[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
BAD COMPANY: LASHKAR E-TAYYIBA AND
THE GROWING AMBITION OF ISLAMIST
MILITANCY IN PAKISTAN
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
THE MIDDLE EAST AND SOUTH ASIA
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MARCH 11, 2010
__________
Serial No. 111-98
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOWARD L. BERMAN, California, Chairman
GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida
ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey
Samoa DAN BURTON, Indiana
DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey ELTON GALLEGLY, California
BRAD SHERMAN, California DANA ROHRABACHER, California
ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois
BILL DELAHUNT, Massachusetts EDWARD R. ROYCE, California
GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York RON PAUL, Texas
DIANE E. WATSON, California JEFF FLAKE, Arizona
RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri MIKE PENCE, Indiana
ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey JOE WILSON, South Carolina
GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
MICHAEL E. McMAHON, New York J. GRESHAM BARRETT, South Carolina
JOHN S. TANNER, Tennessee CONNIE MACK, Florida
GENE GREEN, Texas JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska
LYNN WOOLSEY, California MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas TED POE, Texas
BARBARA LEE, California BOB INGLIS, South Carolina
SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada GUS BILIRAKIS, Florida
JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York
MIKE ROSS, Arkansas
BRAD MILLER, North Carolina
DAVID SCOTT, Georgia
JIM COSTA, California
KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota
GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona
RON KLEIN, Florida
VACANT
Richard J. Kessler, Staff Director
Yleem Poblete, Republican Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia
GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York, Chairman
RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri DAN BURTON, Indiana
MICHAEL E. McMAHON, New York JOE WILSON, South Carolina
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas J. GRESHAM BARRETT, South Carolina
SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska
JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas
MIKE ROSS, Arkansas BOB INGLIS, South Carolina
JIM COSTA, California GUS BILIRAKIS, Florida
KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota DANA ROHRABACHER, California
RON KLEIN, Florida EDWARD R. ROYCE, California
BRAD SHERMAN, California
ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
GENE GREEN, Texas
VACANT
Howard Diamond, Subcommittee Staff Director
Mark Walker, Republican Professional Staff Member
Dalis Adler, Staff Associate
C O N T E N T S
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Page
WITNESSES
Marvin Weinbaum, Ph.D., Scholar-in-Residence, The Middle East
Institute...................................................... 9
Ms. Lisa Curtis, Senior Research Fellow, Asian Studies Center,
The Heritage Foundation........................................ 16
Ashley J. Tellis, Ph.D., Senior Associate, South Asia Program,
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace..................... 24
Mr. Shuja Nawaz, Director, The South Asia Center................. 35
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
The Honorable Gary L. Ackerman, a Representative in Congress from
the State of New York, and Chairman, Subcommittee on the Middle
East and South Asia: Prepared statement........................ 3
Marvin Weinbaum, Ph.D.: Prepared statement....................... 11
Ms. Lisa Curtis: Prepared statement.............................. 18
Ashley J. Tellis, Ph.D.: Prepared statement...................... 26
Mr. Shuja Nawaz: Prepared statement.............................. 37
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 56
Hearing minutes.................................................. 57
BAD COMPANY: LASHKAR E-TAYYIBA AND THE GROWING AMBITION OF ISLAMIST
MILITANCY IN PAKISTAN
----------
THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 2010
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on the Middle East
and South Asia,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:36 p.m. in room
2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Gary L. Ackerman
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Ackerman. The committee will come to order. While U.S.
attention has focused primarily on al-Qaeda and the Afghan and
Pakistan Taliban, the Lashkar e-Tayyiba, or LET, and other
violent Islamic extremist groups in Pakistan have been growing
in both capability and ambition. As was demonstrated in the
horrific Mumbai attack in November 2008, the al-Qaeda model of
perpetrating highly visible, mass casualty attacks appears to
have migrated with enormous potential consequences for the
United States.
With a team of ten well armed terrorists, a carefully
coordinated plan of attack, and a team of controllers back in
Pakistan in constant communication with the terrorist attack
team, the LET in 3 days killed 173 innocent people, wounded 308
others, and grabbed hold of the entire world's attention.
Communications intercepts that have been made public by the
Government of India include an attack controller broadcasting
about the carnage in Mumbai. This is just the trailer, he said,
the main movie is yet to come.
We need to take this threat very very seriously. The LET is
a deadly serious group of fanatics. They are well financed,
ambitious, and most disturbingly, both tolerated by and
connected to the Pakistani military, the same Pakistani
military to which we are selling advanced arms, the same
Pakistani military that objected so bitterly to legislation
this Congress passed to provide a massive $7.5 billion plus-up
in American assistance to their country, Pakistan, because our
accompanying language with all that money suggests that
Pakistan's military should be answerable to a democratically
elected government.
Lashkar e-Tayyiba, which means the army of the righteous or
the army of the pure, was set up with help from the Pakistani
military as a proxy weapon for use in Jammu and Kashmir, parts
of India that Pakistan has contested since partition in 1947.
After 9/11 Pakistan officially banned the LET, but the reality
is that it is like other Islamist terrorist groups, LET
maintains a clear public presence and a vast recruiting network
by providing extremely useful charitable and social services to
millions of impoverished people in Pakistan.
Public estimates suggest LET operates some 2,000 offices in
towns and villages throughout Pakistan as well as maintaining
ties with the Pakistani military. There is in fact no reason to
doubt that Pakistan's military is likely paying compensation to
the families of the terrorists killed in the Mumbai attacks.
These are our allies in the war on terror. Operational funding
for the LET comes from charitable fundraising amongst the
general population in Pakistan, but also depends heavily upon
contributions by Pakistani businessmen living abroad and other
wealthy individuals from the Persian Gulf. Let us note too,
these states are also our allies in the war on terror.
But it would be unfair and wrong to suggest that the LET
problem is strictly confined to Pakistan and Middle East. In
fact, one of the key facilitators in the Mumbai attacks was an
American of Pakistani extraction. Unfortunately, the LET enjoys
a substantial global network stretching from the Philippines to
the United Kingdom. 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 is 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. 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, all Hindus and Jews, who they
insist are ``enemies of Islam.'' In the wake of the Mumbai
attack, investigators uncovered in controller records and email
accounts a list of 320 locations worldwide deemed by the LET as
possible targets for attack. Only 20 of the targets were
located within India.
The LET has been attacking U.S. forces in Afghanistan
almost from day one, and their forces are present throughout
Afghanistan. The LET has been slaughtering Indians by the score
for decades. The LET has put the world on notice that they
intend to escalate the carnage and spread it worldwide. This
group of savages needs to be crushed, not starting in a month,
not in a year, not when the situation stabilizes in
Afghanistan, not when things are under control in Pakistan,
now, today, and every day going forward. We are not doing it,
and we are not effectively leading a global effort to do it,
and we are going to regret this mistake, we are going to regret
it bitterly. The ranking member.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Ackerman
follows:]Ackerman statement
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Burton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks for calling
this hearing today so we can examine the ongoing struggle with
Pakistan to deal with radical militants seeking to undermine
Pakistan's Government and threaten regional efforts to bring
stability and peace to Pakistan as well as Afghanistan. For a
very long time I have been a champion of Pakistan and a co-
chairman of the Pakistani Caucus in Congress because I
fundamentally believe that a stable, democratic, and prosperous
Pakistan is vital to our interests.
