The forgotten Jihad in Andhra Pradesh

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Muslims attack Hindus in Old City, Hyderabad

“Goshala burnt :
They also burnt a goshala killing 4 cows at Shamshergunj, Aliabad. Two temples in the goshala were also burnt. ”

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LeT’s true goal is not Kashmir, it is India

India, not Kashmir, is Lashkar’s true goal: US congressman
PTI, Mar 13, 2010,

WASHINGTON: A resolution of Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan would no longer satisfy Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and the terrorist outfit responsible for 26/11 and attack on Indian Parliament would continue to pose a serious threat to both India and the western world in particular the US, top experts have told American lawmakers.

“There is no doubt in my mind that we have to find ways to resolve the issues relating to Kashmir. But I think resolving Kashmir is not going to solve the problems relating to LeT,” Ashley J Tellis, senior associate at the prestigious Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told US lawmakers at a Congressional hearing on Thursday.

“Resolving the Kashmir problem by itself is not going to remove this threat because the aim of these groups is to leverage themselves into a position of power inside Pakistan and to take control,” said eminent Pakistani scholar, Shuza Nawaz, Director, South Asia Centre, the Atlantic Council of the United States.

Both Nawaz and Tellis were responding to concerns of the US Congressmen at the hearing if LeT would abandon terrorism if Kashmir dispute was resolved; given that Lashkar was initially popped up by the ISI of Pakistan for the specific purpose of targeting Kashmir and India in particular.

“I always find it interesting that the people conducting the murder and mayhem (in the Valley) today are not Kashmiri. The people who actually are deprived of all their political rights, they are not conducting the murder and mayhem,” Tellis said.

“The murder and mayhem is being conducted by groups that have absolutely no connections to Kashmir. To my mind that is story, the fact that this is a group that has operations in 21 countries, that has an ideology that is completely anti-western, that is opposed to modernity and secularism and all the kinds of values that we take for granted. This group is not going to be satisfied by dealing with the issue of Kashmir,” Tellis said.

Testifying before the same committee, Lisa Curtis of the Heritage Foundation, referred to the Musharraf formula on resolving the Kashmir dispute; which the then Pakistani President made in a statement in December 2006.

“He (Musharraf) made a very important statement in December of 2006, where he said Pakistan would be willing to give up its claim on Kashmir if four things happen. He said, if the Line of Control that divides Kashmir was made irrelevant, which means people could freely pass back and forth could pass back and forth,” said Curtis, who is known as an American authority on South Asia.

“Two, (Musharraf said) if Kashmir was given greater autonomy. Three, if both sides could figure out a joint mechanism to interact, to have the two sides of Kashmir, Pakistani Kashmir and Indian Kashmir interact. So he made a very forward looking proposal. And as we know by Steve Coll, who wrote about this in the New Yorker Magazine not too long ago, they were very close to coming to some kind of agreement or understanding on Kashmir,” Curtis said.

Except for Congressmen Dan Burton tended to agree with the observations made by these eminent experts. Burton, who is well-known for his anti-India approach at the Congress, believed otherwise.

“I wish all of the experts and the people in the governments involved, as well as the US would make as their number one goal resolving the issues that have been prevailing for a long, long time. And that is resolving the issue of Kashmir,” he argued.

“I think the only way to do that is to get the Pakistani government and the India government and the people in Kashmir together and resolve some way for them to solve that problem in Kashmir that’s been existing since 1948. Until you get that done, you’re not going to solve this problem.

India can’t attack Pakistan because if they do, Pakistan’s got the ability to retaliate with a nuclear weapon and vice versa. So the killing’s going to go on and the festering that’s created from this impasse is just going to grow,” he said.

Noted Pakistani scholar Shuja Nawaz said, “LeT represents — a word that’s been used often — a Frankenstein’s monster created for the purpose of assisting the Kashmiri freedom movement but that ended up becoming a powerful Sunni Punjabi movement with an independent agenda that appears to have taken on a broader regional role.”

It was born out of the US-backed Afghan jihad against the Soviets, and built on the training provided by that war to Punjabi fighters who could then inculcate Kashmiri fighters in their ways.

Successive civil and military leaders of Pakistan supported the movement as a strategic asset to counter a powerful India to the East and to force it to negotiate for a settlement of the disputed territory by waging a war of, quote, “a thousand cuts”, he told the lawmakers.

