Lashkar-e-Taiba Research Articles

When terrorists attempt politics: an evaluation of Lashkar-e-Taiba’s pursuit of political transformation

ABSTRACT In recent years, the United Nations (UN) designated terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a group with links to the Pakistani security establishment, has been pursuing a strategy of political transition. This paper explores whether existing counter-terrorism frameworks such as the UN-led disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) and state-led de-radicalization and disengagement programs adequately explain the transition of terrorist organizations into the political arena. It is argued that a lack of organizational consensus, the failure to evolve an ideological consensus for renouncing violence and endorsing democracy, and unpromising domestic and international political environments are the strongest predictors of difficulties in achieving successful transformation.

India Counterterrorism: India and Pakistan's Lack of Cooperation in Fighting Lashar e-Taiba after Mumbai Attacks 2008

Following the 2008 Mumbai Attacks, India refrained from engaging in counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan, the origin country of Lashkar e-Taiba (LeT), marking a significant departure from previous approaches. This study investigates the factors influencing India's decision through the lens of the Prisoner's Dilemma Theory. By examining India's strategic calculations and contextualizing them within the security dilemma framework post-Mumbai terror, this research aims to elucidate the rationale behind India's non-cooperative stance. Results reveal a complex interplay of historical distrust, perceived security threats, and strategic considerations shaping India's decision-making, highlighting the implications for future counter-terrorism efforts and international relations strategies.

Understanding the Cozy Relationship between Pakistan ISI and Lashkar-e-Taiba

This article evaluates to what degree the relationship between Pakistan and militant groups, primarily Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operating within its border, has influenced Islamabad’s counterinsurgency approach. The article succinctly describes the process that led to the formation of Pakistan and its ongoing fight with India since then over Jammu and Kashmir. It further discusses India’s overall strategic recourses in the Disputed Territory that have driven it to interpose in the internal affairs of its neighbors, principally Pakistan and Afghanistan. The interventionist behavior of India in the region generates strong anti-India sentiment among Pakistanis and Afghans. And in turn, the Pakistan militant groups cunningly use this anti sentiment as red meat to feed and reinforce the mindset of their followers and Kashmir nationals. Also, it addresses the developmental impact these militant groups have on Pakistan’s strategy to counter India’s dominance over the Disputed Territory of Kashmir. Additionally, this research highlights that while LeT has been previously a vibrant element of Pakistan’s regional stratagem, the group capability has morphed beyond Pakistan’s ISI’s control. It operates independently of the political development, and its organizational structure has extended beyond Jammu and Kashmir. The seeming threat poses by Indians over the Disputed Territory of Kashmir indeed creates a security quandary for the Pakistani army and security establishments. For over seven decades, India and Pakistan have clashed over the Kashmir-Occupied Territory, critical to both countries’ economies and prosperity. Islamabad has used LeT as its proxy primarily to keep India entangled in the economic drain in the Kashmir area while Pakistan continues to influence Afghanistan. This study is interested in understanding past events in an attempt to interpret the facts and explain the cause of occurrences, and their impact on the present events; thus, it is historical research. Both primary and secondary sources have been consulted to conduct this inquiry. Grasping the changing regional aspects of terrorism may be significantly advantageous in policymaking and intervention strategy. The research results highlight the significance of the entrenched geopolitical conflict and interests of the two nations and the order in comprehending terrorism. And the religious hatred of the Indian Hindus is not the principal driving force of militant groups of Pakistan attacks against India; instead, it is used as a vehicle by jihadists to make a point. The driving factor behind their attacks toward New Delhi is against its hegemonic desires of territorial control. Psychologically, the issue has been the building and making of the separate and unique identity of the people of Jammu and Kashmir. The research contributes to a clear understanding of the past and provides some possible ways forward. The study concludes that Islamabad and New Delhi need new strategies to mend their relationship and develop a plan to restore their security and stability. Lastly, it suggests some pragmatic recommendation steps India and Pakistan might take to overcome their differences and co-exist peacefully as neighbors.

