Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT)

• Aliases: Army of the Pure, Army of the Righteous, Army of the Pure and Righteous, al-Monsooreen, al-Mansoorian. Sometimes spelled Lashkar-e-Taiba or Lashkar-e-Tayyiba.
• Summary: Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) is a Pakistani Islamist fundamentalist organization dedicated to bringing the Indian province of Jammu and Kashmir (generally referred to as "Kashmir") under control of Pakistan. It may also have ambitions stretching beyond Kashmir, including terrorist attacks elsewhere in India and countering Indian influence in neighboring Afghanistan. LeT was founded in the mid-to-late 1980s with the help of Pakistan's military intelligence organization, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI). Among the most dramatic incidents linked to LeT are an attempted attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001, attacks on commuter trains in Mumbai, India, in July 2006, and a raid on five Mumbai landmarks in November 2008 that killed 163 people. In July 2009, the sole surviving attacker in the Mumbai incident confessed to having ties to LeT and being trained in Pakistan. LeT has also been accused of leading three significant attacks against Indian government sites or private contractors in Afghanistan. India's decision to release the leader of LeT following the 2008 Mumbai attack appeared to derail efforts to renew talks between Pakistan and India aimed at decreasing tensions over the Kashmir issue and, as a result, may have discouraged Pakistan's army from directing more attention to defeating Afghan Taliban terrorists operating on its northern border region.
• Territory: Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, especially in the Kashmir Valley, with affiliates throughout Pakistan.
• Religious affiliation or political orientation: Islamist
• Founded: 1990
• Stated goal: Islamist rule over Kashmir—and all of India
• Key leader: Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, nominally the head of the Islamic charity Jamaat-ud-Dawa, is widely described as a front organization for Lashkar-e-Taiba.
• Alliances: LeT is the armed wing of the Pakistan-based, anti-US Sunni missionary organization Markaz-ud-Dawa-wal-Irshad (MDI), organized in 1989. It is also associated with a charitable group, Jamaat-ud-Dawa. LeT has been credited with facilitating the movement of Al Qaeda members within and outside of Pakistan.

Activities

• 1993: In the "Wandhama Massacre," LeT operatives kill 23 Kashmiri Pandits in Ganderbal, Kashmir, as part of a pattern of targeting religious minorities to create panic and drive demographic change.
• 1999: During the Kargil War (May–July), the Pakistan Army uses LeT fighters to augment regular forces and infiltrate Indian positions.
• December 2000: LeT admits responsibility for the attack on landmark Red Fort in Delhi, India, that killed three.
• December 2001: The group is accused of complicity in a terrorist attack against the Indian parliament but denies involvement. Pakistan freezes LeT accounts and arrests its leader, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, who is released six days later. The group is designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the US State Department.
• August 2003: India accuses LeT of bombings in Mumbai that kills fifty-five and injures 180.
• October 2005: LeT is accused of bomb attacks in New Delhi that kill more than sixty people.
• July 2006: Indian police suspect LeT's involvement in bombing Mumbai, India, commuter trains in a coordinated attack that kills 184 people. LeT denies responsibility.
• November 2008: The group is blamed for organizing a raid by ten gunmen on sites in Mumbai, India, over sixty hours, resulting in 163 deaths. Pakistan arrests seven allege members of LeT for having ties to the Mumbai attack, including the alleged mastermind Hammad Amin Sadiq.
• October 2009: US officials accuse American David Headley of plotting to attack a Danish newspaper in retaliation for a cartoon publication deemed by many Muslims to disrespect the Prophet Mohammad, suggesting that LeT has expanded its horizons beyond Pakistan and Kashmir. Headley is accused two months later of helping LeT plan attacks on Mumbai a year earlier.
• 2011: The LeT organizes a group, Difa-e-Pakistan Council, of Islamist groups opposed to Western political practices.
• 2015: Twelve LeT militants are convicted of involvement in the 2006 train bombings.
• 2016: Suicide bombers attacked the Indian military headquarters in Uri, Jammu and Kashmir, India, in the name of LeT. More than twenty were killed.
• 2017: The group changes its name to Tehreek-e-Azadi-e Kashmir (TAJK), attempting to avoid sanctions.
• 2018: Milli Muslim League (MML) nominated candidates in the 2018 Pakistani parliament elections but were denied entry.
• 2019: The Pulwama attack in Jammu and Kashmir saw a suicide bomber target an Indian paramilitary convoy, killing forty personnel.
• 2023: The Dhangri village attack in the Rajouri district resulted in seven civilian deaths. Indian authorities attributed the attack to LeT operatives.
• 2024: A deadly ambush on a bus in Reasi District carrying Hindu pilgrims was orchestrated by Lashkar-e-Taiba, according to Indian police, despite an initial but later retracted claim by The Resistance Front.
• 2025: LeT was held primarily responsible for the April Pahalgam attack in Jammu and Kashmir, which resulted in the deaths of twenty-six civilians, primarily tourists.