“Over time, however, the sponsored organisation took a life of its own, finding the economically disadvantaged area of Central and Southern Punjab to be a fertile territory for recruitment of Jihadi warriors,” he said over time, the ISI began losing its control as the LeT became self sufficient.

“But the realisation that the LeT had become autonomous was slow in being understood or accepted in the ISI and by the military leadership of Pakistan under General Pervez Musharraf,” he said.

“General Musharraf did make an effort to lower the political temperature in Kashmir and began distancing the state from the LeT. However, the process was not handled as well as it could have.

Similar to the disbanding of the Iraqi army after the US invasion when thousands of trained soldiers and officers were let go, the LeT was cut loose without a comprehensive plan to disarm, re-train, and gainfully employ the fighters.”

A dangerous corollary was the induction into the militancy of some former members of the military who had trained and guided them in their war in Kashmir, Nawaz said.

Congressman Gary Ackerman said there is a temptation to think that the LeT is really India’s problem, that the LeT is just interested in the so-called “liberation” of Jammu and Kashmir.

“While it’s true that the primary area of operations for the LeT has historically been the Kashmir Valley and the Jammu region, the LeT has also undertaken repeated and numerous mass casualty attacks throughout India and, in particular, directed at the Indian government. But the idea that this group can be appeased on the subject of Kashmir is dangerous nonsense,” he said.

“The LeT’s true goal is not Kashmir, it is India. And the LeT is not shy about announcing that its intention is to establish an Islamic state in all South Asia. Neither does it hide or try to play down its declaration of war against all Hindus and Jews, who they insist are “enemies of Islam”, Ackerman said.

Did the US let 26/ 11 Mumbai attacks happen to protect Islamic terrorist Headley

To protect Headley, did US let 26/11 happen?

March 21, 2010

To protect Headley, did US let 26/11 happen?

Swapan Dasgupta

During the 2008 US presidential election there was a belief in New Delhi that a Barack Obama presidency would trigger the re-calibration of Indo-American relations. Translated into English, it implied concern that the new guy wouldn’t accord the same priority to Indian concerns as President George W Bush did. At that time we were assured by star-struck Indian reporters in Washington, DC, that this was poppycock and a function of the deranged Islamophobia of the Dick Cheney Fan Club. Obama, we were informed, saw Hanuman as his lucky mascot. The more sober interlocutors informed us that the Cold War was over, that India was no longer a hyphenated link with Pakistan and that the relationship was on auto-pilot.

It’s now 14 months since Obama assumed office and the special relationship forged by Bush shows distinct signs of wear and tear. I may be guilty of only a minor exaggeration in suggesting that the middle class euphoria that propelled the India-US nuclear accord (and played a role in the UPA’s undeserved re-election last May) has dissipated, if not disappeared. It has been replaced by a growing surge of anti-Americanism, not very dissimilar to the one being witnessed in Israel, another country where a strategic partnership was allegedly etched in stone.

As opposed to the civilisational anti-Americanism that binds the Marxist to the mullah, this wariness of Uncle Sam is entirely political and centred on the belief that the US doesn’t give a toss for Indian sensitivities. Worse, it has got entangled with the feeling that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is more concerned with obliging the US than doing what is right for India.

This new surge of anti-Americanism may not be adequately reflected in the mainstream media where editors and diplomatic correspondents are curiously circumspect in questioning US motives, but it is real and predates the kerfuffle over the alleged cover-up in the David Coleman Headley case.

The doubts over the Obama Administration’s bona fides are strongest in India’s ‘strategic community’, the charmed circle of diplomats, spooks, security experts and interested politicians. The Headley case has suggested a grey zone of complicity between US Intelligence and its asset who may have turned into a double agent. It is, after all, scarcely conceivable that Headley could have undergone five spells of training in a Lashkar-e-Tayyeba camp, from late-2005 to October 2009, without being on the radar of US counter-terrorism. Circumstantial evidence points to Headley undertaking his jihadi activities with the knowledge, and possibly consent, of US authorities. Till much after the Mumbai attacks, Headley wasn’t regarded as a rogue agent.

In 1940, Winston Churchill had advance warning that the Luftwaffe was planning a massive raid on Coventry. He wilfully shied away from ordering the RAF to repel the bombers because he didn’t want to let on to the Germans that the British had cracked one of their most secure codes. Likewise, there is a theory that the US didn’t share its prior knowledge of the 26/11 attack because it wanted its asset to gain the full trust of the LeT leadership and be privy to information of future conspiracies.

