India has unfortunately become the “sponge” that protects us all(//from terrorism//).

[chandu_69]

http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=22676&prog=zgp&proj=zsa

 

 

 

Testimony to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, January 28, 2009:

Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Senator Collins, and Members of the Committee. Thank you for your invitation to testify on the recent terrorist attacks in Bombay (Mumbai) and their consequences for the United States. As requested by the Chairman and Ranking Member in their letter of invitation,

I will focus my remarks on assessing the regional and global threat posed by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the implications of that threat for the U.S. homeland, and the status of U.S.–India cooperation on counterterrorism and homeland security.

 

I respectfully request that my statement be entered into the record.

 

....

Of all the terrorist groups present in South Asia—and there are many—LeT represents a threat to regional and global security second only to al-Qaeda. .... Being an Ahl-e Hadith adherent of Sunni Wahabism,

 

LeT seeks to establish a universal Islamic Caliphate with a special emphasis on realizing that dream through the gradual recovery of all lands that were once under Muslim rule. The strategic objective of inaugurating a universal Caliphate has made LeT a strong ideological ally of Al-Qaeda,

 

while the emphasis on recovering “lost Muslim lands” in Asia and Europe has taken LeT to diverse places such as Palestine, Spain, Chechnya, Kosovo and Eritrea.

 

That LeT is a constituent member of Osama bin Ladin’s International Islamic Front should not be surprising given that one of its three founders, Abdullah Azzam of the International Islamic University in Islamabad, was closely associated with Hamas and has been widely described as one of bin Ladin’s religious mentors. Together with Hafiz Saeed, the LeT’s current amir, and Zafar Iqbal of the Engineering University, Lahore, Azzam formed LeT in 1987 as the armed wing of the Markaz Dawat-ul Irshad (MDI), the Center for Proselytization and Preaching,

 

which sought to actualize the universal Islamic state through tableegh (preaching) and jihad (armed struggle).

 

.......The LeT’s initial focus on Afghanistan is significant because it refutes the common misapprehension—assiduously fostered since the early 1990s—that the group has always been a part of the indigenous Kashmiri insurgency. Nothing could be further from the truth....

 

......Hafiz Saeed wholeheartedly endorsed the objective of destroying India writ large.

 

Asserting in a 1999 interview that “jihad is not about Kashmir only,”

 

he went on to declare that “about fifteen years ago, people might have found it ridiculous if someone told them about the disintegration of the USSR. Today,” he continued, “I announce the break-up of India, Inshaallah. We will not rest until the whole [of] India is dissolved into Pakistan.” In a later 2001 statement,

he reaffirmed the proposition that “our struggle will continue even if Kashmir is liberated.....