And I am extremely concerned, as are many other members of
the committee, about the increasingly negative news reports
coming out of Pakistan. A new threat has emerged within
Pakistan that may perhaps be more powerful and dangerous than
al-Qaeda, and that is the LET you talked about. It has proven
in recent years that it is strong, well organized, and well
resourced as a terrorist organization. LET's growing influence
has serious implications for regional, national, and
international security interests.
As we all know, Pakistan has a nuclear arsenal, which would
pose a grave threat to the entire region should it fall under
the control of the extremists. Since the LET's most famous
attack, the 2008 incident in Mumbai, we have seen LET expand
its stated objectives of liberating Kashmir to an embrace of
global jihad against the West. In my opinion, resolving the
dispute on Kashmir should be a crucial component of any
military plan to defeat the militants and stabilize Pakistan.
I do not know how the problem in Kashmir will ultimately be
solved, however I personally believe that the people of Kashmir
should be given the plebiscite that they were promised by the
United Nations back in the '40s. I have been a very strong
supporter of a plebiscite on Kashmir and to let the Kashmiri
people have the voice that they should have for a long time.
And there have been thousands and thousands of Indian troops up
there in that region imposing what in effect is martial law,
and it has been a real problem.
And I talked to President Musharraf and Prime Minister
Singh about this when I was over there not long ago, and they
came close to finding a compromise when they presented a
proposal to pull the troops out of the cities and open
crossings between India controlled Kashmir and Pakistan
controlled Kashmir and allow the people to largely govern
themselves. If this effort had been successful, I wonder if we
would be looking at a different Pakistan today.
And I would just like to add one other thing in here before
I go on with my statement, and that is, I really believe
Kashmir, the Kashmir problem, could be resolved if we could get
the leaders in Pakistan and India to sit down together and look
at this from a realistic point of view. It might take the wind
out of the sails of some of the terrorist organizations. And
so, while we don't have a lot of television cameras here today,
I hope that this message goes out to anybody beyond this room
that they know that I feel very strongly that India and
Pakistan ought to sit down and work this out so the people of
Kashmir get what they have been promised for the last 50 or 60
years.
Nevertheless, the immediate problem is confronting and
destroying terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and LET before they
can bring down another, either the Afghan or Pakistani
Government and once again allow the region of the world to
become a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of the
people as they possibly can, it gets no clearer than that. Much
like our efforts to eliminate al-Qaeda though, eliminating LET
is proving to be a very daunting task as LET enjoys a
stronghold, as the chairman said, and safe haven in parts of
Pakistan.
Furthermore, as Jeremy Khan, author of the recent Newsweek
article, ``The next al-Qaeda,'' pointed out, LET's parent
organization has developed a large charity arm that is popular
in both Punjab and Kashmir, where it runs schools and ambulance
service, mobile clinics, and blood banks. It earned tremendous
good will in Kashmir providing assistance after the 2005
earthquake, and I was over there and saw some of the damage
that was done. As Khan warns in his article, moving against it
could provoke civil unrest or even civil war.
And that is why I think it is important that in addition to
the problems we face in Afghanistan and Pakistan with the
Taliban and al-Qaeda that we really take a hard look along with
our allies Pakistan and India in trying to resolve this problem
of Pakistan and Kashmir and Punjab as a way of de-emphasizing
this problem and maybe slowing down the terrorist threat that
is posed by LET. Clearly, that is no easy task, but we can't
shy away from it as the stakes are too far too high.
As Pakistan goes, so goes Afghanistan, and while I disagree
with the President on many foreign and domestic policy
questions, I do believe that President Obama was right a few
months ago when he declared the conflict in Afghanistan as not
a war of choice, this is a war of necessity, this is
fundamental to the defense of our people. I believe the
President is also right to treat Afghanistan and Pakistan as
one conflict. A destabilized Pakistan can only lead to a
destabilized Afghanistan because the threat in Afghanistan
feeds off the threat in Pakistan and vice versa.
Victory is definitely possible, but it is not going to be
easy. There is nothing easy about war, and this is especially
true in these types of counterinsurgency efforts. These efforts
require our troops to get out and do everything they can to
gain the support of the populace and help them to rebuild.
However, if we and our allies, including the Governments of
Afghanistan and Pakistan, go all in and do what is required, we
can still win. I look forward to hearing from our expert
witnesses regarding what they feel is the winning formula for
success.
But I want to emphasize one more time--and I realize that I
have gone over my time, Mr. Chairman--and that is that I have
been working on this Kashmir and Punjab issue for years now,
and even you and I have had some debates on it over the years,
and I don't believe we are ever going to solve that problem up
there in Kashmir until India and Pakistan sit down together and
say, what can we do to solve the problem so the people in
Kashmir feel like they have a legitimate voice as was promised
to them in the '40s, late '40s. And if we can get them to do
that and include in the discussions the people from Kashmir, I
think that we can defang in large part the LET, which has
become a bigger threat. And with that, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Ackerman. Thanks the ranking member. We will proceed
now to introducing our distinguished panel. Dr. Marvin Weinbaum
is a scholar-in-residence at the Middle East Institute.
Previously Dr. Weinbaum was an analyst in the Bureau of
Intelligence and Research at the Department of State, where he
focused on Afghanistan and Pakistan. Dr. Weinbaum has also been
director of the South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies program
at the University of Illinois, senior fellow at the U.S.
Institute of Peace, and has held the Fulbright research
fellowships in Afghanistan and Egypt.
Ms. Lisa Curtis is a senior research fellow on South Asia
at the Heritage Foundation. Before going to Heritage, Ms.
Curtis worked for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as a
professional staff member heading the South Asia portfolio for
Senator Luger, former chairman of the committee. From 2001 to
2003 she served as senior advisor to State Department's South
Asia Bureau, where she advised the Assistant Secretary for
South Asia on India-Pakistan relations.
Dr. Ashley Tellis is a senior associate at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace. Commissioned into the
Foreign Service, Dr. Tellis served as a senior advisor to both
the U.S. Ambassador in New Delhi and to Under Secretary of
State for Political Affairs Nick Burns, as well as serving on
the National Security Council Staff as a special assistant to
the president and senior director for strategic planning in
South Asia. Prior to his government service, Dr. Tellis was a
senior policy analyst at the Rand Corporation.
Mr. Shuja Nawaz is the director of the South Asia Center at
the Atlantic Council of the United States. Prior to joining the
Atlantic Council, Mr. Nawaz held senior positions at the
International Monetary Fund, the World Health Organization, and
the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. Dr. Nawaz was
also a newscaster and producer for Pakistani television and
covered the 1971 war with India from the western front. I want
to thank our panel for being with us today.
Mr. Burton. Chairman, before we go to our panel, our
colleague from California just came and he has a short opening
statement he would like to make if it is all right with you,
sir.
Mr. Ackerman. Well, he can make as long a statement as he
has.
Mr. Burton. Okay.
Mr. Royce. That is very kind of you.
Mr. Ackerman. Mr. Wilson--Mr. Royce, sitting in Mr.
Wilson's chair.
Mr. Royce. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling this
hearing. Al-Qaeda has been our focus since 9/11. Yet the LET,
the Pakistani based jihadist group that carried out the days
long rampage in Mumbai, India, demands our attention. We will
hear words today on the threat from the LET, but nothing more
powerfully presents that case than the recent documentary,
``Terror in Mumbai.'' For those of you who have not seen it, I
really suggest you do, because there you see the terrorists and
you hear their words as they receive instructions from the
controller safe in Pakistan.
