2 dec 2008

Bobby Jindal, Gods Own Party's Obama


The Washington Post has an interesting item today on Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's (R) recent swing through Iowa, apparently the first step towards the 37-year-old governor's 2012 presidential campaign. As has been apparent for quite a while, the GOP's far-right base has exceedingly high hopes for Jindal, and consider him "the party's own version of Obama."
Like the president-elect, Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana is young (37), accomplished (a Rhodes scholar) and, as the son of Indian immigrants, someone familiar with breaking racial and cultural barriers. He came to Iowa to deliver a pair of speeches, and his mere presence ignited talk that the 2012 presidential campaign has begun here, if coyly. Already, a fierce fight is looming between him and other Republicans -- former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who arrived in Iowa a couple of days before him, and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who is said to be coming at some point -- for the hearts of social conservatives. [...]
No less an aspiring kingmaker than Steve Schmidt, the chief strategist of McCain's failed presidential bid, sees Jindal as the Republican Party's destiny. "The question is not whether he'll be president, but when he'll be president, because he will be elected someday." The anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist believes, too, that Jindal is a certainty to occupy the White House, and conservative talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh has described him as "the next Ronald Reagan."
Jindal is, above all else, a political meteor, sharing Obama's precocious skills for reaching the firmament in a hurry. It was just four years ago, after losing a gubernatorial election, that he won election to Congress, and only this year that he became Louisiana's governor, the first nonwhite to hold the office since Reconstruction. And now, 10 months into his first term, the talk of a presidential bid is getting louder among his boosters.


Earlier this year, Jindal was approached by the McCain campaign about V.P. vetting, but the governor reportedly declined. Chris Cillizza recently reported, "[T]here was also real trepidation within his political inner circle that Jindal might wind up as the pick -- McCain was attracted to his comprehensive health-care knowledge -- and be caught up in what they believed to be a less-than-stellar campaign that could pin a loss on Jindal without much ability to change or control the direction of the contest."

It's obviously way too early to start seriously sizing up future presidential candidates, especially governors. Yglesias had a good item on this a couple of weeks ago: "A governor presiding over an economic boom can cut taxes while increasing spending, and thus develop a reputation as a popular can-do pragmatist. Think of George W. Bush, George Voinovich, Christie Todd Whitman, and other classics of the 1990s.... [R]ight now [Jindal's] looking at the need to cut $1 billion in spending. Not his fault (though the decision to make up the budget shortfall with a mix of 100% service cuts and 0% tax cuts reflects the intellectually and morally bankrupt nature of contemporary conservatism) any more than the 'free money for everyone' governors of the nineties were really geniuses, but it's going to make it difficult for him to rack up the sort of Record Of Accomplishments that you're usually looking for in a presidential candidate."

Better and Worse




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How they did it.


By Emily Wax, Washington Post
MUMBAI, Nov. 30 -- It was just after dinner, about 9 p.m., when the fishermen noticed four strangers come ashore on an inflatable raft. Moments later, another four pulled up to the boat launch in a speedboat. Only two got out of the boat. They were young, muscular men, with backpacks and bulky duffel bags slung across their shoulders.
At least one of the fishermen was instantly suspicious and asked the strangers what they were doing. "One of them turned around and said in heavily accented Hindi: 'Don't hassle me. I'm in a terrible mood.' We got nervous and just left them alone," said a 25-year-old fisherman who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