If true, the implication is quite chilling. It suggests that a section of US Intelligence chose to sit on specific information of the Mumbai attacks because the target was India and its principal objective is to safeguard America and its citizens. In other words, Indian lives are always at a discount compared to American lives — a charming message in the context of the sharply discounted liability ceiling in the proposed Nuclear Liability Bill. Of course, six US citizens also died in the Mumbai attacks and, maybe, this proved to be Headley’s undoing.

There are many questions that Indian investigators have for Headley when the US prison authorities grant access to him — curiously, they have already given the Danish police access to him. However, there are an equal number of questions that India must ask the US authorities. The most important of these is a blunt query: Did you wilfully allow the massacre of 160 innocents in pursuance of a game that lacks a winning strategy?

The US can, of course, retort that it did warn India of maritime attacks. Indeed it did and this is a lapse that will haunt India’s counter-terrorism establishment. Yet, there is a difference between general warnings and ‘actionable intelligence’. Did the US deny India ‘actionable intelligence’ which it had? If so, the implications are grave.

In July 2008, the US had ‘actionable intelligence’ about the attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul which killed 58 people. Rather than provide it to the Indian agencies in real time, it chose to route it through the Afghan authorities. The delay was callous.

If the US strategy lies in identifying the masterminds of terror and identifying the complete network, we can perhaps explain the deaths in Mumbai — just as Churchill could explain the destruction of Coventry to himself. Headley’s testimony is categorical on one count: The epicentre of terrorism is located in Pakistan. Headley has also removed all ambiguity over the LeT’s involvement.

What does the US propose to do with this information? So far it plans to outsource Afghanistan to Pakistan.

What Headley has so far left unsaid are two things. First, the identities of LeT terrorists, who are referred to as A, B, C and D. And, second, whether he provided his US handlers a full account of his jihadi activities at each stage.

If India had full access to Headley and the right to both extradite and waterboard him, he may have sung out of fear. In the light of his plea bargain and the knowledge that the extent of his punishment depends on following US orders, the chances of the horrible truth emerging in the natural course is zero. Unless, we too demonstrate that the lives of Indians matters to India.

India, not Kashmir, Lashkar’s true goal

India, not Kashmir, Lashkar’s true goal

Aim to set up Islamic state in South Asia: Experts
Ashish Kumar Sen writes from Washington

Recent actions by Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) have fuelled a belief in Washington that the militant group’s agenda is much broader than a resolution of the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan.

At a congressional hearing this week, analysts made the point that LeT would no longer be satisfied if India and Pakistan resolve their differences over Kashmir. Ashley Tellis at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told the panel of lawmakers that there was no doubt in his mind that a way must be found to settle issues related to Kashmir, but, he added, “I think resolving Kashmir is not going to solve the problems relating to LeT.”

Shuja Nawaz of the Atlantic Council echoed that opinion. “Resolving the Kashmir problem by itself is not going to remove this threat because the aim of these groups is to leverage themselves into a position of power inside Pakistan and to take control,” he said.

Nawaz noted that successive civilian and military leaders in Pakistan had supported LeT as what he described as a “strategic asset” to counter India and force it to negotiate a settlement on Kashmir “by waging a war of… a thousand cuts.”

Over time, LeT took a life of its own, he said, and found the economically backward regions of Pakistan’s Punjab province to be a fertile ground for recruiting militants.

Nawaz said Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency lost control of LeT as the group became self-sufficient. “Similar to the disbanding of the Iraqi Army after the US invasion when thousands of trained soldiers and officers were let go, the LeT was cut loose without a comprehensive plan to disarm, retrain, and gainfully employ the fighters,” he added.

Earlier this year, Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the alleged mastermind of the Mumbai attacks, accused India of imposing war on Pakistan by constructing “illegal dams” and diverting the water of Pakistani rivers.

In a fiery diatribe at the launch of a “nationwide protest,” Saeed called upon the Pakistani government to prepare the country to counter this aggression. This focus on water issues has added credence to an opinion held by a growing majority that Kashmir is merely a red herring raised by LeT and its affiliates.

“LeT represents… a Frankenstein’s monster created for the purpose of assisting the Kashmiri freedom movement but that ended up becoming a powerful Sunni Punjabi movement with an independent agenda that appears to have taken on a broader regional role,” Nawaz contended.

