UN Acts to Designate Lashkar e Tayyiba’ Offshoots and Its Leaders As Terrorists Associated With Al Qaeda

By Victor Comras

Last month’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai focused anew a spotlight on the activities of Lashkar e Tayyiba, its offshoots, and its possible links with Al Qaeda. The investigation conducted by India, Pakistan and other cooperating countries has produced new evidence that Lashkar e Tayyiba operatives were directly engaged in planning and providing material support and assistance for the series of Mumbai urban attacks that shook the international community as well as India. Based upon this investigation, and the formal request of the Government of India, the United Nations Al Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions committee agreed December 10th to expanded its designation of Lashkar e Tayyiba to specifically include 4 of its leaders, including Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, Haji Muhammad Ashraf, and Mohmoud Mohammad Ahmed Bahaziq. The United States had been pushing for this action since last May. The UN Committee has now also agreed to clarify that the Lashkar e Tayyiba designation also applies to Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JUD), which has long operated as an LET front organization (see below).

I expressed my concerns here two years ago with the UN Committee’s failure to designate Jammat-ud-Dawa along with Laskkar e Tayyiba, or to designate Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, who was the founder and leader of both organization. Leaving Jammat and Muhammad Saeed undesignated left them free to recruit , arm and solicit funds for Lashkar's terrorist activities. I wrote:

“Jamaat was established by the same group that led Lashkar-e-Taiba in order to circumvent the sanctions measures that flowed from this designation. Yet, it took the Administration another six months to get around to confirming this linkage and to designating Jamaat as a successor/partner organization to Lashkar-e-taiba. … But what is still surprising is that no action has yet been taken to designate Lashkar's founder, Hafiz Muhammad Sayeed, who is also the head of Jamaat ud-Dawa….(H)olding the leaders responsible, and penalizing them, is even more important and would be a much more effective step then seeking only to close down the charities they run. Experience has shown that you can’t truly shut down these operations unless you also put their leaders and organizers out of business.’’

In fact, US soldiers worked in association with Jammat-ud-Dawa to provide relief during the late fall 2005 Kashmir Earthquake. Subsequently, the U. S. State Department did designate Jammat, on April 27, 2006, but failed to convince the UN group to follow suit. No action was taken at that time by the State Department or the Treasury Department to also designate Muhammad Saeed. He was only added to the Treasury OFAC designation list on May 27, 2008.

The basis for any listing by the UN Al Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee must be founded on links between the designated entity and Al Qaeda or the Taliban. This prerequisite was established in the Security Council’s Chapter VII resolution 1390 (2002) that empowered the Al Qaeda and Taliban Committee to make such designations. The Security Council resolutions also require that all countries act immediately to freeze the assets and deny all economic resources to those so designated. All countries are also required to ban them, with few exceptions, from entering their territory, and to assure they do not have access to weapons and explosives.

Lashkar-e-Taiba was founded in 1989 in the Kunar province of Afghanistan as the military wing of Markaz-ud-Dawa-wal-Irshad (MDI), an Islamic fundamentalist organisation of the Ahle-Hadith sect in Pakistan. The MDI was based in Muridke near Lahore, Pakistan and was headed by Hafiz Muhammad Sayeed, who also became the Amir of the LeT. Its first presence in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) was recorded in 1993 when 12 Pakistani and Afghan mercenaries infiltrated across the Line of Control (LoC) in tandem with the Islami Inquilabi Mahaz, a terrorist outfit then active in the Poonch district of J&K. Lashkar has established cooperative ties with religious militant groups throughout the middle east, southeast asia and in areas of the former soviet union. It is believed to have also been active in supporting the insurgency in Chechnya. The organization was designated as a terrorist group by the US Treasury Department in December 2001.. However, Pakistan, then a member of the UN Al Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee was able to forestall a UN decision to also designate the group. Lashkar was finally added to the UN’s consolidated al Qaeda designation list on May 2, 2005, after Pakistan’s tenure on the Al Qaeda Committee had ended.

The Al Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee has also now acted to insure that offshoots of other designated Pakistani terrorist organizations, such as Al Rashid Trust and Al-Akhtar trust have also been designated.

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