The strangers flagged down two taxis and sped off toward the Oberoi Trident hotel in Nariman Point. It would be among the first stops in a trail of death and destruction spanning 10 sites and three days that left 174 people dead and 239 wounded.
The mayhem struck at the very heart of Mumbai, a roiling soup of mansions, high-rises, faded Victorian government buildings and vast, heaving shantytowns. It is a sprawling metropolis of more than 14 million, home to the country's stock market and the Bollywood film industry, as well as a destination for vast numbers of migrant workers searching for better lives.
Retracing the steps of the Mumbai attackers offers clues as to how a posse of just 10 gunmen brought India's largest city to its knees in a matter of minutes Wednesday night and kept it terrorized until the last shot was fired Saturday afternoon.
It started at the fishing colony near Badhwar Park -- about a mile from the beachside Oberoi Trident -- where about 10,000 people in ramshackle huts eke out a living in a murky inlet of the Arabian Sea.
"It's a slum area. We didn't think to protect it," said L. Sankla, one of the police officers who, since the attacks, has been assigned to watch over the boat launch. A second team of gunmen is thought to have come ashore Wednesday night at another landing site, near the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel.
The lax security along Mumbai's coastline gave the heavily armed assailants the perfect opportunity to quietly slip into the heart of the city, security experts said.
"It could have been done only through the sea route," said an Indian intelligence officer familiar with terrorist groups in Pakistan and bombing investigations in India. "For an attack this big, if they had chosen the land route, they would have had to involve a large number of Indian people for logistics. And when you use too many Indians, the chance of exposure is more. This is a precision operation, known only to a small number of people -- the planners, the operators and the executors."
After landing, the gunmen fanned out across the city, most likely in groups of two or three. Within half an hour, they had hit about five sites: the city's main rail station, a Jewish center at the Nariman House, the Leopold Cafe, and the Oberoi and Taj hotels.
About 9:35 p.m., they shot their way past the security guards in front of the Oberoi. Once inside, they started firing into the air, eyewitnesses said.
Around the same time, two gunmen farther south opened fire outside the Leopold Cafe, a hangout popular with backpackers and other tourists. The attackers fired from the sidewalk for more than a minute, killing seven people, including three foreigners, said Farhang Jehani, an eyewitness and the owner of the 137-year-old cafe.
"It seemed like they were in a hurry," he said. "It was as if they wanted to shoot as many people as they could even though this was not their main target. Their motive might have been to divert the police, who have a station across the street, to keep them occupied as they headed to the Taj hotel."
The back entrance to the Taj, where the attackers went next, is about a three-minute walk from the Leopold through a narrow alley bounded by rug shops, street-food vendors and a pharmacy.
Bharat Waghela and his older brother were in their family's pharmacy when they heard shots being fired from the road. Their oldest brother, Subash, came running from across the street to pull down the store's metal shutters when the gunmen appeared in the alley and began firing indiscriminately into some of the shops. Subash was hit in the abdomen and left hand.
"My brother fell down and was lying in a pool of his blood," Bharat Waghela said. "When the two gunmen left toward the Taj, we took him to a clinic and then to a hospital."

Subash died later that day.

Most of the Taj's security guards, some of whom were armed, are concentrated at the hotel's front entrance. The two attackers who passed the Waghela pharmacy joined two gunmen who had come down another alley, according to police. Together they entered the Taj through the back, rushing past the hotel's elegant swimming pool before entering its main lobby.
About two miles from the Leopold Cafe and the Taj is Mumbai's main rail station, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, or CST, where two young men in black T-shirts, backpacks slung across their chests and backs, started firing their assault rifles indiscriminately and lobbing grenades onto the train platforms, killing 48 people and wounding many more.

In the station's main waiting area is the Re-Fresh restaurant. During the attack, its plate-glass windows were riddled with more than a dozen bullet holes, leaving huge, spidery cracks near a pastry case.
"I was sitting in our upstairs cafe when I thought the electricity had cut out," said Irshad Khan, 26, one of the restaurant's managers. "There was a lot of gunfire. I looked outside and saw people running helter-skelter. It was total chaos. At least 12 people died right on the spot."
Sebastian D'Souza, a photographer for the Mumbai Mirror newspaper, took several photos of the attackers as they rampaged through the station.
"There were armed policemen hiding all around the station, but none of them did anything," D'Souza told reporters afterward. "At one point, I ran up to them and told them to use their weapons. I said, 'Shoot them! They're sitting ducks,' but they just didn't shoot back."
According to several eyewitnesses, the assailants were in the station for up to 20 minutes before leaving through a side entrance. Back on a main street, they opened fire on several nearby targets, most of them within view of the side entrance, including the Times of India and the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai buildings.
The two gunmen then commandeered a police vehicle, killing three officers and wounding a fourth. The officers had been responding to a call from Cama Hospital about shots fired, said the lone survivor, police constable Arun Jadhav, who was in the vehicle but played dead.
Cama Hospital, a charity for women that is less than 10 minutes by car from the CST, had been attacked about 10:15 p.m., most likely by a separate group of gunmen. At least three hospital workers and two police officers were killed.

