International Political Will

You probably had never heard of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). The terrorist group reportedly behind last week’s attacks in Mumbai was formed in the early 1990s, and initially focused on wresting Kashmir from Indian control. But make no mistake: the Mumbai attacks were not about Kashmir.

The November attacks in Mumbai were retaliation for the ongoing US/NATO war in Afghanistan and the Pakistani border regions. Geography, military pressure, the India-US nuclear deal, and a common enemy have caused the LeT, the Taliban, and Al Qaeda to form a new alliance. The targets in Mumbai were clearly the major foreign entities involved in Afghanistan – the U.S., Britain, and India (the fifth largest donor to Afghan reconstruction). 

The attacks also signaled a shift in strategy that began in early 2008 with a similar raid on the Serena Hotel in Kabul.

The recent attack in Mumbai is a warning for other soft targets across Asia: any civilians from countries that cooperate in the so-called “war on terror” are now in the crosshairs. And the LeT will be a name Westerners will become familiar with in the future.

• The developing relationship between the LeT and the Taliban

During the 1980s in Afghanistan, the U.S. government and the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI) funded many jihadi groups to combat the Soviets. The ISI imitated the strategy in Kashmir, funding local groups to wage a proxy war – except in Kashmir the enemy was India.

In the early 1990s, the ISI shifted their support from native Kashmiris to the LeT, a group primarily recruited from other areas in Pakistan: Balochistan, the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA - located in the western-most areas of the NWFP and northern Balochistan). But the LeT had no loyalty to Kashmir.

The LeT sought a more radical and religiously-motivated jihad, beyond simply liberating Kashmir. This was in line with Pakistan policy that also supported the Taliban in Afghanistan; both the LeT and the Taliban are students of the extremist Deobandi Islam.

The radicalization of jihadi groups in the 90s unleashed the extremists, and LeT moved the terror beyond the confines of Kashmir.

In 1999, the LeT hijacked an Indian Airlines flight and diverted it to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. After eight days, the Indian government set a precedent and negotiated the release of 188 passengers in return for freeing three jailed terrorists. (One of the freed terrorists, Omar Saeed Sheikh, later organized the beheading of reporter Daniel Pearl.)

President Pervez Musharraf’s acquiescence to the United States’ post-9/11 toppling of the Taliban also made him - and his government - a target of the LeT.

Seeking to divert the Pakistani military from the Afghan border during the fall of the Taliban, the LeT staged a brazen attack on India’s Parliament in December 2001. Expecting a war with their neighbor, Pakistan moved troops away from the western Afghan border to face off against India. The Afghan border was thus opened for fleeing Taliban to find safe haven.

Now a rogue group - funded and acting independently of the ISI - the LeT’s ideology aligned more with Al Qaeda than their original cause, Kashmir. Their tactics shifted accordingly toward inflicting mass casualties rather than using hostages to extract concessions. The July 2006 train bombings in Mumbai that killed 187 were also allegedly the work of LeT.

With a history dating back as early as 1999, the goals and interests of the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and the LeT have coalesced. Now sharing a home base in western and southern Pakistan, Al Qaeda has become the ideological figurehead, while the Taliban focuses on operations within Afghanistan and Pakistan and the LeT acts against international targets.

Frequent U.S. bombing in Afghan and Pakistani villages is causing more civilian casualties, and in the process acting as a recruitment tool for the Taliban and/or the LeT.

The two groups – facing a common enemy, sharing the same goals, living in the same region, and subject to the same military pressures – have begun to combine their efforts.

• A shift in tactics, targets

Long gone are the days of NATO or U.S. troops patrolling the streets of Kabul or villages of Afghanistan. Most soldiers are isolated in rural military bases or within heavily guarded compounds. Speaking from personal experience, there is little military visibility in Afghanistan.

From the perspective of the Taliban insurgency, there are very few legitimate targets. Thus, they resort to soft targets – restaurants, embassies, markets, hotels. Anyone appearing to cooperate with the western-backed Afghan government is subjected to the Taliban’s violence: girls walking to school (attacked with acid), NGO workers in villages (kidnapped and beheaded), and countries providing any support (Indian embassy bombed in July 2008).

In January 2008, Kabul’s five-star Serena Hotel, frequented by foreign officials, NGO workers, and international business elites, was laid to siege by Taliban gunmen. The attack was a watershed: guerilla-style raids on soft targets could succeed. Whereas a suicide bomber’s mission was over once they were discovered at a front gate, a gunman could shoot past the guards and into the building.

Attacks on soft-targets spread. In September 2008, the Taliban bombed the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan, killing at least 50. The hotel is being rebuilt with 16-foot high blast walls to thwart future attacks.

Inevitably, the soft targets in both Afghanistan and Pakistan are being secured. In addition to a shrinking number of targets, over the last year the Taliban has faced U.S. airstrikes in their villages, the overwhelming victory of secular politics in Pakistan’s February elections, pressure from the Pakistan military and the new democratic government, and the problem of transporting men and supplies overseas in order to exact revenge on Western democracies.

• Why Mumbai?

The logistical nightmare of sending men and materials halfway around the world is not an impediment to terrorists anymore. In a globalized world, business – and the growth of new economic centers like India – depends on interactions between business elites in many countries. These economic power brokers gather in luxury hotels not only in New York and London, but now also in Mumbai, Kuala Lumpur, and Shanghai.

The Mumbai siege was not about Kashmir. It was about a new alliance between terrorists fighting a war against US/NATO troops in central Asia. It was about diverting the attention of the Pakistani military away from the Afghan border and back toward India. It was about the recent civilian nuclear agreement between Delhi and Washington D.C. It was about striking back at the West and its allies where it hurts the most – in the global marketplace. And the existence of these groups – the Taliban, Al Qaeda, the LeT, and others – is a result of 30 years of policy that assumes “an enemy of my enemy is a friend of mine.”

The attacks on Mumbai are a precursor. No longer having to overcome the logistics of attacking Americans in New York or Brits in London, the new centers of power in a globalized world are now the targets. The geographical proximity of Mumbai, the recently-formed alliances between India and the United States, and the gathering of wealthy, international elites in easily-identifiable and lightly-guarded locations put Mumbai at the top of the list.

Dubai, matching these same criteria, has reason to be worried.

Tags: LeT, Mumbai, Kashmir, Mumbai attacks, War of Misinformation

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