You hear the handler, anxious for the terrorists to hit the
Jewish Cultural Center: ``Every person you kill where you are
is worth 50 of the ones killed elsewhere.'' Lashkar e-Tayyiba,
or ``Army of the Pure,'' traces its roots to Afghanistan and
the war against the Soviets, where Pakistani intelligence
backed it. I should also say that part of its intellectual
roots are in the Muslim Brotherhood, and frankly some of the
architects come out of the Middle East for the LET. But
afterwards, Pakistan's ISI refocused LET to fighting India over
disputed Kashmir.
Given LET's deep roots within Pakistan's security services
and its popular charity services, Pakistan is in a delicate
dance ``with a Frankenstein of its own making,'' notes a former
top counterterrorism official. Reading today's testimony, it is
clear that another Mumbai could happen again, along with all
the accompanying tensions of two nuclear armed rivals that it
would bring. But this isn't just India's problem. Mr. Chairman,
Frankenstein is going global.
The director of national intelligence just testified that
LET is ``becoming more of a direct threat'' and ``placing
Western targets in Europe in its sights.'' Disturbingly, an
American citizen was at the heart of the Mumbai attacks. He is
now awaiting trial. Reportedly, a captured LET laptop contained
a list of 320 potential targets, many outside of India. How
many are American targets? As Lisa Curtis will testify this
afternoon, ``overlooking the activities of LET in Pakistan is
equivalent to standing next to a ticking time bomb waiting for
it to explode.'' Mr. Chairman, the clock is running, and I
thank you for holding this hearing. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Ackerman. Thank you very much. We are joined by Mr.
Bilirakis.
Mr. Bilirakis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate it so
much. Good afternoon, and welcome to our distinguished panel of
witnesses today. I appreciate the chairman calling this hearing
and allowing us the opportunity to learn more about the
emerging global threat of the Pakistani based terrorist group
LET. I am very concerned with how much of the people of
Pakistan have suffered as a result of terrorists operating in
western Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Sadly, these terrorist groups have targeted religious
minorities and other Pakistanis who oppose them. The most
recent incident involved the Taliban capturing and beheading a
Pakistani Sikh. While Pakistan has cooperating with the U.S. to
combat these terrorist groups, it is vital that the U.S.
develop a more comprehensive strategy with Pakistan in dealing
with the threat of other terrorist groups and religious
extremists that threaten both Pakistani and international
security.
The LET involvement in the Mumbai bombings in late 2008 and
their growing involvement in attacks on the West necessitate
the Pakistan end all ties with these terrorist groups and work
to eliminate the threat they pose to the West. In light of
these challenges, I look forward to hearing what the panel has
to say about the threat of the LET and their suggestions for
how this threat should be addressed. Again I thank you for your
testimony this afternoon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I yield back
the balance of my time.
Mr. Ackerman. We will now go directly to our previously
introduced panel. Dr. Weinbaum?
STATEMENT OF MARVIN WEINBAUM, PH.D., SCHOLAR-IN-RESIDENCE, THE
MIDDLE EAST INSTITUTE
Mr. Weinbaum. Thank you. Lashkar e-Tayyiba has evolved from
being a government sponsored Pakistani jihadi group dedicated
to the insurgency in India and Kashmir into a terrorist
organization with regional and global ambitions and reach. In
the U.S. focus on al-Qaeda, it has failed to take into full
account the presence of other organizations capable of
surpassing and replacing al-Qaeda as a terrorist threat
worldwide. LET is probably the leading candidate for such a
role.
It exceeds al-Qaeda in its capacity for recruitment and
fundraising across the Islamic world. Unlike al-Qaeda, LET has
strong societal roots and enjoys the protection of the
institutions of a state. LET is determined to use violent means
to inflict damage on American and Western interests
internationally. Despite its transnational views that envision
the emergence of a ``caliphate'' across the Islamic world, the
organization champions militant Pakistani nationalism and
thrives on its association with domestic charitable activities.
LET was originally the offspring of a group called Markaz
Al-Dawa-Wal-Irshad, which was founded in the early 1980s by a
Palestinian who was for a time at least an ideological mentor
to Osama bin Laden. This parent organization created a military
wing which was the LET in 1990. LET was principally designed to
provide Pakistan's military with a proxy force of recruited
fighters to augment the Islamic insurgency in India and
Kashmir. But by the late 1990s, LET was engaged as well in
training Islamic militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan coming
from countries ranging from Egypt to the Philippines.
In 2001, LET's parent organization changed its name to
Jamaat-ud-Dawa, and LET, the following year, was banned by the
Pakistan Government, it simply folded itself into the charity
organization. The organization directs a wide network of social
services and institutions, including Madrassas, secondary
schools, and a major medical mission. It receives funding from
mosque collections, expatriate Pakistanis in the Gulf and
Britain, Islamic NGOs, and Pakistani and Kashmiri businessmen.
Like other extremist organization, it also draws money from
drugs and smuggling. There are suspicions that it gets direct
financial assistance from the Pakistani Inter-Services
Intelligence agency as well. When Pakistan in 2002 curtailed
its assistance to Pakistani insurgents after a U.S. broke its
ceasefire that year in Kashmir, the organization with the
knowledge of the ISI shifted most of its training camps and
militant operations to the western border with Afghanistan.
Despite the government's ban of LET, Pakistan's ISI
continues to consider the organization an asset. The ISI is
believed to share intelligence and provide protection for LET.
We could talk about if we had time Muhammad Saeed and his
virtual impunity and what that demonstrates. Let me say that
there has been reciprocation on the part of LET and that it has
refrained from involvement in attacks against the Pakistan army
and against Pakistani civilians.
In fact, although it is very definitely part of the
terrorist network which includes the Tehriq-e Taliban, the
Pakistan Taliban, and al-Qaeda and the Haqqani network, it is
viewed by some of the jihadi groups as being too soft on the
state of Pakistan, and other extremist groups are skeptical of
its linkages with ISI. The current leadership in Pakistan may
recognize, as it turns out, better than any previous government
the dangers that LET and its groups pose to the state.
But the organization's deep penetration of the country's
social fabric makes any attempt to reign it in by the
beleaguered People's Party impossible without the military's
full commitment. Moreover, party and provincial politics in
Pakistan adds a further obstacle. The major opposition, the
Nawaz Sharif's Muslim League resists a challenge to the feared
LET that could put at risk the party's ascendant position in
the Punjab. I assume my time has just about run out,
unfortunately.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Weinbaum
follows:]Marvin Weinbaum
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Ackerman. Thank you very much.
Ms. Curtis? Everybody's full statement will be part of the
record.
STATEMENT OF MS. LISA CURTIS, SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOW, ASIAN
STUDIES CENTER, THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION
Ms. Curtis. Thank you very much, Chairman Ackerman, Ranking
Member Burton, and thank you very much for holding this very
important hearing. The Lashkar e-Tayyiba was not a widely known
group before the 2008 attacks on Mumbai, but its links to al-
Qaeda go back over a decade, and it has long posed a threat to
vital U.S. national security interests including promoting
stability in South Asia and degrading the overall terrorist
threat emanating from the region.
Although its primary focus has been India, its sharp anti-
West ideology, willingness to kill innocents on a massive
scale, and operational ties to al-Qaeda, should have raised
alarm bells in Washington long ago. Instead, the U.S.
Government has tended to view the LET primarily through the
Indo-Pakistani prism, and thus has not taken the group as
seriously as it has al-Qaeda. That attitude has proved short
sighted.
The arrest of Pakistani-American David Coleman Headley at
Chicago's O'Hare Airport on October 3rd, 2009, may mark one of
the most significant counterterrorism breakthroughs since 9/11.