In the police vehicle, the gunmen sped west toward the Metro movie theater, a 70-year-old landmark about half a mile from the rail station.
The art deco theater overlooks a major traffic intersection, where the gunmen opened fire on bystanders, injuring several. From that intersection, it is a fairly straight drive south along Mahatma Gandhi Road, past the Bombay Stock Exchange, to the Taj. But the two gunmen in the vehicle were intercepted at Chowpatty, a beach on Mumbai's far west side.
Police killed one of the gunmen. The other, a 21-year-old Pakistani national named Azam Amir Kasab, was arrested. Mumbai police confirmed that Kasab was one of the shooters at the rail station.
Police said that after hours of interrogation, Kasab admitted that the operation had been launched from the Pakistani port city of Karachi, from where the attackers initially set out by boat. They reportedly hijacked a fishing trawler along the way. Police later found the trawler, along with the captain's body -- his throat cut and his hands bound with rope. The gunmen had killed the trawler's four other crew members and dumped the bodies overboard.
By the time Kasab was arrested, the sieges of the Jewish center and the Oberoi and Taj hotels were well underway. The nightmare would not end until Saturday afternoon, when police said the last of Kasab's nine comrades was killed.
"How could so few young guys take a city down?" asked Rangoli Garg, 18, nursing a leg wound suffered as she fled the Taj amid a hail of bullets. "Somehow these men owned us. They took over our city."

Correspondent Rama Lakshmi in New Delhi and special correspondent Ria Sen in Mumbai contributed to this report.
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Ingredients for a Fundamentalist Attack

Photo: a name to watch:
Pakistani general Ali Mohammed Jan Aurakzai

By Gary Brecher of eXiledonline:
"Terrorism is usually a matter of spending as few of your people as you can, but somebody connected with al-Qaida or its Pakistani fan club decided to spend a lot of lives here. That's what's interesting, looking at these attacks cold-bloodedly. Suppose you're an al-Qaida honcho deciding how to get maximum bang for your resources. Until now the solution has been bombs, most of the time. Because bombs can be planted by a few men, and if they set the timers right and keep a low profile, there's a good chance those men will get away to plant more bombs another day. And since good men are hard to find, especially good men willing to risk having their fingernails pulled out in a police basement, that's the way most terrorist movements decide to go.

"Not this time. If these guys sent men to 10 different locations in Mumbai, they spent a lot of lives. They'd have to assume that none of these men will come back alive. Suppose they sent 10 men to each location. You need numbers for this sort of frontal assault in a heavily policed city, so that seems like a good number. Even if the real number turns out to be lower, say seven men to each location, that's 70 supporters' lives spent in one raid. Not the sort of thing that makes your human resources manager happy.

"But it comes down to what you might as well call market forces, and in those terms it makes perfect sense. Supply and demand. Supply: it looks like the gunmen came from Pakistan by ship. Supplies of dumb, trigger-happy young Pakistanis in a hurry to find martyrdom are basically infinite. Thanks to the CIA, ISI and Saudi funding, there are now more than 4000 madrassas, martyrdom academies, in Pakistan.

