Was "The Army of the Righteous" behind the Attack?

For years, the Pakistani military have been deploying Islamist terrorists against India. One of the groups they've been using is Lashkar-e-Taiba - the "Army of the Righteous." They are alleged to have been behind the Mumbai attacks. Jochen Vock reports

Lashkar-e-Taiba was founded in the early 1990s as the military wing of a radical Sunni Muslim Koran centre close to the Pakistani city of Lahore. Its fighters first appeared in Afghanistan, and then moved to Kashmir. They were supported by the Pakistani military and secret service, and they were able to collect money and recruit fighters openly in the country.

In 2002, shortly after the terror attacks in the USA on September 11th 2001, the group was officially banned by the then ruler of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf. The United Nations, the USA and the European Union have all banned it as a dangerous terrorist organisation. But Lakshar-e-Taiba has continued under a new name.

Indian anti-terror investigators suspect Pakistan

Whenever India suffers an act of terror, the name of Laksha-e-Taiba is heard again. When terrorists stormed the Indian parliament building in New Delhi in 2001 and nearly caused a war between the two nuclear powers, India and Pakistan, or when nearly 200 people died when bombs exploded on commuter trains in Mumbai in July 2006, both events were linked with the organisation.

One reason was that their leader, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, declared in the 1990s that the Jihad should be extended from Kashmir to the rest of India.

This time too, the Indian authorities were immediately certain that the terror came from Pakistan, where the terrorists received their training. The Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, didn't even have to name the country – everyone knows what he meant when he spoke of the terrorists' "external linkages," saying that the attacks were planned and carried out with precision.

The Indian security expert Anul Bhat says it openly: he accuses the military establishment in Pakistan of being behind the terror. The Pakistani secret service ISI does not have to send its own people to India, he says; it's had almost thirty years to set up cells all over India.

The Pakistani foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Quereshi, expresses indignation at the accusations. He denies firmly that terrorists are trained in his country and says that Pakistan follows a policy of cooperation with India.

What is the role of Al Qaeda?

But it is still uncertain whether Lashkar-e-Taiba has links to the global terror network, Al Waeda, and if so, what kind of links. The two organisations have common roots in Afghanistan, they operate similar kinds of attacks with similar well-thought-out logistics. The German MP Stefan Edathy of the Indian-German parliamentary group thinks this makes a link between them likely.

The style of the attacks points to Al Qaeda, he says. Both the Mumbai attackers and Al Qaeda "want to cause as much damage as possible, and to focus as much attention as possible on the terrorist act itself."

Christian Wagner, an India expert with the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, also believes that the Mumbai terrorists were inspired by Osama bin Laden's international conspiracy. He says, "Al Qaeda declared war on India several years ago, and has repeatedly drawn attention to itself with attacks on India." The Mumbai attacks, though, perhaps exhibit "a new quality and a new dimension," in that it appears that it has been possible this time to recruit Indian Muslims into the terror network.

Jochen Vock

Translated from the German by Michael Lawton

Qantara.de

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