Responding to questions raised by congressmen, Tellis said, “I always find it interesting that the people conducting the murder and mayhem (in the valley) today are not Kashmiri. The people who actually are deprived of all their political rights. The murder and mayhem is being conducted by groups that have absolutely no connections to Kashmir. To my mind … the fact that this is a group that has operations in 21 countries, that has an ideology that is completely anti-western, that is opposed to modernity and secularism and all the kinds of values that we take for granted. This group is not going to be satisfied by dealing with the issue of Kashmir.”

While the panel’s co-chair, Dan Burton, Indiana Republican, was insistent that the resolution of Kashmir should be the No. 1 issue for everyone involved, subcommittee chairman Gary Ackerman, New York Democrat, disagreed. Ackerman cautioned against the temptation to think that LeT is interested only in the “liberation” of Kashmir. “The LeT’s true goal is not Kashmir, it is India. And the LeT is not shy about announcing that its intention is to establish an Islamic state in all South Asia. Neither does it hide or try to play down its declaration of war against all Hindus and Jews, who they insist are enemies of Islam,” he said.

Two Indian Muslim terrorists arrested for major plot to blow up ONGC terminals and a mall

Mumbai ATS nabs 2 for plotting to blow up ONGC oil tanks
March 14, 2010

Mumbai: Acting in the nick of time, the Mumbai Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) has arrested two persons allegedly planning to blow up vital installations in Mumbai, like 26/11 attacks that killed more than 180 persons.

The two suspects – named as Abdul Latif Rashid (29) and Riyaz Ali (23) – were picked up by the security agency from Central Mumbai.

According to the Mumbai ATS, the duo have applied for passports and wanted to flee to Pakistan. “But before fleeing they wanted to orchestra a big strike. They have in fact identified three places in the city – ONGC establishments, Mangla Market, and the Thakkar Mall,” an ATS officer said.

“But before they could do this, we have nabbed them,” he added.

They had, in fact, instructions, from someone called “Uncle” to carry out the task, a news agency reported quoting some ATS officer. Police have also recovered maps of other vital installations of the city from them.

Talking to press persons, ATS officials said that the two arrested persons have no known criminal record.

The duo, who were produced in the Mumbai Killa court, have been sent to 18 days of police custody.

The arrest of the persons came amid a terror alert in Kochi.

Mumbai has been on the target of terrorists over the years. In November 2008, a daring terror attack on many busy places in the city had claimed over 180 lives, derailing the peace process between India and Pakistan.

Terrorists planning attack held in Mumbai

Indo-Asian News Service
Mumbai, March 14, 2010

The Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) claimed to have foiled a major terror plot to blow up state-run Oil & Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) terminals in south Mumbai and a mall by arresting two people in Mumbai on Sunday. They were sent to police custody till March 18 by a city court.

ATS chief K.P. Raghuvanshi told reporters that the arrested duo, identified as Latif and Riyaz, were from Mumbai.

They were nabbed after a tip-off that they were allegedly plotting to blow up oil tanks of the ONGC and a mall in Mumbai, among other sites, Raghuvanshi said.

They were produced before a Mumbai court that granted them police custody till March 18.

Raghuvanshi said the duo had conducted a recce of the sensitive Nhava-Sheva area of the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) and also its surroundings.

Police have also recovered several maps of Mumbai, Navi Mumbai and the sites they were planning to strike from them. They are suspected to have links with international terror outfits.

As per initial investigations, Raghuvanshi said they were trained in Pakistan and were in touch with some Pakistani terror outfits. However, he declined to identify the terror outfits.

The JNPT is among the most sensitive installations in the city and barely a few kilometres away from downtown Colaba, which was the landing point of the 10 Pakistani terrorists who had attacked Mumbai Nov 26, 2008.

The ATS, which is carrying out further investigations into the matter, would also probe the duo’s links to the 26/11 attacks and the Feb 13 Pune blast, their other associates in Mumbai and elsewhere in the country, he added.

Thousands of Islamic terrorists riot in Bareilly

Muslim terrorists riot in Bareilly

Read here

Indian Muslim Terror Group on Recruitment Spree

Terror group Indian Mujahideen on recruitment spree

CNN-IBN
Mar 08, 2010 

New Delhi: The Indian Mujahideen (IM) are trying to re-group and recruit new cadre that’s what has emerged from the interrogation of 21-year-old Salman, an alleged IM operative. A Delhi court has sent Salman to eight days of police custody.

