US strike at Lashker not yet | Profile of a Terrorist Group

04-Nov-2001 | April 2001 | Deccan Herald (India) | US Dept. of State

[Brian_Baldwin]

US strike at Lashker not yetFrom L K Sharma
DH News Service
WASHINGTON, Nov 3

Washington is not yet ready formally to strike against the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) even though as a result of confusion here, New Delhi has already welcomed the inclusion of this Pakistan-based group in the relevant US order.

However, the US is expected to soon extend its reach to the LeT because Attorney General John Ashcroft has recommended to Secretary of State Colin Powell that it should be done. The Indian embassy certainly hopes that it would be done soon.

At least, the LeT cannot complain that it has not been given adequate notice by the US to change its name and signboards at its offices in Pakistan! Bringing justice to the terrorist organisations is time-consuming. So is the bureaucratic process of bringing them on to the relevant official papers so that they could be strangled financially.

The process of various inter-agency steps linked to one another, generates a lot of confusion as the media grapples with new lists and old lists, revised lists and expanded lists. It caused some hilarity at the State Department briefing as newshounds tried to sniff out what was new about the new announcement. Washington "designates" an organisation as "terrorist organisation" which does not mean it wishes to act against it. The organisations which figured regularly in the State Department's annual report on "Patterns of Global Terrorism" gave some needed oxygen of publicity to the outfits but no comfort to the victims of terrorism. And the US designation did not scare the organisations out of existence.

September 11 changed the situation somewhat. The Treasury Department stepped in and under new orders, began to select some of the terrorist organisations as its targets. The new regimen has ensured that Osama bin Laden can no longer use his American credit card at New York till or receive a big amount such as one million dollars through electronic transfer from Saudi Arabia.

The noose tightened further when the President of the United States signed the USA Patriot Act. One of its sections defines a terrorist organisation, inter alia, as one "designated, upon publication in the Federal Register, by the Secretary of State in consultation with or upon the request of Attorney General, as a terrorist organisation, after finding that the organisation engages in terrorism-related activities or provides material support to further terrorist activity".

The Attorney General in his letter to the Secretary of State quotes various legal verses and chapters, sections and sub-sections and then comes to a point that interests India.

It reads: "I also request that you designate as ‘terrorist organisations’ certain groups identified in the Department of State's 2000 Patterns of Global Terrorism report published in April 2001. A list of the groups is attached to this letter. Patterns of Global Terrorism reports that each of the named groups has undertaken at least one terrorist attack, and thus satisfies the statutory predicate for your designation." So New Delhi can continue to hope and be ready with another welcoming statement before the prime minister's visit to Washington.

Deccan Herald (India, 4-Nov-2001)

[Brian_Baldwin]

PROFILE OF A TERRORIST GROUP:

Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LT) (Army of the Righteous)
From: Patterns of Global Terrorism, 2000. United States Department of State, April 2001.

Comments on the content of the material should be sent to the U.S. Department of State
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Description

The LT is the armed wing of the Pakistan-based religious organization, Markaz-ud-Dawa-wal-Irshad (MDI)--a Sunni anti-US missionary organization formed in 1989. One of the three largest and best-trained groups fighting in Kashmir against India, it is not connected to a political party. The LT leader is MDI chief, Professor Hafiz Mohammed Saeed.

Activities

Has conducted a number of operations against Indian troops and civilian targets in Kashmir since 1993. The LT is suspected of eight separate attacks in August that killed nearly 100, mostly Hindu Indians. LT militants are suspected of kidnapping six persons in Akhala, India, in November 2000 and killing five of them. The group also operates a chain of religious schools in the Punjab.

Strength

Has several hundred members in Azad Kashmir, Pakistan, and in India's southern Kashmir and Doda regions. Almost all LT cadres are foreigners--mostly Pakistanis from seminaries across the country and Afghan veterans of the Afghan wars. Uses assault rifles, light and heavy machineguns, mortars, explosives, and rocket propelled grenades.

Location/Area of Operation

Based in Muridke (near Lahore) and Muzaffarabad. The LT trains its militants in mobile training camps across Pakistan-administered Kashmir and Afghanistan.

External Aid

Collects donations from the Pakistani community in the Persian Gulf and United Kingdom, Islamic NGOs, and Pakistani and Kashmiri businessmen. The amount of LT funding is unknown. The LT maintains ties to religious/military groups around the world, ranging from the Philippines to the Middle East and Chechnya through the MDI fraternal network.

---

My comments: The actual, correct acronym for the Army of the Righteous is LeT, not LT as used by the Department of State. This terrorist organization, which without doubt assists the bin Laden group, operates missionary activities - that is, collects money for "the needy" and "orphans" - through Pakistani dominated Islamic centres both in the U.K. and the United States. Some of these missionary activities have been advertised on Urdu radio broadcasts on UK and US "community radio", and radio for foreign language audience via public radio and private. Have LeT operatives in the US been involved in anyway in the anthrax mailings? Further investigation should be done . . . also, have any of these Islamic terrorist operatives been in liaison with leftist pro-Iraqi Castro front groups in Florida, New York, Illinois and the US as a transit of Saddam's anthrax into America? Castro front groups, such as the Workers World Party, are pro-Iraqi (pro-anything that could threaten America which they hate). These leftist groups should be investigated to inquire if they are using their liaisons with Iraq to perhaps assist the terrorists.