Headley was arrested for conspiring with the LET in Pakistan to
conduct attacks in India and for plotting an attack on the
Danish newspaper that first published controversial cartoons of
the prophet Mohammed in 2005. Headley traveled frequently to
Pakistan, where he trained with the LET. He also went to India
where he scouted sights for the Mumbai attacks as well as
sights for future attacks including on India's National Defense
College in New Delhi and two well known boarding schools.
The findings from the Headley investigations have awakened
U.S. official to the gravity of the international threat posed
by Pakistan's failure to crack down on terrorist groups
including those that primarily target India. The Headley
investigations are changing the way the U.S. Government views
the LET. State Department Counter-Terrorism Coordinator Daniel
Benjamin, for instance, recently said that the Headley
investigations show the LET has global ambitions and is willing
to undertake bold, mass-casualty operations.
But what is most troubling about the Headley case is what
it has revealed about the proximity of the Pakistan military to
the LET. The U.S. Department of Justice indictment that was
unsealed on January 14th names a retired Pakistani Army Major
as Headley's handler. While the allegations do not point to any
serving Pakistani army or intelligence officials as being
involved in the Mumbai attacks, they do reveal the Pakistan
army's past support and continued toleration of the LET
contributed to the group's ability to conduct those attacks.
It took several months for Islamabad to admit publicly that
Pakistanis had been involved in the Mumbai tragedy. Islamabad
did eventually arrest seven LET operatives, including those
that India fingered as being the masterminds of the attack.
However, there are indications that the LET as an organization
continues to operate relatively freely in the country. On
February 5th, for example, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, one of the
cofounders of the LET, addressed a crowd of thousands in
Lahore, Pakistan, where he called for additional attacks on
India. Eight days later, terrorists bombed a German bakery in
Pune, India, killing at least 15.
Saeed's release from jail and ability to hold public
rallies sends a strong signal that terrorism will be tolerated
in Pakistan. Now, the degree of control that the Pakistani
intelligence services retain over LET's operations remains an
open question. Some Pakistani officials claim al-Qaeda has
infiltrated the LET and that elements of the LET were
freelancing. Regardless of whether the Pakistani authorities
did or did not have control of the group that carried out the
Mumbai attacks, they are now responsible for taking actions
that close down the group.
Therefore, the U.S. must develop policies that approach the
LET with the same urgency as that which the U.S. deals with the
threat from al-Qaeda. The Mumbai attacks and the Headley
investigations reveal that the LET has the international
capabilities and the ideological inclination to attack Western
targets whether they are located in South Asia or elsewhere.
The U.S. must convince Islamabad to take decisive action to
neutralize the LET before it can conduct additional attacks
that could well involve Western targets and possibly
precipitate an Indo-Pakistani military conflict.
Moving forward, the U.S. needs to closely monitor Pakistani
actions to dismantle the LET. Merely banning the organization
has done little to degrade its capabilities. The U.S. should
also avoid conveying a message that the U.S. is more interested
in some terrorist groups than others, which only encourages the
Pakistani leadership to avoid confronting the LET. Washington
also should repeat messages like that of Defense Secretary
Robert Gates, when he wrote in a recent op-ed about the
futility of trying to distinguish between terrorist groups that
share more commonalities than they do differences. Lastly, the
U.S. should assure Pakistani leaders that the U.S. will monitor
closely India's military posture toward Pakistan as it seeks to
dismantle dangerous groups like the LET. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Curtis
follows:]Lisa Curtis
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Ackerman. Thank you.
Dr. Tellis?
STATEMENT OF ASHLEY J. TELLIS, PH.D., SENIOR ASSOCIATE, SOUTH
ASIA PROGRAM, CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE
Mr. Tellis. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member, thank you for
inviting me this afternoon. Last year I had the opportunity to
testify before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security on the
LET as an organization and its ideology. I won't go over the
substance of that testimony again here, but I wanted to focus
on the issue that I was asked to, which is the impact of LET on
India-Pakistan relations. Let me summarize my testimony today
in the form of eight propositions.
First, let me affirm what others have said before me, that
the LET today, after al-Qaeda, remains the most important
terrorist group that operates in South Asia. But what is
important to recognize is that it has become the spearhead of
the Pakistan military's campaign against India. This campaign
no longer consists of fomenting insurgencies within India, as
was the case in the 1990s. In the early 1990s, the Pakistan
military sought to exploit domestic discontent within India,
and exploit it for its own purposes. After 1993, the strategy
changed. It moved from exploiting domestic discontent to
unleashing terrorism, which is aiding groups whose only purpose
of existence is to engage in indiscriminate attacks against
civilians throughout the length and breadth of the Indian
landmass.
The second proposition, LET has grown enormously in
competence and its capabilities. Its capacity to engage in
terrorist attacks worldwide has increased. But today, it does
not need the constant operational support that it once needed
from the ISI to conduct these operations. Yet, the tight
organizational linkages between LET and the ISI persist to this
day, even though Pakistan remains officially an ally of the
United States in the war on terror and even though Pakistan
officially has banned LET and its parent organization.
Third, the Pakistan army and the ISI have certain
objectives with respect to LET. They seek to modulate its
terrorism, not to end it. They seek to modulate it in order
that its actions do not embarrass the Pakistani state or
provoke a major Indo-Pakistani war. But the record since 2001
shows clearly that they have no intentions of putting LET out
of business.
Fourth, it is important that the United States recognize
Pakistan's deep investments in the LET and cease to refer to
LET as if it were an independent actor whose actions are
intended to embarrass the Pakistani state. Rather, LET remains
to this day an instrument of the Pakistani intelligence
services. The investigations that have occurred in the context
of the Headley case demonstrate clearly ISI's links with the
attacks that took place in Bombay.
Fifth, it is to President Obama's credit that he has made
it an important objective that Pakistan target LET if a new
U.S.-Pakistan strategic relationship is to be sustained. I
believe a U.S.-Pakistan strategic relationship is in the
interest of both countries. But thus far, the Pakistani state
has been unresponsive to the President's entreaties to suppress
LET. Sixth, the most immediate challenge that LET poses for the
United States is the risk that its operations in India will
provoke a crisis in India-Pakistan relations that end up with
the threat of war. If we have been lucky to escape that problem
so far, it has been largely because Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh has been forebearant in terms of his response to
Pakistan.
Seventh, despite the provocations posed by LET's actions,
Prime Minister Singh has yet made another attempt to restart
the dialogue with Pakistan. But by all accounts, this dialogue
is unlikely to be fruitful in the near term for want of a
suitable partner in Pakistan capable of conducting a dialogue
that leads to the agreement that the ranking member rightly
pointed out is necessary if we have to close the books on this
group.
Eighth and last, all U.S. efforts so far to encourage
Pakistan to suppress the LET have failed. I think we need to
face up to that fact. And therefore we will have to
increasingly consider what is a very unpalatable possibility,
that we might have to target LET and its operatives
unilaterally as part of our efforts in Pakistan and
Afghanistan. Thank you very much for your attention.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Tellis
follows:]Ashley Tellis
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Ackerman. Thank you.
Mr. Nawaz?
STATEMENT OF MR. SHUJA NAWAZ, DIRECTOR, THE SOUTH ASIA CENTER
Mr. Nawaz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member
Congressman Burton, and members of the committee, I am honored
to speak before you today. Today's topic is at the heart of the
dangers that confront Pakistan today. The Lashkar e-Tayyiba
represents a word that has 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 U.S. 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 ``a
thousand cuts.'' Over time, however, the sponsored organization
took a life of its own, finding the economically disadvantaged
area of central and southern Punjab to be fertile territory for
recruitment of jihadi warriors.