Difa-e-Pakistan: An India Centric Threat

Within a year of the Mumbai attack by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the public outrage that many thought would usher in a political groundswell for a firmer government response, has dissipated. Almost all the political officials who resigned as a result of the attack either back in their old jobs or promoted to other plumb posts. After a brief hiatus, bombings by LeT and/or its affiliates resumed in cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Varanasi and Srinagar killing 56 people in mainland India and around 1000 in Jammu and Kashmir since Mumbai attack. India has done little of the painful public soul-searching that followed the September 11 attacks on the United States. After the Mumbai attack, while the US government has commissioned atleast a dozen of official studies on LeT, India government commissioned none. While the LeT is gradually growing from strength to strengh by encompassing the role of a political pressure group under the guise of Difa-e-Pakistan, India is blind to the danger unfolding in its western neighbour.

Automated Generation of Counterterrorism Policies Using Multiexpert Input

The use of game theory to model conflict has been studied by several researchers, spearheaded by Schelling. Most of these efforts assume a single payoff matrix that captures players’ utilities under different assumptions about what the players will do. Our experience in counterterrorism applications is that experts disagree on these payoffs. We leverage Shapley’s notion of vector equilibria, which formulates games where there are multiple payoff matrices, but note that they are very hard to compute in practice. To effectively enumerate large numbers of equilibria with payoffs provided by multiple experts, we propose a novel combination of vector payoffs and well-supported ϵ-approximate equilibria. We develop bounds related to computation of these equilibria for some special cases and give a quasipolynomial time approximation scheme (QPTAS) for the general case when the number of players is small (which is true in many real-world applications). Leveraging this QPTAS, we give efficient algorithms to find such equilibria and experimental results showing that they work well on simulated data. We then built a policy recommendation engine based on vector equilibria, called PREVE . We use PREVE to model the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), responsible for the 2008 Mumbai attacks, as a five-player game. Specifically, we apply it to three payoff matrices provided by experts in India--Pakistan relations, analyze the equilibria generated by PREVE, and suggest counterterrorism policies that may reduce attacks by LeT. We briefly discuss these results and identify their strengths and weaknesses from a policy point of view.

Big Data and International Relations

From November 26 to 29, 2008, ten heavily armed members of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a Kashmiri separatist group, attacked several public sites in Mumbai, India, with automatic weapons and grenades, killing 164 people and wounding three hundred. This was one of the first known instances of terrorists employing powerful search algorithms such as Twitter's or the link analysis used in Google's PageRank system, which allowed LeT members to access information from massive data pools in real-time. During the attacks, an LeT operations center based in Pakistan communicated with the terrorists via sattelite and GSM phones to provide them with open-source intelligence. From the operations center, LeT members data mined the Internet and social media, tapping into the power of Big Data to provide the attackers with an intelligence advantage over Indian law enforcement agencies. The attackers were thereby kept up to date on the status of the Indian government's response and even received personal profiles of the hostages they took in the Taj Mahal Palace hotel.

