Indians may reject Al Qaeda, but LeT link is troubling - Narayan Lakshman,
The Hindu
Counterterrorism experts here [Washington], who parsed the announcement of al Qaida al-Qaeda boss Ayman al-Zawahiri that the terror group would be setting up a “wing” in the Indian subcontinent, suggested that while India’s pluralistic democracy would militate against their efforts, the possibility of al Qaida al-Qaeda tying up with Lashkar-e-Taiba could spell trouble for the government of Prime Minister Narenda Modi government.
The report above is brief and does not explain why American analysts believe in what they have said.
I wanted the following to be posted yesterday in the STFUP thread after reading the Al Qaeda announcement but refrained from doing so. I am doing it here now.
The Indian branch of AQ is a sinister plan by the ISI to make future terror attacks appear completely 'Made in India' and influenced by the general wahhabi, jihadi Islamist tendencies around the world and without any connection to STFU-TSP. It wants to remove the 'terror' subject off the India-Pakistan equation table and not to give that handle to India even as it maintains the terror pressure on us. As the Afghan denouement approaches, Mullah Omar and Zawahiri become important for Pakistan Army once again. The Pakistani Army has twin objectives now. One is the constant endeavour to defeat India and alter the balance of power in the Indian subcontinent. The next is to get the 'bad Taliban' monkey off its back. It might have decided that off-sourcing terror against India to Al Qaeda & IM could achieve both its goals and simultaneously wipe off the terror blame too from it. It is taking 'plausible deniability' to a new level. Its calculation might be that the US, the US-funded peacewallah constituency in India etc. can then reprimand India for seeing a Pakistani ghost in every shadow if India accuses Pakistan and put political pressure on GoI apart from the terror pressure too.
The question is how will LeT merge into Al Qaeda's India operations?
Currently, Al Qaeda and LeT are not partners even though there have been deep linkages between the two organizations. LeT is a member of IIF, Islamic International Front for Jihad against the Crusaders and the Jewish people. Just before 9/11 happened in circa 2001, the extremist Dar-ul-Uloom Haqqania madrassah in Peshawar (belonging to Maulana Sami-ul-Haq aka Maulana Sandwich for the positions that he prefers to assume during certain times) organized a meeting which was attended, among others, by Gen. Hamid Gul, former DG of ISI and Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg, former COAS, wherein a declaration was made to defend Osama bin Laden and attack the Western countries as a sacred duty of Muslims. LeT was part of that meeting too.
Hafeez Saeed and OBL go back to the Maktab-al-Khidmat days (with OBL's mentor Abdullah Azzam) in Peshawar during the Afghan Jihad. After Azzam's assassination, the Maktab became Jama'at-ud-Dawah and Hafeez Saeed became its head. In parallel, Hafeez Sayeed had started, along with Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi (known by aliases such as Chachaji, Abdullah Azzam et al) , Markaz-daw’a-wal-Irshad (MDI) in Muridke in 1985. MDI was started with the twin objectives of peaceful activities (such as running charities and prosletyzation) and Islamist jihad. In 1990, LeT was launched officially by MDI as its militant wing with Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi as its commander while Hafeez Sayeed remained in overall charge of the organization. Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi has directed LeT military operations, including in Chechnya, Bosnia, Iraq, and Southeast Asia. Lakhvi, in 2004, sent operatives and funds to attack US forces in Iraq. Lakhvi also directed an LeT operative to travel to Iraq in 2003 to assess the jihad situation there. After the 1992 Babri mosque destruction, LeT sent Azzam Cheema to India to set up Tanzeem Islahul Muslimeen which much later became Indian Mujahideen. Osama bin Laden handsomely funded the Murike campus.
The aim of Markaz Dawa wa Al-Irshad (the Centre for Preaching and Guidance.) has been to reject democracy as a western concept of governance unsuited to and against Islamic principles. It disapproves of all sorts of democratic means of political expression like peaceful protests, demonstrations and sloganeering as un-Islamic. The organisation is also averse to electoral politics in Pakistan and elsewhere. The annual convention of MDI at Muridke is attended by political & military leaders of Pakistan including PMs, Presidents, COASs, ISI Chiefs, Admirals and Air Chiefs (serving & retired). There is no wonder that democracy never thrives in Pakistan.
LeT's connection with Al Qaeda was proved when Abu Zubaydah, a top Al Qaeda operative, was arrested from an LeT safe house in Faisalabad.
The trouble is that the Punjabi Taliban (the 'bad Taliban') hate the LeT for their connections with the Pakistani Army. They do not trust them at all and have kept them away from Al Qaeda operations in Afghanistan though there have been some sporadic instances of LeT taking part in some of them. Certainly, LeT & Haqqani have worked together under ISI leadership to target Indian embassy, consulates and Indian-assisted projects in Afghanistan.
While Osama had deep linkages with Pakistani Army, ISI, and almost all the Sunni terror organizations of Pakistan, Ayman-al-Zawahiri does not enjoy that kind of proximity. Can he exercise that kind of influence over these tanzeems? The ISIS is after all a breakaway faction of the Al Qaeda and is now threatening to expand into Khorasan, the traditional sovereign areas of Al Qaeda, the Taliban and the Pakistani terror tanzeems. Or, is it a surreptitious attempt by the Pakistan Army's proxy, the LeT, to take over Al Qaeda's leadership to shape events in a way that the Army would deem fit?
In any case, India has a huge problem on hand, what with Pakistan's decade old support now seeing fruits all over India, Pakistan using newer areas to inflitrate jihadists (through Sri Lanka, for example) into India, the uncertainty in Afghanistan, the rise of the even more vicious ISIS, a large number of Indians flocking to ISIS and then coming back to India to infect the rest, the Al Qaeda announcement (though to be fair to Al Qaeda, one must say that even from Osama's days, it has been targetting India), the instability, chaos and ungovernability of Pakistan etc.
They strung them up in the backroom of the police station and they probably gave up a few names. We need to pass a law which forces the terrorist and their immediate family to pay for damages and lives lost. Moreover, property seizures and account freezes have to occur as an added deterrent. If you target the families, most wouldn't dare pull this kind of sh*t.