"Now quality, that's a different issue. How much is the life of one of these cannon-fodder kids worth, to the movement? That depends on a lot of factors. If you're that al-Qaida HR manager and you had to construct your dream recruit, he'd speak unaccented American or British English; he'd be white, or East Asian looking; he'd be comfortable in urban/yuppie life anywhere in the West; he'd have a cool head, know how to smile like a car salesman all the time and talk sports; and underneath he'd have total Terminator dedication to the cause and be immune to the attractions of the evil world you'd be sending him to infiltrate. [The attackers weren't] smooth enough to get through normal hotel security to plant a bomb, but they didn't have to be. They just stormed in through the front door, firing at full automatic.

"That's why this talk about whether security at the hotels was adequate is ridiculous. Hotel security is aimed at stopping sneak attacks, bomb-planters. To stop the sort of heavily armed suicide squads that hit these hotels, you'd need a full platoon of infantry. So what you see here is something economists would understand as well or better than traditional military analysts. I hate to sound cold-blooded, putting it this way, but what happened is that Pakistan's Islamists had a surplus of raw labor and thought of a way to get it to a place where it maximized its global value in terms of pure blood and destruction."
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Mumbai: Who did it? (2)


To continue our exploration of the most likely perpetrators of the attacks on Mumbai, India, Pointer adds some more specifics about the group (all common knowledge from open sources):

Role in India-Pakistan relations
Pakistan denies giving orders to Lashkar-e-Taiba's activities. However, the Indian government and many non-governmental think-tanks allege that the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence is involved with the group. The situation with LeT causes considerable strain in Indo-Pakistani relations, which are already mired in suspicion and mutual distrust.

Area of operation
While the primary area of operations of the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s militant activities is the Kashmir valley, the outfit is also active in the Jammu region besides having undertaken isolated attacks in other parts of India. The Lashkar is reported to have conducted several of its major operations in tandem with the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. The Kashmiri cadre of the HM provide vital knowledge of the ground conditions in the target zone, while the highly trained and motivated LeT insurgents undertake the attack.
The LeT was also reported to have been directed by the ISI to widen its network in the Jammu region where a considerable section of the populace comprised Punjabis. The LeT that has a large number of activists who hail from Pakistani Punjab can thus effectively penetrate into Jammu society.
News reports, citing security forces, said that the latter suspect that in the December 13, 2001 attack on India’s Parliament in New Delhi, a joint group from the LeT and the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) were involved. The LeT was also held responsible by the government for the December 23, 2000 attack in Red Fort, New Delhi. LeT confirmed its participation in the Red Fort attack and its involvement in the Parliament attack.
LeT cadres have also been arrested from different cities of India. On May 27, a LeT militant was arrested from Hajipur in Gujarat. On August 15, 2001, a LeT militant was arrested from Bhatinda in Punjab. The LeT has also built contacts with other Islamist militant outfits active in India. An arrested activist of the proscribed Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), is reported to have confessed during interrogation on August 21, 2001, that two LeT militant had held discussions with SIMI’s Malegaon unit in Mumbai on August 6, 2001 to carry out subversive activities in the State of Maharashtra.

External linkages
The Lashkar-e-Taiba was created to participate in the Mujahideen conflict against the Najibullah regime in Afghanistan. In the process, the outfit developed deep linkages with Afghanistan and has several Afghan nationals in its cadre. The outfit had also cultivated links with the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan and also with Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network. Even while refraining from openly displaying these links, the LeT office in Muridke was reportedly used as a transit camp for third country recruits heading for Afghanistan. A news report in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. has indicated that the outfit provides terrorists for the outer circle of Bin Laden’s personal security.
The outfit collects donations from the Pakistani community in the Persian Gulf and United Kingdom, Islamic Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), and Pakistani and Kashmiri businessmen. The LeT maintains ties to various religious/military groups around the world, ranging from the Philippines to the Middle East and Chechnya primarily through the MDI fraternal network.
Reports also indicate that the LeT receives considerable financial, material and other forms of assistance from the Pakistan government, routed primarily through the ISI. Pakistan’s security agencies are reported to be providing training to the outfit. A December 13, 2001 news report cited a LeT spokesperson as saying that the outfit wanted to avoid a clash with the Pakistani Government. He claimed, even though the government has been an ardent supporter of all Muslim freedom movements, particularly that of Kashmir, in the present conditions a clash was possible because of the sudden wedge that appeared between the interests of the government and those of terrorist outfits active in J&K.
According to the declaration of LeT operatives, the Pakistan Army, particularly in the borders with India (the International Border and the Line of Control - LoC) aids members of the outfit in their infiltration, extraction and clashes with Indian security forces near the borders by providing covering fire.
The Markaz campus at Muridke in Lahore, its headquarters, was used as a hide-out for Ramzi Yousef and Mir Aimal Kansi, who was convicted and sentenced to death for killing two Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officers outside the CIA’s headquarters in Washington in January 1993.

