San Francisco, CA (June 8, 2006) - The Hindu American Foundation (HAF) supported the addition of two Pakistani splinter terrorist groups to the Specially Designated Global Terrorist Designation (SDGT) of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) by the United States Department of State in consultation with the Attorney General, the Secretary of the Treasury, and the Department of Homeland Security on April 28, 2006. Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), which has already received the designation in 2001 following a brazen attack on the Indian Parliament, has since been operating under the additional aliases Jamaat-ud-Dawa and Idara Khidmat-e-Khalq to evade sanctions.
Formed in 1990, the Pakistani-based LeT is considered one of the best trained and equipped terrorist organizations operating in South Asia. Initially the LeT participated in the resistance operations against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, and subsequently began operations in Jammu and Kashmir. The group follows a fundamentalist Islamic ideology demanding the end of Indian sovereignty in Kashmir, the establishment Islamic rule in other parts of India and the eradication of Hindus. LeT supremo Hafiz Mohammad Saeed once stated, "the Hindu is a mean enemy and the proper way to deal with him is the one adopted by our forefathers who crushed them by force." Closely affiliated with the other radical Islamist entities, the group is known to have safe-housed top al-Qaeda commanders and has claimed to have assisted the Taliban and Osama bin Laden.
In Kashmir, the LeT has been responsible for much of the ongoing violence including the recent massacre of 35 Hindus near the Doda district in early May. In other regions of India, the LeT has formed an extensive network of cells which have facilitated their terrorist activities throughout the country. Officials suspect the group’s hand in the coordinated bombing of a popular Hindu temple and a railway station in March which killed more than 20 people in the holy pilgrimage city of Varanasi. In December of 2005, LeT militants opened fire on the campus of the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore killing and seriously injuring several professors and researchers. Last October, the LeT is believed to have planned and executed a series of bomb blasts in populated marketplaces which killed 61 in New Delhi. In July, 2005, LeT terrorists attacked worshippers and security forces at the holy Ram Janmabhoomi complex in the city of Ayodhya.
Unfortunately, LeT and its splinter organizations have found a virtually unrestricted base of operation in Pakistan. Though the Pakistani government officially banned LeT in 2002 under international pressure, the government seems to be indifferent to the presence of this notorious terrorist organization functioning from within its borders and has allowed LeT affiliated groups to openly finance, recruit and operate virtually unhindered. Pakistani officials maintain that the two LeT affiliated groups that have been given the SDGT designation are ‘Islamic charities’ and refuse to ban them domestically.
“We are pleased by the State Department’s perseverance in identifying, exposing and banning the multiple facades of this terrorist outfit,” said Swaminathan Venkataraman, Executive Council Member of the Hindu American Foundation. “But at the same time, these efforts may be in vain if the Government of Pakistan continues to fight the war on terror in an insincere and half-hearted manner.”