Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LT) (Army of the Righteous)

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Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LT) (Army of the Righteous)

The Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LT) (Army of the Righteous) is the armed wing of the Pakistan-based religious organization, Markaz-ud-Dawa-wal-Irshad (MDI), a Sunni anti-U.S. missionary organization formed in 1989. The LT is led by Abdul Wahid Kashmiri and is one of the three largest and best-trained groups fighting in Kashmir against India. The LT is not connected to a political party. The United States added the group to the list kept by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC), which includes organizations that are believed to support terrorist groups and have assets in U.S. jurisdiction that can be frozen or controlled. The group was banned and its assets were frozen by the Pakistani government in January 2002.

The LT has conducted a number of operations against Indian troops and civilian targets in Kashmir since 1993. The LT claimed responsibility for numerous attacks in 2001, including a January attack on Srinagar airport that killed five Indians along with six militants; an attack on a police station in Srinagar that killed at least eight officers and wounded several others; and an attack in April against Indian border security forces that left at least four dead. The Indian government publicly implicated the LT along with the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM) (Army of Mohammed) for an attack on the Indian parliament building.

LT has several hundred members in Azad Kashmir, Pakistan, and in India's southern Kashmir and Doda regions. Almost all LT cadres are non-Kashmiris mostly Pakistanis from madrassas across the country and Afghan veterans of the Afghan wars. During attacks, LT uses assault rifles, light and heavy machine guns, mortars, explosives, and rocket propelled grenades. Based in Muridke (near Lahore) and Muzaffarabad, LT trains its militants in mobile camps across Pakistan-administered Kashmir; prior to the fall of 2001, it also conducted training in Afghanistan.

LT collects donations from the Pakistani community in the Persian Gulf and United Kingdom, Islamic NGOs, and Pakistani and Kashmiri businessmen. They also maintain a website (under the name of its parent organization, Jamaat ud-Daawa), through which it solicits funds and provides information on the group's activities. The amount of LT funding is unknown. The LT maintains ties to religious military groups around the world, from the Philippines to the Middle East and Chechnya, through the MDI fraternal network. In anticipation of asset seizures by the Pakistani government, the LT withdrew funds from bank accounts and invested in legal businesses, such as commodity trading, real estate, and production of consumer goods.

█ FURTHER READING:

ELECTRONIC:

Central Intelligence Agency. World Factbook, 2002. <http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/> (April 16, 2003).

Taylor, Francis X. U.S. Department of State. Patterns of Global Terrorism 2001. Annual Report: On the Record Briefing. May 21, 2002. <http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/rm/10367.htm> (April 17,2003).

U.S. Department of State. Annual reports. <http://www.state.gov/www/global/terrorism/annual_reports.html> (April 16, 2003).