The Indian Mujahideen has been recruiting new cadres to make up for the loss of several of its top members, who were arrested following blasts in Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Delhi between 2007 and 2008.

The revelations have been made by the 21-yr-old, Salman, who has allegedly been involved in almost all activities of the Indian Mujahideen since 2005.

Salman alias Chothu has also told interrogators that the Indian Mujahideen is trying desperately to re-group and cause further strikes across the country.

Following the Delhi serial blast Salman spent a lot of time in eastern Uttar Pradesh and then fled to Nepal, where he got himself a Nepalese passport under a fictitious identity.

“Is passport ke dwara woha Pakistan gaya aur kayi dusre desh gaya jinke baarein mein abhi bolna sahi nahi hai (with the help of this passport he went to many other countries. But can’t say it now),” said Brij Lal.

Salman went to different places in UAE and Pakistan including Sharjah, Dubai, Karachi and Lahore.

There he met several top Indian Mujahideen operatives including Iqbal and Riyaz Bhatkal and even underwent training in arms and explosives.

Salman was privy to a lot of information about the future plans of the group, police have recovered a UAE ID and a Nepalese passport from him. He was also using an international number which will now be analysed by the police.

Muslims slaughter hundreds, mostly Christians in Nigeria

Hundreds slaughtered in Nigeria religious violence
By JON GAMBRELL (AP)

In this image taken from TV showing the bodies of victims of inter-faith violence as a crowd gathers around, in the town of Dogo Nahawa, Nigeria, about three miles (five kilometers) south of the city of Jos, Sunday March 7, 2010. Rioters armed with machetes slaughtered more than 200 people on Sunday, many of them women and children, which are being collected from where they lay, in the streets of this central Nigerian town. (AP Photo/NTA TV)

DOGO NAHAWA, Nigeria — The killers showed no mercy: They didn’t spare women and children, or even a 4-day-old baby, from their machetes. On Monday, women wailed in the streets as a dump truck carried dozens of bodies past burned-out homes toward a mass grave.

Rubber-gloved workers pulled ever-smaller bodies from the dump truck and tossed them into the mass grave. A crowd began singing a hymn with the refrain, “Jesus said I am the way to heaven.” As the grave filled, the grieving crowd sang: “Jesus, show me the way.”

At least 200 people, most of them Christians, were slaughtered on Sunday, according to residents, aid groups and journalists. The local government gave a figure more than twice that amount, but offered no casualty list or other information to substantiate it.

An Associated Press reporter counted 61 corpses, 32 of them children, being buried in the mass grave in the village of Dogo Nahawa on Monday. Other victims would be buried elsewhere. At a local morgue the bodies of children, including a diaper-clad toddler, were tangled together. One appeared to have been scalped. Others had severed hands and feet.

The horrific violence comes after sectarian killings in this region in January left more than 300 dead, most of them Muslim. Some victims were shoved into sewer pits and communal wells.

Sunday’s bloodshed in three mostly Christian villages appeared to be reprisal attacks, said Red Cross spokesman Robin Waubo.

Nigeria is almost evenly split between Muslims in the north and the predominantly Christian south. The recent bloodshed has been happening in central Nigeria, in towns which lie along the country’s religious fault line. It is Nigeria’s “middle belt,” where dozens of ethnic groups vie for control of fertile lands.

Rev. Pandang Yamsat, the president of a local Christian group, said he has urged his congregation not to respond violently to Muslims. However, he said he believes Muslims in the area want to control the region and that any peace talks would only give Muslims “time to conquer territory with swords.”

The Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, condemned the violence and said Monday that the conflict must be interpreted in the light of social, economic, ethnic and cultural factors rather than religious hatred.

The killings add to the tally of thousands who have already perished in Africa’s most populous country in the last decade due to religious and political frictions. Rioting in September 2001 killed more than 1,000 people. Muslim-Christian battles killed up to 700 people in 2004. More than 300 residents died during a similar uprising in 2008.

The killings in Dogo Nahawa, three miles (five kilometers) south of the region’s main city of Jos, began early Sunday.

Chuwanga Gyang, 30, said he heard a gunshot and left his house through the back door but stopped when he realized that the attackers were shooting to herd fleeing villagers toward another group of attackers carrying machetes.

