Lashkar main Taliban ally in Afghanistan: US forces

US forces in Afghanistan are increasingly naming Lashkar-e-Taiba as one of the chief Taliban allies that they are fighting in that country. It is the latest confirmation that the LeT has morphed into a transnational jihadi force.

Lashkar also embodies the complex relationship that Pakistan and US have in this war as LeT remains Pakistan’s favourite terror group to be used against India. However, Hafiz Saeed’s outfit has grown over the years to become a pan-Islamic jihad group, including training Al Qaida and Taliban operatives at its training camps.

One of the better known terrorism analysts in the US, Bill Roggio of the Long War Journal, said ISAF forces had named LeT repeatedly in their official documents in the past week as the group supplying terrorists and the deadly improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to the insurgency in Afghanistan. US forces are particularly vulnerable to the latter.

He said it was a significant shift by the international coalition, because although its been known for years that the LeT had become a significant member of the Afghan warfront, the US had been hesitant about openly naming it.

The shift, he said, began on July 3, when ISAF announced it captured a Taliban commander, a Taliban facilitator and two fighters during a raid in the eastern province of Nangarhar. "The commander is directly linked to the Taliban emir of Khugyani district and assisted with the recent influx of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) insurgents into the province. LeT is the Pakistan-based terrorist organisation responsible for the November 2008 Mumbai attacks," the ISAF said.

In the past couple of days, the ISAF referred to the LeT twice. On July 7, reporting the capture of yet another Taliban commander, the ISAF said in a press release that he was connected to the LeT commander captured four days earlier. "He was also directly linked to the overall Taliban emir of Khugyani district and associated with the recent influx of LeT operatives into the province."

The decision to put the LeT’s participation as being part of the same terror network as the Afghan Taliban, Haqqani network and Al Qaida that’s part of the insurgency in Afghanistan brings into sharper focus Pakistan’s long acknowledged dual role. This is going to make it even more difficult for the US to "outsource" any solution in Afghanistan to Pakistan-army backed Haqqani faction.http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/6155750.cms?prtpage=1