In a country, Mr. Chairman, where the median age is
estimated to be 18 years, and hence half the population of 175
million is below that age, the recruitment pool of unemployed
and impressionable youth is large. The attraction of the
militant's message cannot be countered by military might alone.
It has to be addressed at the core by changing the underlying
socioeconomic conditions that foster militancy as a passport to
a better life here and in the hereafter.
LET spread its wings nationwide using its contacts to raise
funds from the public and gradually has attained autarkic
status. It spun off a social welfare organization, the Jamaat
ud Dawa, that proselytizes on behalf of the LET while providing
much needed social services. In doing this, the LET was playing
to the weakness of the corrupt political system of Pakistan
that failed to recognize and meet the basic needs of its
population at large while only catering to the elites.
Over time, the Inter-Services Intelligence began losing its
control as the LET became self sufficient. But the realization
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. Now, 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 U.S.
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 reemploy 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.
What should we do? I believe that it may not be too late to
assist Pakistan in crafting a plan to reach out to the fighters
of the LET and other Punjabi militant organizations and by
involving their extended families in the process provide
trainings and stipends to wean them away from their militant
path. The extended family unit can play a role in ensuring
against recidivism on the part of the fighters.
Simultaneously it is critical to focus on drastically
changing the Islamist curriculum of public schools, a vestige
of the period of General Zia-ul-Hap's rule, and invest in south
and central Punjab to create job opportunities that would lift
up the relatively backward population of this area. Mr.
Chairman, enough evidence exists now to link the Sunni militant
groups Sipah-e-Sahaba and Jesh Muhammad with al-Qaeda and the
Taliban, and the LET's emerging role as a trans-regional force
that has broadened its aim to include India and perhaps even
Afghanistan.
By linking with the students Islamic movement of India and
the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami of Bangladesh, it poses a serious
threat to regional stability. As has been said before, another
Mumbai type attack involving the LET might bring Pakistan into
conflict, a prospect that should keep us awake at night. Now,
it appears that the army's recent actions has dislocated the
Teriki Taliban of Pakistan, yet it faces a huge, and to my mind
greater, threat in the hinterland in the form of the LET.
My own research into the recruitment of the Pakistan army
over 1970 to 2005 indicates that the army is now recruiting
heavily in the same area from where the LET springs. Unless we
change the underlying social and economic conditions there, the
Islamist militancy will start seeping into the military. Mr.
Chairman, I am grateful that this committee is focusing on this
issue, and thank you for allowing me to share some of my ideas.
I shall be glad to take questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Nawaz
follows:]Shuja Nawaz
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Ackerman. Thank you, and thank all of you. Well, it
seems we have a unanimity in a panel in that everybody is an
alarmist. Now where do we go? I think there is also general
agreement that the ISI/Pakistani military has been complicit in
creating the Frankenstein monster, seems not to be able to
control the Frankenstein monster, they are still able to
influence it, and that if I am not mistaken everybody made
reference to a belief or suspicion that the Frankenstein
monster can live independently even were it not receiving
substantial support from the Pakistan military. I would surmise
if that is accurate that the Pakistan military could make it a
little bit more difficult and uncomfortable.
The threat that this posed in the creation of this
terrorist that everybody considers an international terrorist
group at this point, everybody on the panel, the question is
whose responsibility is it? The answer to that is everybody's,
because it is international. My question is, in addition to how
big is this Frankenstein monster--can anybody quantify the
number of people or the rate of growth that it might have? But
what strategy might be employed and what expectation might
there be that we get Pakistan, its military and the
intelligence services, to determine that LET is no longer
useful, is counterproductive, and to concur in the fact that it
must be done away with? That is a big question. Let us start
with Dr. Weinbaum.
Mr. Weinbaum. With regard to your question, Congressman, I
think something else has to happen, and that is the attitude of
the people of Pakistan. I think it is more than simply a
decision here on the part of the government, which would be
very difficult without a different view of particularly the
charity work with which LET is associated, although not the
name LET. We have a larger task here. It is part of this larger
problem that we see here about the poisonous atmosphere that
exists and the willingness of people to accept conspiracy
theories as facts.
So this is a formidable task, of course, but it is more
than simply convincing the elites in Pakistan what to do, I
don't believe that there is any likelihood that they are going
to move without a change of attitude by the people of Pakistan,
and what that means is that they have to be addressing the
people themselves and pointing out what counterproductive ways
in which LET is operating for the security of Pakistan.
Mr. Ackerman. I think, before going down the rest of the
line, I think the dilemma the world is facing is that all of
these groups, whether it be Hammas or Hezbollah or LET or Robin
Hood and his Merry Men, have captured the imagination of the
general population by providing social services that
governments have not provided to a rather desperate people and
societies. And without being accused of being a wild-eyed
liberal and saying, you know, thinking we have to just
redistribute the wealth in the world, certainly you have to
give poor people and disadvantaged people a stake in their own
societies in those countries that we are talking about where
there is none. That is a huge undertaking. In the mean time,
somebody has to provide law and order and get rid of bad guys.
You know, it will be generations before you can build up the
economy of any of these places to Scandinavia. Anybody just
want to comment on that? My time is over but Ranking Member is
concurring in my generosity to myself. Mr. Nawaz?
Mr. Nawaz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Since I have spent a
substantial portion of my life at the IMF and the World Bank, I
believe that economics is at the heart of it and you have quite
rightly identified that. But I believe that it is possible to
accelerate the process of change, and it has to be an internal
process of change, it is not something that will come from
outside. First of all, a recognition by Pakistan that it faces
an existential threat from within and not from outside.
Secondly, the possibility of opening those areas where the
terrorist groups and the extremists are recruiting heavily, and
my research on this indicates as well as juxtaposed against the
recruitment of the Pakistan military, it is central and
southern Punjab. It is a vast area, very heavily populated, the
military cannot take military action given the fact that it is
now fighting on the western frontier.
So what is the best way? The best way probably is to open
up the economies of this. And what is the best way of opening
up the economy of the Punjab is to open up the border with
India. The moment you return to trade of 70 percent between
India and Pakistan instead of the 2 or 3 percent that it is
currently of GDP, you can I think overnight transform that
region. The kind of employment generation that will occur on
the Indian side of the border as well as on the Pakistan side
of the border will make it impossible for people to be lured
away by the kind of payments that the terrorist groups now
make.
Mr. Tellis. If I may make two points. First I would like to
qualify the analogy of the Frankenstein's monster. We think of
it as the Frankenstein's monster. I don't think the Pakistani
state thinks of the LET as a Frankenstein's monster, because
the LET as Dr. Weinbaum has pointed out has been very careful
not to attack state interests in Pakistan, to maintain its
links with key institutions like the Pakistani intelligence
services. And so the idea that somehow this is a organization
that is going to turn back and bite the Pakistani state, that
urgency is certainly not shared by key institutions in
Pakistan.
Secondly with respect to dealing with the challenge, LET
certainly has two streams. There is a civilian stream that is
focused on its charities, but there is a very distinct military
stream that is involved in its operations, and there is no
reason why in principle the Pakistani state cannot make a
distinction between these two streams. These are two different
categories of people. The people who go out to do charitable
work are not the people who do the gunrunning and who do the
killing. If the Pakistani state decided that it wanted to go
after the military components while leaving the civilian or the
charitable components aside, it could. The reason it won't is
because it does not really accept the fundamental analogy of
the Frankenstein's monster.
Ms. Curtis. Mr. Chairman, if I might just emphasize Dr.