Role in Afghanistan
Guantanamo detainee Khalid Bin Abdullah Mishal Thamer Al Hameydani's Combatant Status Review Tribunal said that he had received training at Lashkar e-Taiba.
The Combatant Status Review Tribunals of Taj Mohammed and Rafiq Bin Bashir Bin Jalud Al Hami, and the Administrative Review Board hearing of Abdullah Mujahid and Zia Ul Shah allege that they too were members or former members of Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Also, the Lashkar is claimed to have operated a military camp in post-Sept 11 Afghanistan, and extending support to the ousted Taliban regime.

Recent focus on Lashkar-e-Taiba
1. In March 2000, Lashkar-e-Taiba militants are claimed to have been involved in the Chittisinghpura massacre, where 35 Sikhs in the town of Chittisinghpura in Kashmir were killed. An LeT militant who was arrested in December of the year admitted to the involvement of the group and had no regret in perpetrating the anti-Sikh massacre.
2. 2005 London bombings: Links to Lashkar-e-Taiba and Al-Qaeda involved.
3. 2005 Delhi bombings: During Diwali, Lashkar-e-Taiba bombed crowded festive Delhi markets killing 60 civilians and maiming 527.
4. 2006 Varanasi bombings: Lashkar-e-Taiba was involved in serial blasts in Hindu city in the state of Utter Pradesh. Thirty seven people died and 89 were seriously injured.
5. 2006 Mumbai train bombings: The investigation launched by Indian forces and US officials have pointed to the involvement of Lashkar-e-Taiba in Mumbai serial blasts on 11 July 2006. The Mumbai serial blasts on 11th July claimed 211 lives and maimed about 407 people and seriously injured another 768.
6. 2006 blasts at Malegaon: The investigation, presently in its early stages, point to the Lashkar-e-Taiba as suspects. They have had connections with Malegaon's radical Islamist organisations. Alternate theories involving the Bajrang Dal as the perpetrators are also being considered, however, no evidence points to the involvement of Bajrang Dal and the modus operandi of the attacks are more consistent with Islamist terror outfits such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba.
7. On September 12, 2006 the propaganda arm of the Lashkar-e-Taiba issued a fatwa against the Christian Pope Benedict XVI demanding that Muslims assassinate him for his controversial statements about Muhammad.
8. On September 16, 2006, a top Lashkar-e-Taiba militant, Abu Saad, was killed by the troops of 9-Rashtriya Rifles in Nandi Marg forest in Kulgam. Saad belongs to Lahore in Pakistan and also oversaw LeT operations for the past three years in Gul Gulabhgash as the outfit's area commander. Apart from a large quantity of arms and ammunition, high denomination Indian and Pakistani currencies were also recovered from the slain militant.
9. On July 31, 2008, Webnewswire, a leading Indian newswire, released 'Undisputed proof that Lashker-e-Taiba is (or was) based in Pakistan.' It lists information available in public sources such as archive.org to prove that the organization was based in Pakistan.
10. In November 2008, Lashkar-e-Taiba has been suspected but has denied being a part of the Mumbai attacks. According to reports, the lone terrorist captured by Indian authorities now admits the attacks were planned and executed by the terrorist organization. US intelligence sources have confirmed that there is mounting evidence that Lashkar-e-Taiba is behind the attacks.
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Mumbai: Who did it?


