Lashkar-e-Taiba

Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure) is a notoriously violent militant Muslim group that initially operated in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, on the Pakistan-India border, but by 2010 had expanded its reach further into India. Jammu and Kashmir is claimed by both India, a largely Hindu country, and Pakistan, a largely Muslim country, and the dispute has given rise to many armed groups within Jammu and Kashmir.

Lashkar-e-Taiba is rabidly pro-Pakistan, and it 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 non-Muslim civilian populations in Jammu and Kashmir in an effort to create a Muslim-only state. Following a cease-fire accord between India and Pakistan in 2003, Lashkar-e-Taiba was believed to have moved most of its operations to Pakistan's northwest, an area bordering Afghanistan over which the central government does not have control. The organization has also increasingly focused its violence on India itself.

Lashkar-e-Taiba 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-Taiba's members are Pakistani or Afghani. 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-Taiba 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, and a senior official of bin Laden's al Qaeda organization was captured in a Lashkar-e-Taiba safe house in Pakistan in March 2002.

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

Infamous for their brutality, Lashkar-e-Taiba attacks were often aimed at unarmed civilians. Children as young as one year old were among 23 Hindus killed at Wandhama in 1998. The group massacred 25 members of a wedding party in Doda later that same year. Beginning in 1999, Lashkar-e-Taiba conducted a series of suicide attacks against Indian security forces, often targeting seemingly secure headquarters. In such attacks, Lashkar-e-Taiba 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-Taiba members staged eight attacks that left roughly 100 people dead, most of them Hindu civilians.

In 2000, Lashkar-e-Taiba had a falling out with Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, which had declared a short-lived cease-fire with India. The group 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.

On December 13, 2001, Lashkar-e-Taiba undertook a daring 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-Taiba, 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 Muhammed Saeed, but he was released a few months later.

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