Tellis's point that we may be missing the forest through the
trees here. There are steps that the Pakistan Government,
namely the Pakistan military and intelligence services, can
take. Number one, they can prevent Hafiz Muhammad Saeed from
making provocative statements calling for attacks on India.
That has nothing to do with charity work. They can disrupt the
ability of this group to train on Pakistani territory, to
finance itself.
And I also want to point out I don't see the LET as having
this broad support base in Pakistan. In fact, I would like to
quote Pakistan's former Information Minister, Sherry Rehman,
who said shortly after Hafiz Muhammad Saeed made this very
provocative statement, she said this in Parliament, ``What is
the point of our innocent civilians and soldiers dying in a
borderless war against such terrorists when armed, banned
outfits can hold the whole nation hostage in the heart of
Punjab's provincial capital?'' So the point is, this group is
not widely supported in Pakistan, in particular by the civilian
leadership, and if we want something done, we need to prevail
particularly on the Pakistan military to take steps to prevent
this group from being able to operate militarily.
Mr. Ackerman. Mr. Burton?
Mr. Burton. You know, I have been involved along with the
chairman probably for 15 or 20 years on the Kashmiri and Punjab
issue, and I believe after all the years I have talked to
people from Kashmir and Punjab and Pakistan and India that
until you solve the problems up in Punjab and Kashmir you are
never going to solve the problems that you are talking about
today, it just is not going to happen. You know, it is just not
going to happen.
Now, you have got a nuclear power in Pakistan and you have
got a nuclear power in India, and if all hell breaks loose, it
is going to be a mess there. Everybody knows that, it could
disrupt the whole region. And then you have got of course Iran
over there trying to develop a nuclear capability, it just
could be a horrible situation. But the thing that bothers me is
that for 20 years now, and the chairman and I have had our
differences over this, there has been no resolution of the
Kashmir province.
Since 1947 when they had partition, the U.N. resolution
that dealt with Kashmir has never been carried out, there has
never been a plebiscite on that up there. India has claimed it,
and there has been a lot of reasons why some royal leaders up
there have ceded some of the territory to India, which I am not
sure they had the ability to do, but nevertheless it has
continued to be a problem, and the people in Kashmir where a
lot of this has started, they are not going to stop. And they
are going to get support from people who are sympathetic to
them from military or religious standpoint.
And so I don't know why our learned experts here, and I
know you are very knowledgeable, and the people in the military
in India and in Pakistan, don't realize that everybody is
walking around with a fuse in their hand that could blow up at
almost any time. The Mumbai attack could have precipitated
something but cooler heads did prevail. But I have seen, they
have brought me pictures time and time again of people who had
been disemboweled and sewed up and thrown in rivers up there in
Kashmir and the people who had been tortured and killed in
Punjab by the military, and I am sure there is atrocities
coming the other way as well, but it is not going to go away.
And you know, I don't know how many hearings we have had on
these subjects but there have been a lot of them, and everybody
talks about, today it sounds like predominantly that Pakistan
and their connection with the LET and other things are mainly
responsible and I am sure there is a lot of blame there, but
there is blame on the other side too. And I wish all of the
experts and the people in the governments involved as well as
the United States 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.
And 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 has been existing since 1948. And until you get
that done, you are not going to solve this problem. And India
can't attack Pakistan because if they do Pakistan has got the
ability to retaliate with a nuclear weapon and vice versa. And
so the killing is going to go on, and the festering that is
created from this impasse is just going to grow.
And I just asked my staff how many people live up there,
and there is at least 10 million people, so there is a
reservoir of people to become terrorists. A lot of these young
people, I mean they hear their parents and they see the things
that is happening with the Indian troops occupying that area
and they have seen the atrocities on both sides, and they say,
you know, to hell with it, let us just fight them, we will kill
them. And it just gets worse and worse and worse.
So that is why I went over there and I talked to Prime
Minister Singh personally, and I talked to President Musharraf
personally, and they had opened a small opening in the border
so that there could be some communication and traveling back
and forth. But as far as moving troops back from Kashmir, even
50 miles or 25 miles so that they could feel a little autonomy
there and actually start discussions on how to solve the
problem, you know, I just don't think it is going to be
resolved.
And I think as the chairman said, you know, this is kind of
like the Gordian knot. And the Gordian knot by Alexander was
not untied, he just chopped it in two, and I think the way to
chop this in two is to get the parties together. And the United
States has been working in the Middle East between the
Palestinians and the Israelis for years, and the Egyptians and
the Lebanese and all the countries involved, Jordan, to try to
solve their problems.
Mr. Ackerman. Gentleman is yielded an additional 5 minutes.
Mr. Burton. Well, I am not going to take that much time,
Mr. Chairman, I am just feeling exasperated, and I know you
feel that way too because we have talked about this on the
floor, this has been going on forever, and it is an issue that
could blow up at any time into something much larger than what
we have seen in Mumbai or any of the other attacks over there.
And all we do is we keep talking about who is at fault and who
is doing this and who is doing that. We ought to look at the
U.N. resolutions of the late '40s, which are still in effect,
and we ought to try to live up to those. And there has got to
be some way to do that and to cut through this Gordian knot.
And I really appreciate the expertise of the people here,
but I get so frustrated because I see the killing and I see
this thing festering and getting into a bigger and bigger
problem because there is no way to exhaust the kind of weapons
these people can get, and they are going to be more and more
sophisticated, and then you have got nuclear weapons. I mean we
keep talking about it and tinking around with it, but nothing
gets done and we run the risk of a major conflagration which
could erupt if not now, 2 years in the future, 5 years in the
future, because we aren't realistically looking at how to solve
the problem.
And the way to solve the problem is to do like we are
trying to do between Palestine and Israel and get these people
together and find out what they can all live with. And then if
you do that, you start to do as I said earlier in my remarks,
defang the terrorist groups. Because the reason they were
originated is not just because of poverty, it is because they
hate the Indians and they want their autonomy and they want the
plebiscite they were promised and all that other stuff. So it
is a combination of things. You can respond if you want to.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Ackerman. Any takers? Dr. Weinbaum?
Mr. Weinbaum. If I could just add on to the problem in a
way. Because, without discounting the importance of LET in
terms of the reconciliation between India and Pakistan and the
spoiler role that it can play, I don't think we have given
enough attention this afternoon to LET as a global
organization. I believe that it has demonstrated that in the
past its members, for example, took part in the Balkans, they
were involved in the war in Tajikistan. What we see here is a
capacity on the part of the LET that certainly which reaches
into Afghanistan.
If we should fail in Afghanistan, I think there is no doubt
that the LET would become along with the Taliban a force here
which has implications that go beyond just this area. I might
mention that we know of at least 17 countries where the LET has
chapters. So my point here is that, as much of a concern as the
LET poses to Pakistan and to Indo-Pakistani relations, LET is
evolving into something which is far greater, an organization
which has by its own statements has global ambitions, and what
I am also saying it is also developing a global capacity.
Ms. Curtis. Just quickly, you talked about the problem and
a possible resolution as being a plebiscite. But frankly, in my
visits to the region I haven't heard support for the idea of a
plebiscite. And in fact I think one of the most significant
things that has happened over the last decade was President
Musharraf actually dropping Pakistani insistence on having a
plebiscite, and in fact he made a very important statement in
December 2006 where he said Pakistan would be willing to give
up its claim on Kashmir if four things happened.
He said, if the line of control that divides Kashmir was
made irrelevant--which means people could freely pass back and
forth, goods could pass back and forth--two, 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 from 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.
