"ISI maintaining links with Lashkar"

The ISI continues to maintain links with Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the terrorist outfit responsible for 26/11, and Islamabad is reluctant to take action against its leaders and its network, several eminent U.S. scholars and experts of South Asia have categorically told U.S. lawmakers.

Attending a special Congressional hearing on Thursday on “Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Growing ambition of Islamic Militancy in Pakistan”, Congressmen unanimously expressed concern that despite best of the efforts by the Obama Administration, the ISI continues to maintain links with LeT and that Pakistan is not taking decisive action against the terrorist outfit.

"The LeT is a deadly serious group of fanatics. They are well financed, ambitious, and most disturbingly, both tolerated by, and connected to, the Pakistani military," said Gary L. Ackerman, Chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia of the House Committee on International Relations.

And it is the same Pakistani military, to which the Obama Administration is selling advanced arms, he pointed out.

Testifying before the Congressional committee, Marvin G Weinbaum, from the Middle East Institute –- a Washington-based think tank, said despite the government official ban of LeT, ISI continued to consider the organisation as an asset.

The ISI is believed to continue to share intelligence and provide protection to LeT, he said.

"It is a measure of the impunity with which LeT is allowed to operate in Pakistan that the authorities have been unwilling to contain LeT chief Hafiz Mohammad Saeed.

His inflammatory remarks would be expected to land him among the hundreds of disappeared political activists in the country. Although he has been periodically arrested, his house detentions have been cosmetic," Mr. Weinbaum said.

Noting that LeT poses a threat to the U.S. national security interests, Lisa Curtis from the Heritage Foundation said the appearance of LeT leader Hafez Muhammed Sayeed at a recent public rally casts grave doubts about Pakistan’s commitment to reining in the group’s activities.

Policy failure

Ms. Curtis said it has been a failure of U.S. policy to not insist Pakistan shut down the LeT long ago. U.S. officials have shied away from pressuring Pakistan on the LeT in the interest of garnering Pakistani cooperation against targets the U.S. believed were more critical to immediate U.S. objectives, that is Al-Qaeda shortly after 9/11 and the Afghan Taliban more recently.

“To degrade the overall international terrorist threat emanating from Pakistan, the US must convince Islamabad to confront those groups it has supported against India," Ms. Curtis said.

The Mumbai attacks and subsequent Headley investigations reveal that the LeT has the international capabilities and ideological inclination to attack western targets whether they are located in South Asia or elsewhere.

Eminent Pakistani scholar Shuja Nawaz too conceded that the relationship between the ISI and LeT has stayed overtime.

Ms. Nawaz is currently the director, South Asia Center, The Atlantic Council of the United States.

"The LeT's emerging role as a trans regional force that has broadened its aim to include India and perhaps even Afghanistan, by linking with the Students Islamic Movement of India or SIMI and the Harkat ul Jihad al Islami or HUJI of Bangladesh poses a serious threat to regional stability," Mr. Nawaz said.

"Another Mumbai-type attack involving the LeT might bring India and Pakistan into conflict, a prospect that should keep us awake at night. In Pakistan, both the civil and the military now appear to recognise the existential threat from home grown militancy.

"The army appears to have dislocated the Tehreek e Taliban of Pakistan. Yet, it faces a huge and, to my mind, greater threat in the hinterland, in the form of the LeT," he said.

‘Pak a safe haven’

Ashley J Tellis, senior associate at the prestigious Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told lawmakers that today LeT relies on the ISI primarily for safe haven and political protection for its leadership, intelligence on selected targets and threats, campaign guidance when necessary, and infiltration assistance, particularly in regard to long distance operations involving transits through third countries.

"Although the interrogation of David Headley has now established that there were clearly some shadowy ISI connections with the Bombay (Mumbai) attacks, the management of the LeT detainees by the Pakistani state and the tortured progress of their trial demonstrates that, whatever the outcome of this charade, the ISI has simply no intention of eviscerating LeT (or any other anti-Indian jihadi groups) because of their perceived utility to Pakistan’s national strategy vis-à-vis India," Mr. Tellis said.

"So long as the Pakistani Army and the security establishment more generally conclude that their private interests (and their conception of the national interest) are undermined by a permanent reconciliation between India and Pakistan, they will not rid themselves of the terrorist groups they have begotten and which serve their purposes-irrespective of what New Delhi or Kabul or Washington may desire," he said.

"This fact ought to be understood clearly by the Obama administration. Once it is, it may push the United

States to either compel Pakistan to initiate action against LeT or hold Pakistan responsible for the actions of its proxies.

If these efforts do not bear fruit, the United States will have to contemplate unilateral actions (or cooperative actions with other allies) to neutralize the most dangerous of the terrorist groups now resident in Pakistan.

Doing so may be increasingly necessary not simply to prevent a future Indo-Pakistani crisis, but more importantly to protect the United States, its citizens, its interests, and its allies," Mr. Tellis said.

India cannot be deterred by HuJI’s threat: Chidambaram

Asserting that the Harkat-ul-Jehadi Islami (HuJI) operational chief Iliyas Kashmiri cannot dictate terms to the country, Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram said India is not deterred by his threats.

“Ilyas Kashmir cannot dictate our course of action. We cannot be deterred and we are not deterred by what he says,” he told reporters here.

Mr. Chidambaram said this when asked about Kashmiri’s threat to international players that they should not go to India to take part in IPL and Commonwealth Games.

The Home Minister, who chaired the Unified Command meeting and reviewed the security situation and the surrender policy here, said the Centre will provide full protection to every player, coach and official who participates in the forthcoming hockey World Cup, IPL and the Commonwealth Games.

Kashmiri’s warning to India was posted by the ‘Asian Times Online’. The portal said it received Kashmiri’s message on Monday morning shortly after the Pune blast. “We warn the international community not to send their people in 2010 Hockey World Cup, IPL and Commonwealth Games. Nor should their people visit India. If they do, they will be responsible for the consequences,” said the statement from Kashmiri.

Most wanted LeT operative arrested

The Hyderabad police foiled the attempts of Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) to organise major ‘actions’ in south India, with the arrest of its south Indian chief Shaik Abdul Khwaja alias Amjad at Afzalgunj bus stop here on Monday. The arrested man was allegedly involved in the twin blasts in Hyderabad in 2007, New Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Jaipur and Ahmedabad.

Amjad (27), who also goes by the nom de guerres of Saif, Pappu and Abdullah, hails from Malakpet locality in the old city and is accused of having close links with other terror groups like the Harkat-ul-Jehad-al-Islami (HuJI) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), Commissioner of Police B. Prasada Rao told a news conference.

Mr. Rao declined to elaborate on what Amjad was planning to do in south India pointing out that the police had to interrogate him and learn more about his plans. Asked whether the terror suspect was planning something on Republic Day, the city police chief asserted that the interrogators could not cull out any such information.

He said the arrested man was a close associate of Shaheed Bilal, another terrorist from Hyderabad, who was shot dead in Pakisatan in 2007. He was involved in several terror attacks in the country and had fled to Pakistan via Saudi Arabia on the pretext of performing Umrah in May 2005. The police are planning to take him on police remand for further questioning. Authorities had seized 348 US dollars, 313 Saudi Riyals, 225 UAE Dirhams and Pakistan rupees 28,640 and 348 Bangla takas.

Police suspect that Amjad and his associates had recced certain targets in the country. He was involved in an attempt to murder over a dispute of installing a Ganesh idol in 2003 in Hyderabad. He jumped bail and escaped to Saudi Arabia.