Pointer takes for granted, that soon will be clear how the attacks on targets at Mumbai, India, have taken place. Too long and too much could muslim fundamentalist groups found and spread their organisation and activities over the world of the region Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and the surrounding muslim territories. It looks like the Saudi government, or rich people at high places, those groups I supporting to keep them out of their own country of system. A large amount of their own population shares those religious believes to live like in the times of the prophet around AD 622 in Mecca and Medina. Pakistani know what happens in their country which is a shelter for groups of terrorists like Al Qaeda. We all know that, if Osama bin Laden still exists, he is hiding among the Taliban, the religious fanatics from uncontrolled Pashtu tribes, some also located in Afghanistan, near and over the border with Pakistan and also present in the Indian province of Kashmir and Jammu.
Saikat Datta of Outlook India writes that by mid-September, Indian agencies knew that the attack would come from the sea, and by mid-November they knew that the Taj hotel would be targeted. And yet the attacks still happened. A blow-by-blow account of how the plan to attack Mumbai by sea was hatched and executed.

There is some name calling in the media and by Wikipedia we learn:
Hafiz Muhammad Saeed is the head (ameer) of Jama'at-ud-Da'wah Pakistan. He was a professor in Islamic Studies department of University of Engineering and Technology (Lahore) Pakistan. He was sent to Saudi Arabia in the early 1980s by the University for higher studies where he met some Saudi Sheikhs who were taking part in Afghan jihad. They inspired him to join his colleague, Professor Zafar Iqbal, in taking an active role supporting the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. There he met some youth who later became his companions. In 1987 Hafiz Muhammad Saeed along with some Salafi Muslims founded Markaz Dawa-Wal-Irshad, which can be grouped with the Ahle Hadith. This is a puritanical interpretation of Islam that has drawn great financial support from Saudi Arabia. This organization spawned the jihadist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which was based in Pakistan before 9/11 and was transferred to Kashmir after that. Lashkar's primary target is the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir although Saeed has spoken of "liberating" Hyderabad State and Junagadh from Indian rule as well.

Jama'at-ud-Da'wah is a Wahhabi Organisation launched in Lahore, Pakistan in 1985. Previously called Markaz Daw'a wal Irshad, the organisation changed its name after the United States Department of State declared Lashkar-e-Taiba to be a terrorist organisation. It also publicly retracted itself from any association with the group.
JUD is popular in Pakistan for providing free medical care and education for the poor. It has done a lot of relief work in natural disasters of Pakistan such as famine of "Thar", flood of Sindh; after the 2005 Kashmir earthquake JUD was quick to donate tents, blankets and food and, according to many relief organizations, its camps were more professionally managed even than those run by the UN. During that earthquake the workers of JUD reached the affected areas even earlier than army and all other organizations. They remained fasting because it was the month of Ramadan and they very efficiently helped the affected people. JUD collected the funds from Pakistani people and made artificial villages where the people were kept. Those villages also had mosques, schools, and computer classes etc.
The leader of JUD is Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, who was an Islamic Studies professor at the University of Engineering and Technology in Lahore. He was accused of inciting riots in Pakistan earlier this year on the Foreign pressure. He was freed in Ramadan on the order of High Court.
JUD runs a weekly newspaper named "GHAZWA" , three monthly magazines among which two are "MAJALLA TUD DAWWA" and "ZARB E TAIBA" and a fortnightly magazine for children named "ROZA TUL ITFAL". They have an official website in English, Urdu and Arabic.

Lashkar-e-Taiba was founded by Hafiz Muhammad Saeed in the Kunar province of Afghanistan, and is currently based near Lahore, Pakistan operating several militant training camps in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Lashkar-e-Taiba members have carried out major attacks against India and its primary objective is to end Indian rule in Kashmir. Some breakaway Lashkar members have also been accused of carrying out attacks in Pakistan, particularly in Karachi, to mark its opposition to the policies of President Pervez Musharraf. The organization is banned as a terrorist organization by India, Pakistan, the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Russia and Australia. According to some sources, Lashkar-e-Taiba renamed itself to Jama'at-ud-Da'wah (JUD) in January 2002 to escape the ban imposed by the Pakistani government.

