Lashker poses serious threat to Indian & western interests: US

NEW DELHI: Pakistan-based terrorist outfit Lashker-e-Taiba (LeT) poses a threat to both Indian and the Western interests, a White House report has said, and stressed on the US government’s resolve to ensure a global fight to defeat the LeT’s subversive agenda.

“In South Asia, LeT — the organisation responsible for the rampage in Mumbai in 2008 that killed over 100 people, including six Americans — constitutes a formidable terrorist threat to Indian, US and other Western interests in South Asia and potentially elsewhere,” said the National Strategy for Counter-Terrorism released by the White House.

As per the 19-page report, the US counter-terrorism efforts against LeT will continue to target the outfit’s capability to conduct and support operations that endanger US interests or regional stability, including the escalating tensions between India and Pakistan. “Much of our effort against LeT will continue to centre on coordinating with, enabling, and improving the will and capabilities of partner nations — including in South Asia, Europe and the Arabian Gulf — to counter the group and its terrorist activities,” the White House said in its report, which for the first time made public the key aspects of its policy to defeat terrorism. The report is mainly focused on al-Qaeda and its affiliated terrorist groups.

“Even if we achieve the ultimate defeat of al-Qaeda in the Afghanistan-Pakistan theatre, an expanded and diverse network of terrorist groups determined to focus beyond their local environments is likely to persist,” it said, referring to LeT as the most dangerous terrorist group.

The White House’s rating of LeT as a serious threat is a far cry from the US position a few years ago which viewed Lashker as an outfit of “militants and freedom fighters” dedicated to the Kashmir cause. Post 26/11, LeT is recognised as one of the most lethal Pakistan-based terror outfits engaged in terror activities not only in India but also against Western nations, including the US.

The LeT’s global outreach was confirmed in the statement of arrested American terrorist David Coleman Headley. He had confessed to having scouted potential terror targets for LeT in India and Denmark, where it planned to target office of the newspaper that had published the controversial cartoon of Prophet Mohammad.