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Preventing the Next Lashkar-E-Tayyiba Attack

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Preventing the Next Lashkar-E-Tayyiba Attack Tricia Bacon Preventing the Next Lashkar-e-Tayyiba Attack November 26, 2018 marked the 10-year anniversary of Lashkar-e- Tayyiba’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India. Though there were no shortage of headline grabbing attacks at the time, the duration and brutality of the siege of Mumbai stood apart, captured by images of the iconic Taj hotel on fire. Ten gunmen terrorized the city for nearly four days and killed over 180 people, includ- ing six Americans. The grim anniversary brought attention once again to Paki- stan’s relationships with militant groups, because Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) was, and is, Islamabad’s most reliable client. Lashkar has received comparatively less attention in recent years, especially compared to its main rival Jaish-e- Mohamed (JeM), which conducted a suicide attack in February in Pulwama that killed 40 and spurred a military confrontation between India and Pakistan. As India has grown increasingly less tolerant of attacks by Pakistani militant groups in recent years, even in Kashmir where it has traditionally absorbed oper- ations without retaliation, the combination of LeT’s well-established responsive- ness to the Pakistani security establishment and ability to conduct major attacks in India beyond Kashmir has the potential to ignite a larger conflict between India and Pakistan. The lack of another major attack outside of Kashmir is not an indication that Lashkar has grown weaker over the past 10 years; if anything, the group has grown stronger. Above all, the absence of another significant attack reflects the strength of the organization’s ties to the Pakistani security establishment, particularly the military, and its desire to avoid a confrontation with India, as well as international pressure. Consequently, the group has exercised restraint and hidden its role in Tricia Bacon is an assistant professor in American University’s School of Public Affairs, author of Why Terrorist Groups Form International Alliances, nonresident fellow in GW’s Program on Extremism, and former State Department counterterrorism analyst. She can be reached at [email protected] and @tricbacon on Twitter. Copyright © 2019 The Elliott School of International Affairs The Washington Quarterly • 42:1 pp. 53–70 https://doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2019.1594135 THE WASHINGTON QUARTERLY ▪ SPRING 2019 53 Tricia Bacon smaller attacks in India, which reflects Pakistan’s post-9/11 policy of maintaining plausible deniability for attacks outside of Kashmir to avoid international pressure: a policy likely to expand to include attacks in Kashmir after the blowback for Jaish’s recent attack in Pulwama. Instead of major attacks in India, Lashkar has focused on the insurgencies in Kashmir and Afghanistan, activities consistent with the Pakistani military’s policies. The group operates quite differently in Pakistan, where it recruits and fundraises openly. There it eschews violence—a policy dating back to its inception—and has continued its longtime provision of social services. Recent years have brought a significant change to the group’s activities in Pakistan with the formation of a political party, seemingly at the behest of the Pakistani military, which is a sharp reversal of the group’s longtime condemnation of democracy. The United States faces a difficult reality: as long as Lashkar retains close ties to the Pakistani state, little can be done to weaken the group. In the years following the U.S. efforts have Mumbai attacks, the United States increased done little to disrupt the pressure on Islamabad to break ties with LeT’s capability or Lashkar. Failing that, it has sought to contain LeT by working with countries outside of Paki- how comfortably it stan, aggressively applying sanctions, and operates in Pakistan. indicting individuals involved in the Mumbai attacks. While laudable efforts, these measures have done little to disrupt its terrorist capability or how comfortably the group operates in Pakistan, where its leader boasted, in response to a U.S. offer of $10 million for information leading to his conviction: “I am here, I am visible. America should give that reward money to me. I will be in Lahore tomorrow. America can contact me whenever it wants to.”1 While the policy prescription would seem to be that the United States should use all means at its disposal to sever the ties between Lashkar and the Pakistani state, that course of action is currently both fruitless and dangerous in its own right. While Pakistan’s proxy policies came under tremendous pressure on all fronts—in Afghanistan, in India, and even at home in Pakistan—since 2001, it has now emerged with key relationships intact and firmly convinced of the utility of them. Of all its militant clients, its relations with Lashkar are the most secure and least susceptible to disruption by the United States. Unfortunately, the