Pakistan’s Strategic Use of Lashkar-e-Taiba: It’s Not Just Kashmir

Abstract

Pakistan has long raised and supported an array of Islamist militant groups to act on the state’s behalf in India and Afghanistan. Scholars generally argue that Pakistan has done so due to its long-standing security competition with India over the disputed territorial disposition of Kashmir. Pakistan, which lacks military, political or diplomatic means to wrest Kashmir from India, has relied upon these Islamist militant groups in hopes of coercing India to make some territorial concession in Pakistan’s favor. By extension, Pakistan’s pre-occupations in Afghanistan stem principally from its concerns about India. Pakistan has sought to use Islamist militants there to deny India access to Afghanistan from which it could support insurgencies in Pakistan. This understanding of Pakistan’s principle reasons for supporting these militants leads to a policy prescription that focuses upon resolving the Indo-Pakistan security competition as a necessary if insufficient condition that would permit Pakistan to abandon its reliance upon Islamist militant groups throughout South Asia. However, in this article, I argue that this understanding is incomplete because it disregards the domestic politics of these groups. Focusing upon Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) in particular, I marshal a new body of evidence to demonstrate that LeT also services Pakistan’s domestic security goals. This suggests that even if Pakistan and India could normalize relations, Pakistan would not likely turn against LeT.