Terrorism:A Deadly gift from Pakistan to World

This column is from Dialy Pioneer. Udayan Namboodiri/ New Delhi

Global member count, financial clout will soon upstage Osama's outfit ----- The Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), considered the deadliest terrorist group in the world post-7/7, is expected to soon outmatch Al-Qaeda's global sweep in terms of membership and financial clout.The discovery that Shahzad Tanweer, involved in the London blasts, had trained in a LeT camp in Muridke near Lahore could also mark Pakistan's return to its old place under the microscope of the West as an epicentre of global terror.

What leads many experts to stumble on the first fact is that the Al Qaeda, being a loosely structured organisation in which no two cells know of each other's existence, is unable to chart out a sustained growth path like the LeT which has well laid out command structures, offices and, above all, the support of a Government (Pakistan's).

From Osama bin Laden downwards, all top Al Qaeda leaders are on the run. The LeT has no such problem. Hafeez Mohammad Sayeed, its supremo, moves around with Pakistani security cover. He is free to run some 50 camps inside Pakistan and PoK, recruit a growing number of fanatical youth (boys as young as 13 are taken in as fidayeen) and spread its tentacles all over the world, including India.

The LeT was set up with a seed contribution of $200,000 by Laden as the militant wing of the Markaz Dawat-ul in 1987. Eleven years later, it became the only South Asian terror group to pledge itself to the International Islamic Jehad which Laden founded. Today, with the founder himself unable to see to the day-to-day operations, the real hand on the levers of control may be that of the Pakistanis.

Consider the disparate locations from where the LeT hand has been discovered.

* The Australian Government arrested a former French Navy officer who admitted under interrogation of having received training in a LeT camp in Pakistan. He was planning a spectacular explosion on the Sydney Opera House;

* In June 2003, a group calling itself the "Virginia Jehad Network" was busted next to the US capital. It was a LeT cell

* The Indonesian terror outfit, Jemaah Islamia, which has close links with Al-Qaeda, sends its operatives regularly to Pakistan for training. This was known after Gungun Rusman, brother of the group commander, Ham Bali, was arrested along with 15 Malaysian and Indonesian students;

* In Kabul, a plot to kill the US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad was blown by Afghan authorities who caught three LeT terrorists. Pakistan denied this.What emerges out of all this is the dubious record of General Pervez Musharraf in helping the international community in the war against terror by closing down camps in his own country. Consider his report card on the 40th month after his January 12, 2002 speech promising a Pakistan on the forefront of an anti-terror campaign:

Though he has cracked down on groups like Jaish-e-Mohammad, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Sipah-I-Sahiba and sundry others, his patronage of LeT has continued unabated. What marked the LeT out for special favaour was its refusal to get involved in Pakistan's sectarian violence.

The LeT has an agenda which dovetails well with ISI's. It has repeatedly stated that it will not stop until India is entirely Islamised. That is why it was the first Pak-based group to move operations beyond J&K. The Ayodhya blast was just the latest in a series of strikes. In the past four months, at least five LeT modules have been busted in northern India.

The LeT subscribes to the Ahle-Hadis sect, which is extremely puritannical. The sect has a large following in Pakistan and in parts of India. That gives the group a support base. In a way, sparing the LeT from an official crackdown has been Musharraf's only pro-people decision.