Author’s Response: The United States Needs a New Policy toward Pakistan

First, I would like to extend my appreciation for all the thoughtful constructive criticism offered by my colleagues in this roundtable. This is truly an opportunity for learning from some of the finest thinkers on this complex subject, and I hope to incorporate these suggestions and challenges in future work on this topic. In this essay, I would like to address a few suggestions that deserve special attention or response.John Gill is most certainly spot on when he suggests that scholars need to better understand how the Pakistan Army manages its image and how its obsession with this influences the army's domestic and international behavior. As Gill noted, I made some efforts to contend with this complex puzzle. However, obtaining relevant data is extremely challenging. Given that I am blacklisted by Pakistan's intelligence agency, I have little expectation of ever being able to return to the country to take on this puzzle more robustly. Hopefully, other scholars who are better positioned to do so may answer Gill's important call.Marvin Weinbaum, in his review, is absolutely correct to note that none of our books cast much light on the interactions between the military and extremist groups. He finds missing discussion about how those values and beliefs associated with Islamic groups may have contributed to forming the military's thinking, including policies toward India, Afghanistan, and the West. I do spend considerable space discussing aspects of this complex set of relations, but the data sources that I used for the book do not illuminate this issue to his or my satisfaction. My current work in progress, which focuses on the writings of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), will in some measure elucidate the vast similarities between official army publications and those of this proscribed terrorist organization. However, LeT is only one of numerous militant groups employed by Pakistan's military and intelligence agencies to prosecute Pakistan's policies at home and abroad. Weinbaum and I will likely not be able to resolve our differences in opinion regarding the degree to which the Pakistan Army's thinking has evolved either about the need for or about the utility of the zoo of militants that the army and intelligence agencies have cultivated. Weinbaum is much more optimistic than I am, and only time will tell which view is more accurate. I would argue that it is less injurious to U.S. interests to err on the side of skepticism. In the past, the United States' cupidity and propensity to see the best in Pakistani intentions only rewarded Islamabad for its perfidy while undermining Washington's interests at the expense of the American taxpayer.Hasan Askari Rizvi, like Weinbaum, is also skeptical about the durability of strategic depth in the army's thinking. He specifically argues that the introduction of nuclear weapons obviates such a requirement. However, the facts belie this claim. As I note in my book, we now know that Pakistan had a crude nuclear device from about 1980. However, during the 1980s and 1990s, there is wide scholarly consensus that Pakistan continued to view Afghanistan through this lens of depth. Moreover, only one general-Mirza Aslam Beg-understood as affording Pakistan with a physical space. As chief of the Pakistan Army between 1988 and 1991, Beg was a fierce proponent of in the physical sense, and his tenure was marked by considerable nuclear proliferation. More generally, the cultivation of in Afghanistan has not been viewed as a strategy for developing a physical sanctuary for Pakistan's forces and war materiel; rather, it has been understood in zero-sum terms as opening up a political space in which Pakistan can compete with India for access. I see no evidence that suggests that Pakistan has abandoned this view of Afghanistan as a space to be politically cultivated.Aqil Shah is correct in his assessment that I discount the role of political learning on elite attitudes and behavior. …

Securing Indian Interests in Afghanistan Beyond 2014

Few countries are as motivated to stay the course with Afghanistan as is India, whose interests there are numerous and enduring. Over the last decade, India has largely used its amicable relations with President Hamid Karzai and the U.S.- and NATO-provided security umbrella to pursue its varied objectives in Afghanistan. However, as the withdrawal of the International Security Assistance Force in 2014 looms, India must now craft its future policy amid numerous sources of uncertainty. No one knows who will govern a post-Karzai Afghanistan or what role, if any, the Taliban will have at the central and subnational levels of governance. No one knows how the United States will disengage and what security forces, if any, will remain for modest operational support or sustained training of Afghanistan's fledgling security force. Equally worrisome, no one can say whether the United States or other members of the international community will continue their financial support for a bloated Afghan government that has no ability to pay for itself, and if they do, for how long. Worse yet, will the United States again outsource its Afghanistan policy to Pakistan? These are all pressing questions for India. This essay seeks to briefly outline India's policy preferences, the means it has to execute these preferences, and the domestic and international alliances that will likely shape India's ability to stay the course in Afghanistan after 2014.Indian Interests in AfghanistanWhile it has long been recognized as the preeminent power in South Asia, in recent years India has projected itself as a rising power in the international system. In the past, India largely reacted to events within its extended strategic environment, which it sees as comprising the entire Indian Ocean basin and much of central and southwest Asia. Increasingly, however, India wants to play a decisive role in determining regional security throughout its near and extended strategic environment. Consistent with this goal, New Delhi has become more interested in proactively employing its formidable and growing economic and political influence to prevent developments that undermine its strategic interests.India's current and future interests in Afghanistan should be viewed through the lens of India's emergence as an extraregional power and an aspiring global actor. It hopes that Afghanistan will not revert once more to a sanctuary for Islamist terrorism taking diktat from Pakistan. Through continued investment and support in Afghanistan, India aims to mitigate Pakistan's tenacious efforts to cultivate Afghanistan as a client state. Most importantly, Afghanistan, along with Iran, is an important corridor through which India can project power and influence throughout Central Asia and beyond. By pursuing its varied interests in Afghanistan, New Delhi can demonstrate that its foreign policies are not driven solely or even primarily by Pakistan. Over the last decade, India has succeeded in some measure by cultivating a suite of sophisticated diplomatic relations with an astonishing array of countries in Southwest, Central, and Southeast Asia. Afghanistan and Iran are of particular import for India because they are its only gateways for the transport of goods into and out of Central Asia and beyond, particularly as Pakistan is not likely to ever offer India access to its ground lines of control.Above and beyond using engagement with Afghanistan to advance its position as an aspirant to global power, India needs to address significant and persistent security concerns that emanate from Afghanistan, as well as from Pakistan. Most of the militant groups that have terrorized India since the early 1990s-e.g., Harkat-ul-Jihad-Islami (HuJI), Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), Harkat-ul-Mujahideen/Harkat-ul-Ansar (HuM/HuA), and Lashkare-Taiba (LeT)-have trained in Afghanistan, with varying degrees of connection to the Afghan Taliban and, by extension, al Qaeda.1 Most of these groups (i. …

