Mumbai attacks put spotlight on Lashkar-e-Taiba

The evidence pointing to the Pakistan-based group's hand in the rampage in India raises the question of whether Pakistan's elite spy agencies continue to nurture militant groups.

By Laura King
LA Times

December 5, 2008

Reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan — Lashkar-e-Taiba, the self-styled "Army of the Pure," has left its footprints in the snows of Kashmir, the back alleys of Lahore and Karachi, the harsh terrain along the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier -- and now, investigators say, in Mumbai, India, the scene of last week's horrific rampage by gunmen.

The growing case against the Pakistan-based militant organization speaks directly to a doubt that has plagued U.S.-Pakistani relations since the two countries became allies after the Sept. 11 attacks: whether present or former officials in Pakistan's powerful security establishment continue to nurture radical Islamic groups.

Pakistan's relatively weak civilian government, in power less than a year, has shown a degree of reluctance to forcefully confront militant groups or to assert control over the intelligence establishment -- a pattern that could bode ill as fallout from the attacks on India's financial capital poisons relations between the two nuclear-armed countries.

Lashkar-e-Taiba's alleged social wing, which gained prominence after Lashkar was officially banned in 2002, operates openly on a sprawling campus outside the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore. Its head, Hafiz Saeed, was one of the founders of Lashkar and is on a list of about 20 militant suspects India has demanded be handed over.

(More here.)