Lashkar-e-Jabbar

LeJ

12/12/2006

Lashkar-e-Jabbar is the most secretive religious terrorist outfit in Pakistan. Also known as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (Army of Jhang, which is a region in Pakistan), they are a militant offshoot of the Sunni sectarian group Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan (the Army of Muhammad's Companions). The breakaway group was formed in 1996 by Akram Lahori, Malik Ishaque, and Riaz Basra, after they accused the Army of Muhammad's Companions of deviating from the ideals of its slain co-founder, Maulana Haq Nawaz Jhangvi. The Sunni-Deobandi (a derivative of Wahhabism) fundamentalist salafi group focuses on anti-Shia attacks and assaults against women.

The Army of Jabbar was banned by Pakistani President/General/Dictator Musharraf in August 2001 in a bit of political pandering designed to fool his American benefactors to think he was trying to rein in sectarian violence. Many of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi members then sought refuge with the Taliban in Afghanistan, with whom they had existing ties.

A news report in October 2000 claimed that the LJ had split into two factions, one headed by Riaz Basra and the other by the chief of the Majlis-al-Shura (or Supreme Council), Qari Abdul Asadullah. The split reportedly occurred due to differences between the two over resumption of attacks on Shi'a Muslims, which had decreased temporarily after the military coup in October 1999. While Basra favored resumption of terrorist attacks against Shia targets, Talha opposed the plan as he reportedly felt it was suicidal for national solidarity.

Lashkar-e-Jabbar has confirmed links with al Qaeda and the Taliban and thus to fundamentalist Sunni Islam and Pakistan's ISI. Recently LJ unified with two other Sunni terrorist organizations, Harkat-ul Mujahideen and Jaish-e-Mohammed.

In September 2002, three chemical labs were found in the Army of Jabbar safe houses in Karachi - the nation's religious capital. According to the Pakistani authorities who educated the Army, LJ members were not smart enough to have maintained the stores of cyanide and other toxic chemicals found in the labs so they assumed that al Qaeda was working with the LJ - having moved its chemical weapons and gold out from Afghanistan when it established operations in Pakistan.

Lashkar-e-Jabbar exists to transform Pakistan into a Sunni theocracy, and through violent means, to impose strict adherence to Sharia law. As an anti-Shiite group, it has admitted responsibility for numerous massacres of Shias and has specifically targeted Shia religious and community leaders. The Army of Jabbar has also carried out numerous attacks against Iranian interests and Iranian nationals in Pakistan. The group claimed responsibility for killing four American oil workers in Karachi in 1997, and for carrying out an assassination attempt in 1999 on then Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi took part in the January 2002 kidnapping and murder of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl.

The entire leadership of the Lashkar-e-Jabbar/Jhangvi consists of jihadists who fought alongside the Taliban and al-Qaeda against Soviet forces in the Great Jihad. The majority of its cadres are drawn from the numerous Sunni madrassas (Islamic religious schools) in Pakistan - especially Karachi, the birthplace of the Taliban. Being part of the broader Deoband Islamic movement (fundamentalist/salafi Islam indistinguishable from Wahhabism), the LJ secured considerable financial assistance from the Saudi OPECers and Pakistan's ISI. As such, they shoot women who do not abide by the Islamic dress code. The group has even demanded that Hindu women wear the Bindi on their foreheads and that Sikh women cover their heads with a saffron cloth.

Lashkar-e-Jabbar has enforced their repressive Islamic agenda by throwing acid into the faces of women who did not comply with their religious orders regarding their dress code. In December 2002, they murdered three Islamic women for not wearing an approved veil. Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen supported the veil campaign, but a spokesman said acid attacks on women were un-Islamic. But the campaign against women received support from a prominent Islamic women's organization - the Dukhtaran-e-Millat (Daughters of the Faith). The Dukhtaran-e-Millat itself launched a campaign to force women in Srinagar to wear the veil over a decade earlier. Its activists threw paint on women who refused to comply. In one incident, girls wearing tight trousers were shot at, and beauty salon owners and cable operators were similarly targeted.

Asif Choto reportedly became leader of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi in 2002 after the death of former leader Asif Ramzi. Choto is behind the revival of attacks on Shia minorities in Pakistan. He introduced suicide bombing as a terrorist technique to the group. Malik Ishaque was one of three principle founders of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. Not much is known about his past, his roles, or his current whereabouts because the attacks he leads go unattributed. Qari Ataur Rahman was arrested for the murder of Daniel Pearl in Karachi, Pakistan.

Asif Ramzi also served as the head of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and was a spokesperson for the Muslim United Army. Wanted in connection with the murder of Daniel Pearl and a bombing at the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, Ramzi was reportedly killed in December 2002 while preparing explosive devices.

Born in South Punjab in 1976, Matiur Rahman rose to prominence in the late 1990s by setting up sophisticated terrorist networks in Pakistan through which he recruited young Muslim men to be trained in al-Qaeda's Taliban camps. Rahman proved himself a skilled explosives expert, with a talent for passing his specialized knowledge to recruits. As well as instructing fellow Pakistanis on how to be effective suicide bombers, Rahman also trained the most promising visiting Western recruits. In the late 1990s Rahman taught thousands of Pakistani, African and Arab Muslim militants how to build the most lethal bombs.

Rahman (named after Muhammad's first god) was a deputy for the jihad leader Amjad Farooqi, the organizer of terrorist training camps with links to al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Pakistan's ISI, and the incorporated Harakat-ul-Ansar. After Farooqi was killed in September of 2004, Rahman became the Chief Liaison between al-Qaeda and the Pakistani terrorist community. He took over the extensive directory that has been dubbed by the intelligence community as the "Rolodex of Jihad." This "Rolodex," actually database, is a massive list of the names, affiliation, skill set and contact information of every Pakistani militant trained by al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. This directory served as a database for recruiting volunteers for Islamic terrorist operations in Asia and in the West. Farooqi and Rahman relied heavily on the directory to establish a wide-ranging, underground logistical infrastructure that proved crucial to al-Qaeda's senior leadership in Pakistani tribal areas where they now reside.