Insights from a Database of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hizb-ul-Mujahideen Militants

This article uses a novel database of 1,625 posthumously published biographies of members of two Islamist militant organizations (Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM)), all of whom were killed in the course of carrying out militant attacks. In general, each biography provides data on the militant’s birthplace, education, recruitment, and training. The number of observations in this database is a full order of magnitude larger than those of previous databases assembled from militant biographies. While the sample of militants in this database is the product of multiple selection effects, analysis of the database undermines many common myths about Pakistani militants and casts doubt on current policy approaches to mitigating Islamist militancy in Pakistan.

Chechnya and Kashmir: The Jihadist Evolution of Nationalism to Jihad and Beyond

This article examines the transformation of the Chechen conflict from a predominately nationalist to jihadist struggle, and compares the similar changes that took place in the Kashmiri insurgency. Using global jihadist strategy and ideology, and the accompanying influence of Al Qaida, both conflicts are shown to have taken on a new ideology and to have expanded beyond previous areas of operation. In both instances, the political leadership wrapped themselves in the mantle of political Islam (Islamism) as ensuing violence led to rapid socioeconomic transformation and social breakdown, thus allowing foreign jihadists to exert power and take up/divert the cause. In the past few years, two main groups originating in Chechnya and Kashmir have taken on Western targets and become more indoctrinated in Al Qaida's global jihadist ideology: the Caucasus Emirate (CE) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). The opportunist franchising strategy of Al Qaida could come to play a role in the future of both groups, especially if the CE is able to coalesce into a more unified front. More importantly, the global jihadist attributes of the CE must begin to garner the same attention in the Western world as that of LeT.

The abundant sea: prospects for maritime non-state violence in the Indian Ocean

Maritime violence perpetrated by non-state actors is a feature of the Indian Ocean. This includes the piracy, which has occurred most prominently off Somalia but also in the waters of Bangladesh, India and Indonesia, and terrorism perpetrated by al-Qaeda, the Tamil separatist movement in Sri Lanka, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and the Pakistani Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) against the Indian city of Mumbai. This paper aims to chart why opportunities for non-state actors to use violence to advance their interests may continue across the region.

Lashkar-e-Taiba of Pakistan: An India Centric Threat Projection

<em>Within a year of the Mumbai attack by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the public outrage that many thought would usher in a political groundswell for a firmer government response, has dissipated. Almost all the political officials who resigned as a result of the attack either back in their old jobs or promoted to other plumb posts. After a brief hiatus, bombings by LeT and/or its affiliates resumed in cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Varanasi and Srinagar killing 56 people in mainland India and around 1000 in Jammu and Kashmir since Mumbai attack. India has done little of the painful public soul-searching that followed the September 11 attacks on the United States. After the Mumbai attack, while the US government has commissioned atleast a dozen of official studies on LeT, India government commissioned none. While the LeT is gradually growing from strength to strengh by encompassing the role of a political pressure group under the guise of Difa-e-Pakistan, India is blind to the danger unfolding in its western neighbour.</em>

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

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.

Terrorist Financing and the Internet

While al Qaeda has used the Internet primarily to spread its propaganda and to rally new recruits, the terrorist group has also relied on the Internet for financing-related purposes. Other Islamist terrorist groups, including Hamas, Lashkar e-Taiba, and Hizballah have also made extensive use of the Internet to raise and transfer needed funds to support their activities. The Internet's appeal in this regard for terrorist groups is readily apparent–offering a broad reach, timely efficiency, as well as a certain degree of anonymity and security for both donors and recipients. Unfortunately, while many governments now recognize that the Internet is an increasingly valuable tool for terrorist organizations, the response to this point has been inconsistent. For the U.S. and its allies to effectively counter this dangerous trend, they will have to prioritize their efforts in this area in the years to come.