Lashkar-E-Tayyiba

Lashkar-e-Tayyiba is a notoriously violent militant Muslim group operating in the states of Jammu and Kashmir on the Pakistan-India border. Jammu and Kashmir are claimed by both India, a largely Hindu country, and Pakistan, a largely Muslim country; the dispute has given rise to many armed groups within Jammu and Kashmir.

Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (“Army of the Pure”) is rabidly pro-Pakistan and is one of the largest groups operating in Jammu and Kashmir. The group opposes any concessions to India, with its leaders expressing the desire to drive Hindus out of much of India once they have been eliminated from Jammu and Kashmir. The group has taken part in several massacres targeting [Page 213]non-Muslim civilian populations in Jammu and Kashmir in an effort to create a Muslim-only state.

Lashkar-e-Tayyiba arose in the early 1990s as a militant wing of Markaz-ud-Dawa-wal-Irshad, an Islamic fundamentalist organization influenced by the Wahabi sect of Sunni Islam. Many of Lashkar-e-Tayyiba's members are Pakistani or Afghan. The group, headquartered in Pakistan, is believed to have had ties with Afghanistan's Taliban government and with the wealthy Saudi extremist Osama bin Laden. (Fighters from Lashkar-e-Tayyiba and another militant Muslim group, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, were killed in August 1998 when American cruise missiles fell on bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan.)

Lashkar-e-Tayyiba made its first incursions in Jammu and Kashmir in 1993. In the late 1990s, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba received greater funding from Pakistan and began operating in the Jammu, which has large numbers of non-Muslim minorities. Working in conjunction with Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba began a program of ethnic cleansing, slaughtering Hindus and Sikhs.

Infamous for their brutality, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba attacks were often aimed at unarmed civilians: children as young as 1 year were among 23 Hindus killed at Wandhama in 1998. Lashkar-e-Tayyiba massacred 25 members of a wedding party in Doda later that same year. Beginning in 1999, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba conducted a series of suicide attacks against Indian security forces, often targeting seemingly secure headquarters. In such attacks, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba forces have been outnumbered and eventually killed, but not before killing Indian troops and causing extensive damage. In March 2000, 35 Sikhs were killed in Chattisinghpora; five months later Lashkar-e-Tayyiba members staged eight attacks that left roughly 100 people dead, most of them Hindu civilians.

Lashkar-e-Tayyiba had a falling out in 2000 with Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, which had declared a short-lived cease-fire with India. Lashkar-e-Tayyiba lost more allies in 2001, after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States led to the removal of the Taliban government in Afghanistan by American-led military forces and the targeting of bin Laden.

On December 13, 2001, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba undertook its most daring action, launching a suicide attack on India's parliament complex in the capital, New Delhi, in conjunction with Jaish-e-Mohammed, another militant group. In response, the United States froze the U.S. assets of Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, calling it a terrorist organization. Under pressure from the United States to crack down on terrorist groups and to avoid a war with India, the government of Pakistan banned the group and arrested its leader, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, but released him a few months later.