Washington: Another major terrorist attack in India by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) has the potential to destabilise the region, a powerful American lawmaker has said, adding that this Pakistan-based militant outfit has increased its threat potential to the United States too.
"This group (LeT), responsible for the vicious Mumbai attacks of 2008, is capable of not only destabilising the region with another attack against India, but through its extensive alumni organisation and network of training camps throughout Pakistan, it could threaten the United States homeland," Senator John Kerry, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said.
Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad continue to launch attacks that risk sparking war between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, he said. Testifying before the committee, Christina Fair, an eminent expert of the region, said that Pakistan has raised and nurtured a number of militant groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba being just one, to operate in India and in Afghanistan.
"These are distinct from the Pakistani Taliban, which has been ravaging the state, although part of the Pakistan Taliban does draw personnel from rebel erstwhile proxies," she said.
"Lashkar-e-Taiba draws most of its recruits from Deobandis and other sectarian groups. This allows them to indoctrinate them into this worldview, and since it deploys relatively few people to Kashmir, this is an important part of its domestic outreach mission," Fair said. But Lashkar-e-Taiba will become more important to the Pakistani state as its internal security continues to degrade at the hands of these Deobandi groups," Fair added.
"I can see that if Lashkar-e-Taiba only had external utility, then resolving the Indo-Pakistani security competition would be necessary, probably insufficient, to put that group down," Fair said in response to a question.
Referring to the ongoing Rana trial in Chicago, Senator Ben Cardin said David Headley a confessed Pakistan-American terrorist, testified that ISI and LeT coordinated with each other, and ISI provided assistance to Lashkar financial, military and moral support.
"Now, I don't know how the United States can just ignore this. It seems to me that we need to be able to confront Pakistan's support for terrorist organisations. And US taxpayers are providing support to Pakistan today. That's an issue that will come to the attention of the United States Congress. So it's going hit a crisis point if we cannot get Pakistan to support the war against terror, including terrorist organisations within their own state," Fair said.
Fair responded by observing that the United States dismissed Lashkar-e-Taiba for years as India's threat.
"Pakistan never turned its back on Laskhar-e-Taiba. Pakistan did a U-turn on its U- turn with the Taliban very early in the conflict, and there were no consequences because we had other preoccupations that did not allow us to have the fortitude that we should have had to be more forthright with Pakistan," she said.
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