Leadership and command structure
The outfit's headquarters was located in the MDI’s complex at Muridke near Lahore until late 2001 when they had to shift its headquarters from Muridke to Muzaffarabad; this was undertaken mainly for political reasons (including detachment from Jama'at-ud-Da'wah and pressure from the Pakistan government), although the MDI has claimed that the LeT has shifted all its facilities and offices because the outfit needed more space and since it formed a new General Council.
The new Council comprises Maulana Abdul Wahid Kashmiri (the Supreme Leader), with Zaki ur Rehman Lakhwi as the 'Supreme Commander' within Jammu & Kashmir. Other members of the General Council are - Abdullah of Anantnag (Islamabad) - Haji Mohammad Azam of Poonch - Muzammil Butt of Doda - Mohammad Umair of Baramullah - Chaudhri Abdullah Khalid Chauhan of Bagh - Rafiq Akhtar of Muzaffarabad - Aftab Hussain of Kotli - Faisal Dar of Srinagar - Chaudhri Yusuf of Mirpur - Maulana Mohammad Sharif Balghari of Baltistan -
Until these new organisational changes, the organisational level of the Lashkar-e-Taiba was led by its Amir, Prof. Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and the operational chief of the outfit was reported to be 'commander' Saifullah. Organisation's field structure in Jammu & Kashmir is organised at district levels with 'district commanders' in charge. Within Pakistan, the outfit has a network of training camps and branch offices, which undertake recruitment and fundraising.
While the organisation receives increasing inspiration from Al-Qaeda, it also has close links with rogue elements in the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan. This owes its roots in the policy of successive Pakistani elements using terrorism, particularly against India, with strategic flexibility.

Funding
Until 2002 the group collected funds through public fundraising events, usually using charity boxes in shops and mosques. With development of humanitarian work of Jama'at-ud-Da'wah, it has expanded its humanitarian efforts. In fact aid for the Oct. 8th earthquake from most Indian organizations was entrusted to Jama'at-ud-Da'wah. They were the first on the scene of Margalla Towers in F-10, Islamabad - before the government, the army or civilians.
A large amount of funds collected for charities within Europe, mostly by misleading Pakistani-Muslim community in Britain are funnelled for the activities of Lashkar-e-Taiba. There have been countless investigations indicating the aid given for earthquake victims was directly involved to expand Lashkar-e-Taiba's activities within India. Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives have been apprehended in India, where they have been obtaining funds from sections of the Muslim Community.
The outfit also collects donations from the Pakistani immigrant community in the Persian Gulf and United Kingdom, Islamic Non-Governmental Organisations, and Pakistani and Kashmiri businessmen. They do to hide their terrorist activities under the guise of charity.

Activities
The group actively carries out attacks on Indian Armed Forces in Kashmir and Jammu and still operates in the jungles in Pakistan. It is considered a well-trained terrorist group.
The Lashkar-e-Taiba group has repeatedly claimed through its journals and websites that its main aim is to destroy the Indian republic and to annihilate Hinduism and Judaism. LeT has declared Hindus and Jews to be the "enemies of Islam", as well as India and Israel to be the "enemies of Pakistan".
Apart from conducting terrorism, it is also known to conduct training camps and humanitarian work with regards to the earthquake. These camps have long been tolerated by the Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency because of their usefulness against India and in Afghanistan, though they have been told not to mount any operations for now. Lashkar-e-Taiba had links to Jama'at-ud-Da'wah, however Jama'at-ud-Da'wah publicly retracted any association with them after the United States Department of State declared Lashkar-e-Taiba to be a terrorist organization.
Several American Muslims, including members of the so-called "Virginia Jihad Network," were convicted of training at LeT camps in Kashmir and Pakistan.
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