The U.S. investigation into the Mumbai terrorist attacks has reportedly found links between Pakistan's main intelligence agency and the attacks' perpetrators, news that came even as Pakistan was raiding a militant camp, where it seized men suspected in the assault.
Although U.S. officials haven't found hard evidence directly linking Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence to Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based group thought to be responsible for the attacks, U.S. intelligence suggests that the ISI has aided Lashkar in the past. In particular, officials say, the ISI provided it with intelligence and protection.
Officials say there isn't any evidence of a direct link between the Mumbai rampage and the ISI. As one U.S. counterterrorism official warned in an interview with the New York Times, "It's one thing to say the ISI is tied to Lashkar and quite another to say the ISI was behind the Mumbai attacks."
With or without the ISI's knowledge, however, some of the training for the operation seemed to have come from Lashkar-run camps on Pakistani territory—camps that Pakistan cracked down on in its first known response to India's demands that Pakistan punish the attacks' perpetrators.
Pakistani security forces seized a militant camp in Kashmir yesterday along with at least 12 people suspected of involvement. One of the prisoners, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, is thought to be a mastermind of the assault, which killed more than 170 people. The only Mumbai attacker captured alive told officials that he was recruited by Lakhvi for the mission.
Lashkar-e-Taiba was founded in the 1980s, with the help of Pakistan's intelligence agencies, to fight in the portion of Kashmir under Indian control. It does have some links to al Qaeda, although the relationship is complicated. While they share many ideological aspects and have helped each other in the past, their goals differ and al Qaeda distrusts Lashkar's relations with the ISI.
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