The US believes Lashkar-e-Tayiba, the Pakistan-based terrorist organisation, responsible for the horrific Mumbai terror attacks on 26/11 and several other terrorist acts in India, could soon replace Al Qaeda as the number one worldwide terrorist threat or at the very least compete with Osama bin Laden's global Terror Inc.
In a major address to the Terrorism and Homeland Security Forum co-sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson Center's International Security Studies and Georgetown University's Center for Peace and Security Studies, Daniel Benjamin, coordinator for counterterrorism at the Department of state, said, "Al Qaeda is not the only group with global ambitions that we have to worry about operating in South and Central Asia, nor is it our only focus."
Benjamin, in a speech titled, Counterterrorism in the Obama Administration: Tactics and Strategy, noted "Lashkar-e-Tayiba has made it clear that it is willing to undertake bold, mass casualty operations with a target set that would please Al Qaeda planners".
He recalled "the group's most recently thwarted conspiracy to attack the US embassy in Dhaka should only deepen concern that it could indeed evolve into a genuinely global threat and one that seeks to replace al Qaeda or at least compete with it."
Thus, Benjamin said, "Very few things worry me as much as the strength and the ambition of LeT, which is a truly maligned presence in South Asia."
He said that in this regard, "We are working closely with allies in the region and elsewhere to reduce the threat from this very dangerous group, and I am pleased to say that there is growing cooperation in the region to thwart LeT, especially between such critical and not always easy partners as India and Bangladesh."
Benjamin said "the magnitude of the challenge of violent extremism", perpetrated by the likes of Al Qaeda and LeT ensures that no country can successfully combat" these groups on their own.
He said to counter the influence of these groups, "We also know that credible local voices have the take the lead in their own communities and argued that they are the ones best placed to convey counter-narratives capable of discrediting violent extremism."
"So, partnering with others, especially at the local level is critical," he said.
"Partnering with foreign government officials is likely to have a better understanding of radicalism in their communities and they can identify exactly who is best placed to counter it."
Benjamin was optimistic, saying that, "today we have more and more to work with and this is a source of great hope. We've seen an even greater desire on the part of ordinary people around the world to be rid of radicals who undermine everything that these individuals seek to achieve."
In the interaction followed, Benjamin said it was a total misperception to think that groups like LeT are Kashmiri or wedded totally to the Kashmir cause to rid Indian troops from the Valley.
"We are less and less able to distinguish precisely because many of the Kashmiri groupsÂ…First of all, some groups have been called Kashmiri, like LeT, but are in fact Punjabi, and are very much active in different parts of the country as well as in Afghanistan."
Benjamin also said "one of the trends that we have seen is an increasing sort of stitching together of different groups and this is a great worry. And, we also see a rise in free-lancers -people who have their roots in one group, drifting to another, contracting with another, and it makes for another one of the really challenging aspects of the changing counterterrorism scene."
The top Obama administration counterterrorism official also said the emergence of the likes of David Coleman Headley, the Pakistan-American Chicago native and Lashkar operative arrested last October and who has now pleaded guilty for being a part of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks conspiracy, was a new domestic "complexity that we face," in counterterrorism.
Benjamin said there was now "a significant uptick in domestic radicalism, which obviously will complicate matters significantly. We have seen a half-Pakistani, half-American using Chicago as a facilitation point for operations in India, Denmark and elsewhere. We have seen five young men from Virginia turn up in Pakistan on their way to the FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas)."
"So, while I think that we are doing well, the nature of the threat is always changing," he added.
