A new US report has warned that elements within Pakistan’s security establishment could turn to lashkar-e-Tayyeba all over again to reignite the conflict in Kashmir.
“The series of skirmishes between Pakistani and Indian forces along the line of Control in Kashmir in January have brought the potential for renewed conflict in Kashmir into sharp relief,” says the report from the US Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at West Point, New York.
It points to the historical precedent suggesting that some of the Pakistan-based militant groups, notably lashkar-e-Tayyeba, will “reorient to and invest more broadly in the conflict in Kashmir”.
The reduction of the US footprint in Afghanistan with the departure of all American combat troops by the end of 2014 could see the spotlight turning on Kashmir for the Pakistani militant outfits, says the 61-page report, titled “The Fighters of lashkar-e-Tayyeba: Recruitment, Training, Deployment and Death”.
“If history and the area to which Pakistani militants (aided by the state) turned their operational attention after the Soviets departed Afghanistan is any guide, the reduction of the US footprint in Afghanistan in 2014 could help to change that,” it says, while noting the drop in the level of militant
violence in Jammu & Kashmir in recent years.
“Should elements of Pakistan’s security establishment view it in their interest to spoil peace or reignite conflict in the region (potentially to serve as a release valve for domestic challenges or to redirect the actions of militants actively waging war against Islamabad), they will likely turn to trusted Pakistani militant groups, such as lashkar-e-Tayyeba (leT), to do their bidding,” the report notes.
Authored by Don Rassler, C Christine Fair, Anirban Ghosh, Arif Jamal and Nadia Shoeb, the study notes that while leT has historically been used by Islamabad as an agent of regional foreign policy that is mostly focused on waging a low-level war of attrition in Kashmir, a steady array of incidents over the last decade strongly suggest that the outfit’s “interests are evolving and that its operations in the future might be less constrained”.
Unlike many other recent studies that see the leT as bitten by a desire to carry out international jihad plots, the CTC report is predicated on ther assumption that lashkar-e-Tayyeba’s local activity and infrastructure are and will remain the key source of its strength, even if the group decides to become more active in the international arena.