There is a growing feeling in the US that despite the best efforts of the Obama administration, Pakistan’s semi-rogue spy agency, the ISI, continues to maintain links with Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). Many US scholars and south Asia experts plainly told US lawmakers that ISI patronage helped the terror outfit to unleash mayhem in Mumbai. They also said the Obama administration’s decision to sell advanced arms to Pakistan can only complicate matters.
Attending a special Congressional hearing on “Lashkar-e-Taiba and the growing ambition of Islamic militancy in Pakistan” in Washington, Congressmen expressed concern over Pakistan’s reluctance to take decisive action against the deadly outfit. “The LeT is a deadly group of fanatics. They are well-financed, ambitious and, most disturbingly, both tolerated by and connected to the Pakistani military,” agency reports quoting Gary L Ackerman, chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia of the House Committee on International Relations said.
Testifying before the Congressional committee, Marvin G Weinbaum from the Middle East Institute — a Washington-based think tank — said despite the government’s official ban of LeT, ISI continued to consider the organisation as an asset.
“It is a measure of the impunity with which LeT is allowed to operate in Pakistan that the authorities have been unwilling to contain LeT chief Hafiz Saeed.”
Although he has been periodically arrested, his house detentions have been cosmetic, Mr Weinbaum said. Noting that LeT poses a threat to the US national security interests, Lisa Curtis from the Heritage Foundation said the appearance of LeT leader Hafiz Saeed at a recent public rally casts grave doubts about Pakistan’s commitment to reining in the group’s activities. Ms Curtis said it has been a failure of the US policy to not insist that Pakistan shut down the LeT long ago. US officials have shied away from pressuring Pakistan on the LeT in the interest of garnering Pakistani cooperation against targets the US believed were more critical to immediate US objectives, that is Al Qaeda, shortly after 9/11 and the Afghan Taliban more recently.
“To degrade the overall international terrorist threat emanating from Pakistan, the US must convince Islamabad to confront those groups it has supported against India,” Ms Curtis said.
The Mumbai attacks and subsequent Headley investigations revealed that LeT has the international capabilities and ideological inclination to attack western targets whether they are located in South Asia or elsewhere.
Eminent Pakistani scholar Shuja Nawaz too conceded that the relationship between the ISI and LeT has stayed overtime. Mr Nawaz is director, South Asia Center, The Atlantic Council of the United States. “The LeT’s emerging role as a trans-regional force that has broadened its aim to include India and perhaps even Afghanistan, by linking with the Students Islamic Movement of India and the Harkat ul Jihad al Islami or HUJI of Bangladesh poses a serious threat to regional stability,” Mr Nawaz said.
Ashley J Tellis, senior associate at the prestigious Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told lawmakers that today LeT relies on the ISI primarily for safe haven and political protection for its leadership, intelligence on selected targets and threats, campaign guidance when necessary, and infiltration assistance, particularly in regard to long distance operations involving transits through third countries.
“Although the interrogation of David Headley has now established that there were clearly some shadowy ISI connections with the Bombay attacks, the management of the LeT detainees by the Pakistani state and the tortured progress of their trial demonstrates that, whatever the outcome of this charade, the ISI has simply no intention of eviscerating LeT (or any other anti-Indian jihadi groups) because of their perceived utility to Pakistan’s national strategy vis-i-vis India,” Mr Tellis said.
Courtesy : indiatimes.
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