Last known status. LeT has been relatively active since its founding. Between 1990 and 2000, LeT evolved from a fringe militant group into one of the most prominent Pakistan-based jihadist organizations operating in Jammu and Kashmir. Its activities during this period focused on launching cross-border infiltrations, terror attacks, and guerrilla warfare against Indian security forces and civilians.

However, by the twentieth century, their efforts became more focused, broadly categorized as high-casualty transnational terrorism with a regional focus on India. For example, in 2016, suicide bombers attacked the Indian military headquarters in Uri, Jammu and Kashmir, India, in the name of LeT, where more than twenty were killed. LeT’s political group, MML, nominated candidates in the 2018 Pakistani parliament elections but were denied entry. They proposed the same candidates under another political front, but they did not receive any votes. Previously, a February 2010 suicide bomb attack on two guesthouses frequented by Indians in Kabul, Afghanistan, and earlier attacks in January were blamed on LeT and led some analysts to suggest that LeT had become an active threat in Afghanistan comparable to Al-Qaeda.

LeT is a Pakistan-based Islamist militant group designated as a terrorist organization by the UN, the US, India, and other countries. It has been involved in attacks in India, particularly in the Kashmir region, and is one of several groups operating in the context of the India–Pakistan dispute over Jammu and Kashmir—the long-disputed, religiously divided area of northwest India that adjoins Pakistan. LeT has a history of targeting the Indian military. India has accused it of launching terrorist attacks inside India, including an attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001, attacks on commuter trains in Mumbai, India, in 2006, and a sixty-hour-long series of attacks in Mumbai in November 2008. In addition to the highly publicized attacks in Mumbai and Delhi, Indian authorities have blamed LeT for over 300 terrorist incidents that caused the deaths of several hundred Indian security personnel in Kashmir.

In 2010, LeT was blamed for attacks against Indian targets in Afghanistan, where India and Pakistan had long competed for influence. Some news reports suggested LeT played a role similar to that of Al-Qaeda—an outside group responsible for organizing terrorist attacks in Afghanistan.

Long-standing ties between Pakistan's military ISI and Lashkar have resulted in decades of strained relations between India and Pakistan, which both have nuclear weapons. In September 2009, the two countries tried, but failed, to resume talks aimed at easing tensions; India's accusation of Pakistani involvement with, or refusal to crack down on, the senior leadership of LeT in the wake of the attack on Mumbai in 2008 was the main reason for the failed talks. In turn, American diplomats feared that renewed tensions with India would dilute Pakistan's efforts to combat the Taliban in northern Pakistan on the border with Afghanistan.

Pakistan said it severed official contacts with LeT after the September 11, 2001, Al-Qaeda attacks, and banned the group in 2002 after it was linked to an attack on the Indian parliament. After that, an organization named Jamaat-ud-Dawa emerged, nominally as a charity but actually as a front for the militant wing of LeT, according to US and Indian officials. Jamaat-ud-Dawa was put on a United Nations list of terrorist organizations after the attacks in Mumbai in November 2008, and Pakistan ordered that the organization be closed.

Nevertheless, according to a report by the New York Times in September 2009, LeT remained functional and capable of training and fielding terrorists at short notice. The report quoted a "mid-level" source in Pakistan's ISI intelligence organization as saying LeT had about 150,000 members in Pakistan. Most of its members are believed to be Pakistani or Afghani veterans of the Islamist guerrilla war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan during the 1980s. LeT is also thought to have had training and logistical support from the Pakistani military intelligence organization ISI in a long-running effort to subvert India's sovereignty over Kashmir.

LeT's stated goal is restoring Islamic rule over all parts of India, not just the region of Kashmir, which has a majority Muslim population but whose sovereign, a Hindu, chose to join India instead of Pakistan a few months after the dissolution of British India in 1947. India and Pakistan fought three wars over Kashmir, and some analysts believe LeT was organized to act as a proxy for the Pakistani military, allowing it to continue the campaign for Kashmir by different means. The fact that both India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons adds to international anxiety over the seeming intransigence of the dispute.

Between 2018 and 2025, LeT remained an active and lethal militant group, orchestrating or being linked to a series of high-casualty attacks in Jammu and Kashmir. These include the 2019 Pulwama suicide bombing that killed forty Indian paramilitary personnel, the 2023 Dhangri village attack resulting in seven civilian deaths, the 2024 ambush in Reasi District targeting Hindu pilgrims and killing nine, and the 2025 Pahalgam attack that left twenty-six civilians, primarily tourists, dead. Indian authorities have consistently identified LeT as the orchestrator or primary actor behind these attacks, underscoring the group's ongoing threat and operational capabilities in the region.

Origins. LeT was an outgrowth of the Islamist campaign against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. It originated in 1990 as the military wing of Markaz-ud-Dawa-wal-Irshad (MDI), a fundamentalist Islamist organization of Pakistan's Ahle-Hadith sect. MDI's leader was an engineering professor, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, who was also the official leader of LeT. (During the November 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India, Pakistani authorities placed Saeed under house arrest on December 12, 2008, but freed him the following July, saying there was insufficient evidence tying him to the attacks. Indian officials strongly objected, insisting they had supplied Pakistan with telephone transcripts showing Saeed offering specific advice and instruction to the Mumbai terrorists.)