He recalled climbing into a tree and watching as villagers were killed and the attackers set homes alight over the course of 90 minutes.

The attackers asked people “Who are you?” in Fulani, a language used mostly by Muslims, and killed those who did not answer back in Fulani, he said.

Plateau State spokesman Gregory Yenlong said police are seeking to arrest Saleh Bayari, the regional leader of the Fulanis, alleging Bayari had made comments incited the slaughter. He gave no details.

The chairman of the local Fulani organization denied that his people were involved in the violence.

Jos has been under a dusk-til-dawn curfew enforced by the military since January’s religious-based violence. It was not clear how the attackers managed to elude the military curfew early Sunday.

Christian evangelist Musah Paul Gindiri said the police and military provided no security to the villages attacked Sunday morning.

“We have seen our flock is becoming very restive as the government is not trying to protect them,” he said, warning that Christians would fight back if attacked again.

Acting President Goodluck Jonathan said security agencies would be stationed along Plateau state’s borders to keep outsiders from coming in with more weapons and fighters.

“(We will) undertake strategic initiatives to confront and defeat these roving bands of killers,” he said in a statement. “While it is too early to state categorically what is responsible for this renewed wave of violence, we want to inform Nigerians that the security services are on top of the situation.”

More than 600 people have fled to a makeshift camp that still held victims from January’s violence, said Red Cross official Adamu Abubakar. He expected more to come, putting an even bigger strain on the already limited humanitarian aid for those fleeing the violence.

Associated Press Writers Ahmed Saka in Jos, Nigeria; Bashir Adigun in Abuja, Nigeria; and Jude Owuamanam in Dogo Nahawa, Nigeria, contributed to this report.

Indians were hunted out in Kabul attack: Washington Post

Indians were hunted out in Kabul attack: Washington Post

Indo-Asian News Service
Washington, March 03, 2010

Pakistani militant group Lashkar-i-Taiba (LeT) orchestrated last week’s deadly attack 
on two Kabul guesthouses with the suicide bombers searching for Indian victims, the 
Washington Post reported Wednesday citing an Afghan intelligence official.
Investigators had concluded that LeT was involved in the attack based on evidence 
that it was carried out by a team of suicide bombers who spoke Urdu and who were 
searching for Indian victims, it said in a report from Kabul citing Afghan 
intelligence spokesman Sayed Ansari. 

“Afghan officials ‘very close to the evidence’ had determined that one of the bombers 
involved in Friday’s Kabul attack yelled, ‘Where is the Indian director?’ as he 
stormed one of guesthouses,”Ansari was quoted as saying.

Others had also sought out Indians, Ansari said. 

“This kind of information, where the Indians are, is not the ability of the Afghan 
Taliban to know,” said Ansari as cited by the influential US daily. 

The Afghan Taliban had previously asserted responsibility for the assault saying it 
was targeting foreigners. Six Indian nationals, including two army doctors and an 
engineer, were among those killed in the attack, as were eight Afghans, an Italian 
diplomat and a French filmmaker. 

The assessment, if true, could signal a departure for the group, blamed for the 26/11 
Mumbai terror attacks, which has long focused on fighting India over Kashmir, the 
daily said. 

The Post said the claim by Afghan intelligence could not be verified Tuesday, and it 
contradicts the conclusions of other observers. A US military intelligence official 
cited by the Post said he believed the Haqqani network, a Pakistan-based Afghan 
militant group, was behind the attack. 

Indian officials have said they suspect that the two groups worked in concert to 
stage the raid.

“Still, the involvement of LeT would have significant implications. It could 
undermine fragile peace efforts between longtime foes Pakistan and India, whose 
foreign secretaries met last week,” the Post said. 

India had previously implicated Pakistan in the 2008 bombing of India’s embassy in 
Kabul, saying Pakistani intelligence had collaborated with militants, it noted. 

The Post quoted Maj. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the top US military intelligence official 
in Afghanistan, as saying that a growing number of the LeT’s fighters are streaming 
into that country’s south for combat experience. 

“They are aligning with the Taliban,” it said citing Mohammad Saad, a retired 
Pakistani brigadier and security analyst. 

Saad said that several members of LeT are training with associates of the Haqqani 
network in North Waziristan, a Pakistani tribal region bordering Afghanistan, but 
that language challenges have forced most of them to work alongside Afghan fighters 
inside Afghanistan.