Its principal theater of operations is in South Asia -- Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kashmir and India. LeT was the group behind the Mumbai massacre, their most spectacular attack to date.
They've also tried to branch out and operate in the West, but have had limited success. Stewart and Noonan suggest that this is because elements of the Pakistani government support LeT activities in their region of the world, and it is that logistical and intelligence support which makes the group more effective. Without such support the group is likely to continue to struggle in launching successful attacks in the West.
Because the article focused on Pakistan I narrowed my search for its Hot Stratfor Babe to Pakistani models and actresses. After an exhaustive and scientifically conducted search I selected Zara Sheikh for the honor.
Ms Sheikh started her career as a teenage model doing ads and fashion spreads in magazines. Her career really took off when she signed on as the JaZZ Girl, which was the spokes-model for a cellular phone company. This expanded her career into TV ads as well as her work in the print media.
It also led her to be cast in a Lollywood film (from its base in Lahore, Pakistan's answer to Bollywood). She apparently is a very talented actress, because that first role landed her to win Pakistan's equivalence of an Oscar for Best Actress. Prior to be selected as a Hot Stratfor babe, the probably was her highest honor.
She has also branched into singing having recently released her first album after a couple of music videos and singing parts in films.
I couldn't find a decent quality video of one of her songs, so as the after-article bonus I've included a video which features a number of scans from her magazine spreads, every transition effect available to whoever put it together, and some very odd-ball zooms that start at her torso and pull back. Not sure what that was all about -- I guess the video's creator had a waist fetish or something.
THE EVOLUTION OF A PAKISTANI MILITANT NETWORK
By Sean Noonan and Scott Stewart, September 15, 2011
For many years now, STRATFOR has been carefully following the evolution of "Lashkar-e-Taiba" (LeT), the name of a Pakistan-based jihadist group that was formed in 1990 and existed until about 2001, when it was officially abolished. In subsequent years, however, several major attacks were attributed to LeT, including the November 2008 coordinated assault in Mumbai, India. Two years before that attack we wrote that the group, or at least its remnant networks, were nebulous but still dangerous. This nebulous nature was highlighted in November 2008 when the "Deccan Mujahideen," a previously unknown group, claimed responsibility for the Mumbai attacks.
While the most famous leaders of the LeT networks, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed and Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi, are under house arrest and in jail awaiting trial, respectively, LeT still poses a significant threat. It's a threat that comes not so much from LeT as a single jihadist force but LeT as a concept, a banner under which various groups and individuals can gather, coordinate and successfully conduct attacks.
Such is the ongoing evolution of the jihadist movement. And as this movement becomes more diffuse, it is important to look at brand-name jihadist groups like LeT, al Qaeda, the Haqqani network and Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan as loosely affiliated networks more than monolithic entities. With a debate under way between and within these groups over who to target and with major disruptions of their operations by various military and security forces, the need for these groups to work together in order to carry out sensational attacks has become clear. The result is a new, ad hoc template for jihadist operations that is not easily defined and even harder for government leaders to explain to their constituents and reporters to explain to their readers.
Thus, brand names like Lashkar-e-Taiba (which means Army of the Pure) will continue to be used in public discourse while the planning and execution of high-profile attacks grows ever more complex. While the threat posed by these networks to the West and to India may not be strategic, the possibility of disparate though well-trained militants working together and even with organized-crime elements does suggest a continuing tactical threat that is worth examining in more detail.
The Network Formerly Known as Lashkar-e-Taiba
The history of the group of militants and preachers who created LeT and their connections with other groups helps us understand how militant groups develop and work together. Markaz al-Dawa wal-Irshad (MDI) and its militant wing, LeT, was founded with the help of transnational militants based in Afghanistan and aided by the Pakistani government. This allowed it to become a financially-independent social-service organization that was able to divert a significant portion of its funding to its militant wing.
The first stirrings of militancy within this network began in 1982, when Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi traveled from Punjab, Pakistan, to Paktia, Afghanistan, to fight with Deobandi militant groups. Lakhvi, who is considered to have been the military commander of what was known as LeT and is awaiting trial for his alleged role in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, adheres to an extreme version of the Ahl-e-Hadith (AeH) interpretation of Islam, which is the South Asian version of the Salafist-Wahhabist trend in the Arab world. In the simplest of terms, AeH is more conservative and traditional than the doctrines of most militant groups operating along the Durand Line. Militants there tend to follow an extreme brand of the Deobandi branch of South Asian Sunni Islam, similar to the extreme ideology of al Qaeda's Salafist jihadists.
Lakhvi created his own AeH-inspired militant group in 1984, and a year later two academics, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed and Zafar Iqbal, created Jamaat ul-Dawa, an Islamist AeH social organization. Before these groups were formed there was already a major AeH political organization called Jamaat AeH, led by the most well-known Pakistani AeH scholar, the late Allama Ehsan Elahi Zaheer, who was assassinated in Lahore in 1987. His death allowed Saeed and Lakhvi's movement to take off. It is important to note that AeH adherents comprise a very small percentage of Pakistanis and that those following the movement launched by Saeed and Lakhvi represent only a portion of those who ascribe to AeH's ideology.
In 1986, Saeed and Lakhvi joined forces, creating Markaz al-Dawa wal-Irshad (MDI) in Muridke, near Lahore, Pakistan. MDI had 17 founders, including Saeed and Lakhvi as well as transnational militants originally from places like Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian territories. While building facilities in Muridke for social services, MDI also established its first militant training camp in Paktia, then another in Kunar, Afghanistan, in 1987. Throughout the next three decades, these camps often were operated in cooperation with other militant groups, including al Qaeda. [continued after the jump]
