Lashkar-e-Taiba? That name that keeps popping up in the reporting on the Mumbai attacks? At newyorker.com, Steve Coll blogs about Lashkar, “the Pakistan-based Islamist organization” (as well as the group’s “charity, called Jamat-ud-Dawa, which is today tolerated openly by the government of Pakistan but banned as a terrorist organization by the United States on the grounds that it is merely an alias for Lashkar.”) Coll, who has reported in Pakistan on both groups, writes:
It has long been an open secret, and a source of some hilarity among foreign correspondents, that under the guise of “humanitarian relief operations,” Lashkar practiced amphibious operations on a lake at its vast headquarters campus, outside Lahore. The events in Mumbai have taken the humor of these “humanitarian” rehearsals away.
UPDATE: But of course, keep in mind the “keeps popping up in reporting” aspect of this. In other words, as Joshua Foust reminds us, nothing is certain at this point.
Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.