sad and indicative of a complete paucity of original statecraft in dealing with Pakistan.

Bush tried that for 8 years and acknowledged the Pakistanis had snowed him.

So we’re back to our stance of wishful thinking instead of considering the Army as irretrieveable from it’s IndoCentric stance.