So I think the point is the two sides are capable of moving
forward. And I agree, they should sit down and do this, but I
think we have to look at what right now at this moment, 2010,
is preventing that. And I think that is where we have to in a
sense, you do have to assess blame. If you want them to really
get back to genuine negotiations then we have to look at what
is holding that up at this particular moment.
Mr. Burton. I just want to make a couple comments. The
plebiscite was promised in 1948. I know what he said, and I
think that is great, that is a great step in the right
direction, because I talked to President Musharraf just about
that. And the other thing I would like to say is that this is a
breeding ground for the expansion of the LET, in my opinion.
And I think that if we could figure out a way to solve this
problem, as President Musharraf laid out, I think it would be a
step in the right direction, which could possibly lead, maybe
not, could possibly lead to helping reduce the aggressiveness
of that organization. Because an awful lot of that stems from
what was been going on for 20 years in Kashmir and that whole
region.
Mr. Ackerman. We will try to come back. Mr. Connolly?
Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I would ask
unanimous consent that my opening statement be entered into the
record.
Mr. Ackerman. Without objection.
Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And welcome to all
of our panelists. I am going to try to squeeze in four
questions, so if we could all be concise, that would be great.
First question, what in your opinion is in fact the current
nature of the relationship between LET and ISI, the Pakistani
intelligence service? Who wants to begin? Mr. Nawaz?
Mr. Nawaz. Well, yes, Congressman, I would be happy to
address that. As I stated in my opening remarks, I think that
relationship has changed over time, and that after President
Musharraf made a decision to distance himself from the groups
that were operating in Kashmir that there was a kind of a hands
off approach, and I think it was not a part of a comprehensive
plan. And it has backfired, as a result of which the group has
basically become completely independent. But I did mention that
the former trainers and associates from the ISI perhaps now
have an opportunity of independently working with the LET.
Mr. Connolly. Well, let me ask a follow-up question to
that, because we have the same kind of problem frankly with the
ISI and the Taliban. Are we to believe that the ISI can operate
sort of a rogue mission independent of the central Government
of Pakistan, or is it done with a wink and a blink from the
central Government of Pakistan? Because we hear denials about
that relationship with the Taliban as well, and yet we know
that there are deep historical ties between the two.
Mr. Nawaz. I don't believe the ISI acts independently of
the government or the power centers in Pakistan, and I use my
words very carefully. I think at the operational level, and
particularly when you refer to Fatah, the border region,
because of the nature of the recruitment pool of the operatives
at the field there is a tremendous amount of ambivalence,
because you have to go into the tribal system and recruit
people there. So you cannot have 100 percent control over
people in the field.
Mr. Connolly. Anyone else on this? Dr. Tellis?
Mr. Tellis. Let me answer that as specifically as I can.
The relationship between LET and ISI is still extremely tight,
and there are four specific dimensions of that relationship.
The ISI protects the LET leadership, it gives safe haven to the
cadres, and it provides protection to the leadership, that is
number one. Two, it provides the organization with intelligence
on specific threats to the organization and specific targets
that may be of interest to the organization.
Three, it provides campaign guidance when required. LET
does quite well on its own and can do scouting of its own
targets independently today, but there have been instances
where ISI has continued to provide campaign guidance. And four,
ISI continues to provide infiltration assistance, particularly
when LET operatives have to go to third countries using the
assistance of ISI stations. So there are four distinct ways in
which LET and ISI operations continue to be coordinated.
Mr. Connolly. Thank you.
Ms. Curtis. I would just reiterate, I don't think ISI is a
rogue operation, and they do have tight links with the Lashkar
e-Tayyiba. But I would say what is most dangerous, it seems to
be when you have these retired officials. In my opening I
talked about the Headley investigations and how the U.S.
affidavit names a former Pakistani Army Major as being the
actual handler for Headley. And so the question is, did he
leave on his own volition? Is he retired because that provides
more deniability? So these are a lot of the questions that I
think need to be asked.
Mr. Weinbaum. I just have one comment, and that is to
repeat something I said earlier, that as far as Pakistan is
concerned, the LET does not present the same kind of threat
that many of the other organizations, Lashkar Jhangvi
particularly, are threats to the state of Pakistan. So that
there is an opportunity here for a modus vivendi so that they
share common objectives. Therefore, to the degree in which LET
continues to do so, and it is a question about whether it will
continue to do so, there is no reason for the ISI as such to
turn against it.
Mr. Connolly. Thank you, and my time is up, Mr. Chairman,
and I got one question in. Thank you.
Mr. Ackerman. Thank you. Stick around. Mr. Royce?
Mr. Royce. Thank you, Chairman. Dr. Tellis: Of the amalgam
of jihadists that operate in Pakistan, is it safe to say that
the LET receives the least amount of scrutiny from the
Pakistani Government?
Mr. Tellis. That is correct.
Mr. Royce. A recent Newsweek article reported that ``unlike
al-Qaeda which is on the run and largely confined, LET operates
terrorist training camps more or less in the open'' in
Pakistan. I would ask you, is this an accurate description of
this, do people agree that this is?
Mr. Tellis. That is correct, and they have an annual
meeting which is often attended by important political
personalities in Pakistan. And the annual meeting is
essentially a jamboree for jihadists that takes place in
Muridke, and it is an open event.
Mr. Royce. But some of the officials that attend, are they
parliamentarians?
Mr. Tellis. There are both elected officials and there are
officials from more shadowy parts of the Pakistani Government
that attend these meetings.
Mr. Royce. And if I could ask Dr. Weinbaum, you note in
your testimony that LET's chief, Hafiz Saeed, because of his
work with young people during his time at an engineering
university became in your words, you said he is believed to
have many sympathizers within Pakistan's scientific community,
especially in the nuclear and missile fields.
Mr. Weinbaum. Correct.
Mr. Royce. People have often asked how many al-Qaeda
sympathizers are in Pakistani security establishment. You know,
your question strikes us that maybe we are asking the wrong
question. Maybe the real question we should have been asking
ourselves is, what about LET elements in the nuclear field? And
have you given some thought to that?
Mr. Weinbaum. Well, I believe that what we have here is
obviously just circumstantial evidence.
Mr. Royce. Yes.
Mr. Weinbaum. But what we do know, and obviously we are
concerned about----
Mr. Royce. Well, their membership is 150,000 people,
according to Newsweek, in Pakistan.
Mr. Weinbaum. Well, again, how do you separate Jamaat-ud-
Dawa, the charity wing, from the political military wing that
LET constitutes? that is very blurred. And it is really the
strength of the organization is the fact that it has this
charity persona.
Mr. Royce. No, I understand that.
Mr. Weinbaum. Yes.
Mr. Royce. Well, so let me ask Lisa a question here.
British Pakistanis have been known to use the ``Kashmir
escalator'' after getting introduced to LET or others in
Kashmir, then they connect with al-Qaeda operatives. And last
year a British official estimated that 4,000 people were
trained in this way since 9/11, and it accounted for three out
of four of the serious terrorist plots faced by the UK. Now, of
course many of these people also could get into the United
States without a visa, right, because they are British
citizens. How deep are the LET ties within the British and
French Pakistani communities in your view, and how are we
working with the British on this?
Ms. Curtis. Well, there was information that one of the
London subway plotters was actually trained at an LET camp, so
I think there are some connections there. But in terms of the
U.S. and whether or not we are working with the UK, I think I
raised in my testimony that I don't think the U.S. Government
has given the LET the attention that it deserves.