scenarios in which Lashkar breaks from the Pakistani state (or vice versa) are farfetched and beyond the influence of the United States. Moreover, after over 30 years of state support and protection, Lashkar has become a formidable organization, capable of conducting more frequent and damaging attacks than it currently does. A Lashkar untethered from the Pakistani state would be far less restrained in its violence, increasing the risk that it would attack in the West, 54 THE WASHINGTON QUARTERLY ▪ SPRING 2019 Preventing the Next Lashkar-e-Tayyiba Attack precipitate a military conflict between India and Pakistan, and even destabilize Pakistan. Thus, the United States is left with few options beyond vigilance in pres- suring Islamabad to impose continuing restraint on the group. Pakistan’s Proxy Policies: Weathering the Challenge The crux of the U.S. approach toward Pakistan’s proxy strategy since shortly after 2001 has been to persuade or compel Pakistan to cut ties with all militant groups. However, one of the primary motivations for Pakistan’s proxy strategy has been its material and political weakness compared to India—a condition that dates back to its inception and one that the United States simply cannot affect. This relative weakness creates a sense of insecurity that shapes the military’s policies in Afgha- nistan as well, where it fears a pro-India government will allow India to encircle Pakistan. Its concerns extend within its borders, where the Pakistani military sees an Indian hand behind the insurgency in Balochistan and even in the Feder- ally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). It is a pervasive concern that shapes all of Pakistan’s national security and foreign policies, including its support for militant groups. Admittedly, after 9/11, Pakistan’s support for militant groups was a distant second priority for the United States—much to New Delhi and Kabul’s dismay —as long as Islamabad cooperated against al-Qaida. Indeed, Islamabad has been a key partner in U.S. efforts to degrade al-Qaida. However, with the gains made against al-Qaida, the United States has elevated Paki- stan’s relationship with Afghan insurgents, specifically The U.S. has the Afghan Taliban and Haqqani Network, to the top priority in the bilateral relationship. Even with the shifted from priori- shift toward greater scrutiny of Islamabad’s relations tizing al-Qaida to with these groups, Lashkar has been and remains a the Afghan Taliban distant second or even third priority. Irrespective of the change in U.S. priorities, Pakistan’s policy of and Haqqani using militant groups, including but not limited to Network, not LeT. Lashkar, as an instrument of its national security in Afghanistan, India, and at home has emerged from the post-9/11 period intact. This section will examine the tremendous pressure on Pakistan to abandon militant proxies in the years since 9/11 as well as how Islamabad’s policies have nonetheless persisted. Pressures to Sever Support to Militant Groups The years after 9/11 put Pakistan’s long-standing policy of supporting militant groups under unprecedented pressure on all three fronts. In Afghanistan, Pakistan THE WASHINGTON QUARTERLY ▪ SPRING 2019 55 Tricia Bacon lost a major client when the Afghan Taliban crumbled quickly in the face of the United States and the Northern Alliance’s—a coalition of primarily Tajik, Uzbek and the Hazara parties that opposed Taliban rule—assault in 2001. With the Tali- ban’s fall, Pakistan lost the only government in Afghanistan that it saw as securing its interests, particularly against India. In its wake, a Northern Alliance-dominated government friendly to India emerged: Pakistan’s worst nightmare for its neighbor to the west. To the east, concerns mounted that Pakistan’s anti-India clients had grown too powerful and exceeded the state’s ability to manage them. This was an alarming prospect, because it raised the specter of a Pakistani group conducting action against India that would ignite a war between the two nuclear powers. These fears appeared realized in December 2001, when Jaish-e-Mohamed—the perpetra- tor of the February Pulwama attack and an Deobandi militant group that has long received support from the Pakistani military—attacked the Indian Parliament in New Delhi.2 The brazen attack on Indian lawmakers killed nine people in addition to the five attackers and brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war. The subsequent mobilization of Pakistani and Indian forces along the Line of Control, the de facto but not internally recognized border that demarcates the dis- puted region of Kashmir, came at a time when the United States needed Pakistani forces’ assistance intercepting al-Qaida operatives fleeing Afghanistan into Paki- stan. It was the first indication of how Pakistan’s proxy policies would hinder U.S. counterterrorism efforts, and it brought Pakistan’s patronage of militant groups, including anti-India groups, into the U.S. Global War on Terrorism— an outcome the Musharraf regime had assiduously sought to avoid.
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