The Markaz-ud-Dawa-wal-Irshad was known for preaching hard-line views on Islamist fundamentalism. It eventually attracted 100,000 people to its annual conventions, which called for jihad (holy war).

In a larger sense, LeT and other Islamist terrorist organizations operating in Kashmir are a continuation of a struggle that began with the withdrawal of Britain from the Indian subcontinent after World War II and the creation of two independent states, Pakistan and India, along religious lines. The principality of Jammu and Kashmir, with a population comprising about 70 percent Muslims and the balance of Hindus or Buddhists, was one of several similar quasi-independent states that existed under British rule and whose maharaja (king) was given the choice of joining either Pakistan or India, although he preferred independence from both. After Pakistani troops invaded the region, the Kashmiri leader appealed for help and became a state of India, sparking a long-standing conflict with Pakistan. Eventually, India controlled about three-quarters of the former principality, with Pakistan controlling the northeast quadrant. Indian and Pakistani troops have long faced each other along an uneasy Line of Control.

India alleges that Pakistan's ISI military intelligence organization was instrumental in forming LeT and providing training and support to its terrorists, who are blamed for more than 300 attacks inside Kashmir since 1996. Characteristically, LeT has organized small-scale attacks on Indian security forces. Although no single attack grabbed world headlines, there has been a steady stream of incidents in which several hundred Indian police and soldiers have died.

LeT and Al Qaeda. In January 2002, Pakistan's then-President Pervez Musharraf banned LeT and four other groups, acting under pressure from the US stemming from the September 11, 2001, attacks. Before then, LeT operated openly inside Pakistan, recruiting members and raising funds, typically through collection boxes placed in most retail shops in Pakistan. LeT's reputation was linked solely to attacks in Kashmir. After 9/11, however, some LeT members participated in attacks inside Pakistan to express disagreement with Musharraf's decision to cooperate with the US war on terrorism. In March 2002, a senior Al-Qaeda operative, Abu Zubaydah, was captured in an LeT safehouse in Faisalabad, Pakistan, suggesting cooperation between LeT and Al-Qaeda in the region.

Eight alleged LeT leaders were arrested near Washington, D.C., in June 2003 on an indictment charging them with preparing and engaging in attacks in Kashmir, the Philippines, and Chechnya. Some news reports have quoted LeT members as saying ties to ISI cooled after 2001 as both the US and India pressured the government in Islamabad to crack down on terrorist organizations. These reports have also said that retired ISI officers continued contacts with Lashkar, providing at least a nominal "hair's breadth" distance between LeT and the government.

LeT and Al-Qaeda's ties are primarily defined by shared ideological beliefs, common enemies, and a mutual interest in waging jihad. While operational cooperation has been evident in some cases, each group retains distinct strategic goals, with LeT focusing on regional jihad and Al-Qaeda maintaining a global jihadist agenda. Despite occasional coordination, their future relationship may evolve as geopolitical circumstances shift.

Bibliography

Burke, Paul, et al. Global Jihadist Terrorism: Terrorist Groups Zones of Armed Conflict and National Counter-Terrorism Strategies. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 2021.

“Lashkar-e-Taiba.” Stanford University, Mapping Militant Organizations, Nov. 2018, cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/mappingmilitants/profiles/lashkar-e-taiba. Accessed 28 May 2026.

"Lashar-e-Taiba." United Nations, Security Council, main.un.org/securitycouncil/en/sanctions/1267/aq_sanctions_list/summaries/entity/lashkar-e-tayyiba. Accessed 28 May 2026.

Macander, Michelle. "Examining Extremism: Lashkar-e-Taiba." Center for Strategic & International Studies, 18 Oct. 2021, www.csis.org/blogs/examining-extremism/examining-extremism-lashkar-e-taiba. Accessed 28 May 2026.

Neerja, Mishka. "NIA Uncovers Lashkar-ISI-Pakistan Army Link in Pahalgam Terror Attack." The Daily Guardian, 2 May 2025, thedailyguardian.com/india/nia-uncovers-lashkar-isi-pakistan-army-link-to-pahalgam-terror-attack/. Accessed 2 May 2025.

Polgreen, Lydia, and Souad Mekhennet. "Militant Network Is Intact Long After Mumbai Siege." The New York Times, 30 Sept. 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/world/asia/30mumbai.html. Accessed 28 May 2026.

Unni, Upasana. "Militant Complex." Harvard International Review, vol. 30, no. 2, June 2008, pp. 10–11. EBSCOhost, research.ebsco.com/plink/b64a7ac2-b544-3521-b583-000e15ffa7e6. Accessed 28 May 2026.

Wolfgang, Simon. “Samina Yasmeen: Jihad and Dawah. Evolving Narratives of Lashkar-E- Taiba and Jamat Ud Dawah.” Everyday Security Practices in Asia, vol. 49, no. 1-2, 2019, doi:10.11588/iqas.2018.1-2.8712. Accessed 28 May 2026.