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Extremist group works in the open in Pakistan

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Times Staff Writer

Although the war against Islamic militancy has focused on shadowy underground organizations such as Al Qaeda, counter-terrorism officials say there is a growing worldwide threat from an extremist group operating in plain sight in Pakistan.

The group, formerly known as Lashkar-e-Taiba, or Army of the Righteous, was formed in the late 1980s and, with the support of the Pakistani government, launched attacks against India in the dispute over the Kashmir region.

In recent years, the camps that Lashkar once used primarily to train Pakistanis to fight for Kashmir have increasingly become a training ground for other militant groups and extremists who come from around the world to learn guerrilla warfare, according to current and former U.S. and allied counter-terrorism officials.

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And as its ranks have swelled along with anti-U.S. sentiment, they say, there is evidence that the group is working more closely with Al Qaeda and other extremist groups and may be getting more directly involved in militant activities against the West. Counter-terrorism officials cite evidence in recent years of fundraising or recruiting efforts in Canada, Britain, Australia and the United States. Inquiries are ongoing in Massachusetts and Lodi, Calif.

Lashkar-e-Taiba was designated as a terrorist organization by the United States in December 2001 and was soon outlawed by Pakistan. It disbanded, but its founders created another group named Jamaat ud-Dawa, which functions openly in Pakistan as an officially recognized humanitarian organization.

U.S. authorities consider it one and the same as Lashkar-e-Taiba and say it has continued to operate camps that train militants. The Treasury Department designated Jamaat ud-Dawa as a terrorist organization in April 2006, saying, “LET renamed itself JUD in order to evade sanctions. The same leaders that form the core of LET remain in charge of JUD.”

U.S. counter-terrorism officials say the group’s status as a legal organization in Pakistan makes it difficult to target the group. It has thousands of loyal supporters and close ties to a government that has done little to rein it in, they say, a factor that has been a source of tension between the United States and Pakistan.

“The U.S. government . . . has voiced its concerns” about Jamaat ud-Dawa to the government in Islamabad, said Daniel Markey, who oversaw South Asia policy for the State Department until February. U.S. officials have expressed the view that “the Pakistan government cannot sit by while Islamic extremists continued to win converts and press their agenda,” he said.

Pakistani officials said that Jamaat ud-Dawa is “under watch,” but that the group is legal and separate from Lashkar-e-Taiba, which they insist has been shut down.

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Charity work

Representatives of Jamaat ud-Dawa say they are running a legitimate charity, citing the group’s campaign to help Pakistanis recover from a massive earthquake in 2005 and its efforts to provide social services, food, water, medical care and education. Lashkar-e-Taiba, they say, no longer exists.

Jamaat ud-Dawa spokesman Abdullah Muntazir said the organization does not participate in any militant activities or run military training camps.

“No political party in Pakistan has as many offices as Jamaat-ud-Dawa,” Muntazir said. “So how can the government of Pakistan ban a group that has such deep roots throughout Pakistan society?”

U.S. officials say that Pakistan has closed down some of the training camps, but that the camps pop up again elsewhere in secret locations along the borders with India and Afghanistan. They say leaders of the group have been detained at times by Pakistan, but only temporarily.

A major concern for U.S. officials now is that the government of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, contending with its own crises, does not have the ability to control the group.

“It has gradually grown and morphed over recent years from something that was directed and manipulated by the Pakistan military establishment into something more grass-roots, more independent and more dangerous -- and more closely tied to terrorist groups with global reach,” Markey said.

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Lashkar-e-Taiba was founded around 1989 by a college professor named Hafiz Mohammed Saeed to help fight the occupying Soviet army in Afghanistan. The Soviets soon pulled out, and Lashkar turned to fighting for Muslims in Kashmir against Pakistan’s predominantly Hindu neighbor, India.

Over the years, Lashkar has claimed responsibility or been blamed for dozens of deadly attacks on Indian forces and civilians, including a 2001 strike on its Parliament that brought the two countries to the brink of war.

U.S. and European authorities believe that throughout the 1990s the group branched out and established close ties with more than a dozen Islamic militant groups in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and areas of the former Soviet Union.

Although its leadership has not been directly connected to any terrorist acts against the West, members of Lashkar-e-Taiba and others who have attended its training camps have been linked to some of the most serious plots uncovered since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, including a scheme in Britain to blow up at least 10 U.S. jetliners over the Atlantic in 2006, plots to attack a nuclear plant and other targets in Australia, and one to blow up Canada’s Parliament building.

In one such case, Frenchman Willie Brigitte was sentenced in a Paris court in March to nine years in prison for planning terrorist attacks in Australia, where, authorities said, he was sent in 2003 after attending Lashkar training camps.