Mr. Royce. And that goes to another point I was going to
ask you about, Ms. Curtis. Have we gotten to that point where
we approach the LET as we approach al-Qaeda? You say no, but we
have got the Headley case as you point out. He was born in the
United States to a Pakistani diplomat and a Philadelphia
socialite. He was charged in December with providing material
support to the LET for scouting locations for the Mumbai terror
attack. He made multiple trips to India taking videos of the
hotels and restaurants in advance in order to carry out these
attacks. What would you tell U.S. policy makers regarding the
need to change our view of the LET?
Ms. Curtis. Well, I think we need to focus on the
masterminds of the attack. Yes, Headley was a facilitator, he
scouted sites, but what is important is his handler, who was
directing him, who was really the one on the other line of the
cell phone telling the killers who to kill, who to murder. So
that is why it goes back to Pakistan and focusing on taking
down the LET in Pakistan. Because yes they do have an
international network and we need to work with our allies in
focusing on that international network, but if you have the
masterminds directing the other arms of this operation, then
you will go a long way to decimating it.
So again I come back to how important it is to focus on
disrupting that leadership in Pakistan, convincing the Pakistan
military that this group is a threat not only to India, to the
international community, but also eventually to themselves, and
that they do have an international viewpoint. I think that is
what I would tell our policy makers to focus on.
Mr. Royce. Thank you, Ms. Curtis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Ackerman. Mr. Bilirakis?
Mr. Bilirakis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate it
very much. I have a couple questions. And I know you touched on
this but maybe you can elaborate a little more or the panel
can. Is the Pakistan Government as a whole seriously interested
in combating religious extremism or are there divisions within
the country and government that prevent the government as a
whole from being able to take immediate steps to address these
threats?
Mr. Nawaz. Maybe I can attempt to reply to that,
Congressman.
Mr. Bilirakis. Thank you.
Mr. Nawaz. I think in the last couple of years
particularly, the people of Pakistan have put pressure on the
government and the military. And the military particularly now
recognizes the growing threat from within. I think this is
being reflected in the support that was given to the Pakistan
army in its operations in Swat and in the renewed operations in
Fatah. And this is something that we should perhaps capitalize
on, which is to strengthen these movements.
And also to build up on an earlier point, to recognize that
if you change the landscape and effect it particularly in the
recruitment area of the LET which is the Punjab, not just the
economic landscape but return Islam to the predominant Sufi
Islam that dominates Pakistan as a religious entity, that is
really where the strength is going to lie because you will yank
the carpet from under the feet of these groups.
And then finally, I think on the external front, as the
ranking member has said a number of times, if you could just go
back to the road map that had already been achieved in the
composite dialogue between India and Pakistan, it exists on
paper and I can confirm that President Musharraf has personally
confirmed to me the outlines of that agreement. It is the
question of going back and picking it up from there, for which
the current reopening of the dialogue is a very good sign. This
has to be a multifaceted effort, I don't think there is any
silver bullet solution to it.
Mr. Bilirakis. Thank you, sir. Anyone else on the panel?
Mr. Tellis. If I may take a crack at that. I think in
principle Pakistan as a country has come to the point where
they recognize that they cannot avoid dealing with the
challenges of religious extremism. But it breaks down once you
start looking at different groups within Pakistan. The body
politic, the public, are clearly sick and tired of the
deterioration that has taken place in Pakistani politics. You
get poll after poll that shows people having absolutely no
appetite for sustaining these groups anymore.
The civilian regime, the regime of President Zardari, I
think very much shares that conviction as well. Where
uncertainties arise are the Pakistani military and intelligence
services. And there it is not that they don't recognize the
nature of the problem, it is that they are deeply conflicted
about the utility of some of these players to their own
interests. And so you get a truly schizophrenic attitude where
the Pakistani military and intelligence services want to
confront the problem but they want to confront it selectively
and they want to pick and choose.
And there are some terrorist groups that affect their own
interests adversely whom they are content to go after, and
there are other terrorist groups who they think they can live
with because they are assets in the military's campaign against
India and Afghanistan. Now, as long as this schizophrenia
exists in the national security establishment, the kinds of
problems that you are alluding to will continue to persist.
Mr. Bilirakis. Thank you.
Ms. Curtis. Yeah, I just want to also highlight that. I
think that there is thinking within the Pakistani security
establishment that you can support some terrorists or tolerate
some terrorists and fight others. I think this is
counterproductive. I think the reality is that these terrorists
they get stronger and stronger, they have such a virulent
ideology, and the LET is a case in point, that they will
eventually go off on their own and start attacking the state.
Now, the LET has not started attacking the state yet but
they are extending their sights internationally, more
Westerners are becoming involved in their attacks, a more pan-
Islamist ideology. So I think it is almost there is a lack of
strategic thinking within the Pakistan military establishment
that doesn't understand that by supporting some of these groups
you are actually undermining your overall ability to get a
handle on the terrorism problem in your own country. And
Secretary Gates tried to explain this in an op-ed that he wrote
which ran in a Pakistani daily a few weeks ago. But I think we
need to keep hammering home that point, that it is bad policy
for them to try to support some terrorists and fight others.
Mr. Bilirakis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, appreciate it.
Mr. Ackerman. We have about reached that time, but what I
think I would like to do, rather than let you all go right now,
because as soon as you are halfway down the hall you are each
going to say, I wish I had another half a minute, I would have
said X. You each have 45 seconds to fill in the blank if you
would like.
Mr. Weinbaum. To sum up what I said in my statement. LET's
reputation for charity and piety and patriotism together with
its close ties to the senior officers of the Pakistan military
and intelligence establishment give it the potential I believe
to transform Pakistan society into a Sharia state similar to
that of Afghanistan in the 1990s. I don't see that as imminent,
but I think that that potential exists. The U.S. therefore
would be faced in Pakistan with a jihadi dominated state that
it has most to fear and a global threat that I believe dwarfs
al-Qaeda. Thank you.
Mr. Ackerman. Ms. Curtis?
Ms. Curtis. I guess I would just like to reiterate what
Congressman Royce quoted out of my testimony, that if we just
keep allowing this group to exist we are sitting next to a
ticking time bomb. I think it does pose a threat to U.S.
interests. It is a very short step to go from the attacks in
Mumbai, in which of course six Americans were killed, it is a
very short step for them to then, you know, target a strictly
Western target. And I think that we need to take this problem
more seriously and raise it to the top of our agenda with
Pakistan.
Mr. Ackerman. Dr. Tellis?
Mr. Tellis. I would just like to end by responding to the
remarks that the ranking member made because I think they are
very important. 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. I always find it interesting that the people
conducting the murder and mayhem in the subcontinent today are
not Kashmiris, the people who actually are deprived of all
their political rights, they are not conducting the murder and
mayhem.
The murder and mayhem is being conducted by groups that
have absolutely no connections to Kashmir, and to my mind that
tells me a 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 issues of Kashmir. So we have to deal with Kashmir,
but it is not going to solve this problem.
Mr. Ackerman. Mr. Nawaz?
Mr. Nawaz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to make
two points. First of all, I agree with Ashley Tellis that
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. They are going to face a very uphill task because the
majority of the population doesn't believe in their brand of
Islam or their tactics. Secondly, I think we need to support
the ideas of the people of India and Pakistan for peace.
A recent simultaneous poll conducted by the Times of India
and the Jang newspaper group in Pakistan indicates that 70
percent of the people polled want peace between India and
Pakistan. I think that is the kind of movement that needs to be
supported from within and from outside, because once you
achieve that you create economic openings and those openings
will allow the people of Pakistan and India to prosper and
remove these terrorist groups from their midst. Thank you.
Mr. Ackerman. Thank you. Thank the entire panel, you have
been very very helpful, very informative, and very persuasive.
The committee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:01 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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