Since the formation of Jamaat ud-Dawa, which translates roughly as “the Islamic Missionary Organization,” Saeed has remained at the helm. From its headquarters near Lahore, close to the border with India, Jamaat still runs a network of at least 10 camps and mobile training centers, U.S. officials say. The camps provide training in explosives, weapons, assassinations and surveillance to recruits and to individuals affiliated with other extremist groups, such as the Taliban of Afghanistan, which pay for the service, said a Western diplomat in Pakistan who monitors the group.

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Jamaat also has a sophisticated fundraising apparatus that has raised tens of millions of dollars from donors in the oil-rich Middle East, the United States and elsewhere, according to U.S. officials, court testimony and government reports. The group’s leaders say the funds are for its charities, hospital network and more than 130 schools and 35 religious academies.

U.S. officials believe some funds are diverted to support holy war. The Treasury Department said in 2006 that Jamaat “has also used its ‘relief’ wing . . . to exploit humanitarian disasters such as last year’s earthquake in an effort to raise money to support its terrorist agenda.”

Jamaat has publicly advocated violence, including calling for a holy war against the United States and its allies and the destruction of Jews worldwide.

The Treasury Department said that “while JUD claims to be a ‘humanitarian’ organization, it continues to voice its support for violence against civilians. A recent article in a JUD magazine, for example, praised suicide attacks around the world, including by the Taliban, Iraqi insurgents and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, among others.”

Husain Haqqani, a former senior advisor to three Pakistani prime ministers, described Jamaat as a highly disciplined organization that furthers its agenda through associations with both the Pakistani government and militant groups including Al Qaeda. But the group has taken pains not to have its fingerprints on any violent attacks against the West, Haqqani said.

“That is why they have survived the global war on terror to fight another day,” said Haqqani, a professor and director of the Center for International Relations at Boston University and the author of the 2005 book, “Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military.”

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“They have managed to fly under the radar of the global network of law enforcement and still maintain their global links. But they have a grandiose ideological agenda and the capacity to wage violence, which makes them very dangerous.”

U.S. and allied officials now fear that the group may be getting more directly involved in the terrorism business.

“They are still a rent-a-service,” said the Western diplomat in Pakistan, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. “But they are increasingly involved in discussions with other terrorist groups about tactics and targets.”

Bahukutumbi Raman, a former head of counter-terrorism for India’s intelligence service, said Saeed’s group has established much closer ties to Al Qaeda in recent years and has sleeper cells in Britain, France, Australia and the U.S., as well as Singapore and other Southeast Asian countries.

Those cells collect information, motivate Pakistani expatriates, recruit, procure weapons and raise money, said Raman, director of the Institute for Topical Studies in Chennai, India.

One British convert to Islam, Dhiren Barot, wrote a book about his experiences in Lashkar before the Sept. 11 attacks. He pleaded guilty last year in London to plotting numerous attacks in Britain with extremists of Pakistani origin; some of the attacks would have used a radioactive bomb.

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Ties to Al Qaeda

U.S. authorities say Barot is one of many men who “graduated” from Lashkar camps to Al Qaeda, which sent him to the United States to scout prominent financial targets for attack, including the World Bank in Washington and the New York Stock Exchange.

In suburban Washington, 11 men -- including an associate of Saeed -- were convicted in one conspiracy for preparing for holy war against U.S. troops in Afghanistan in late 2001 with the help of Lashkar.

One of them, Masoud Ahmad Khan, told his FBI interrogators that a senior British-based Lashkar operative asked him to conduct surveillance on a chemical plant in Maryland. A 2003 search of Khan’s home in Gaithersburg, Md., turned up weapons including an AK-47 rifle, a “Terrorist’s Handbook” and a photograph of FBI headquarters in Washington.

FBI and Homeland Security officials said they could not comment on Jamaat-related investigations underway in the U.S., but several officials in Washington and Islamabad said there are inquiries in North America, Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere.

In one case in the last year, federal agents arrested as many as 33 people in a continuing investigation of suspected immigration fraud. Among them were two Massachusetts imams, the brother and brother-in-law of Saeed, federal authorities say. The two were arrested for visa violations and released on bail.

Authorities say they are watching that Pakistani community and another in the Lodi, Calif., area for men with ties to the Lashkar organization.

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Meanwhile, Saeed appears to have grown more militant in speeches and sermons.

“Do I suspect LT will go over and blow up a U.S. facility?” asked the Western diplomat. “Right now, I’m not sure that it’s their primary objective. But they are happy to help anyone who is going to.”

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josh.meyer@latimes.com

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