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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 âhumanitarian relief operations,â Lashkar practiced amphibious operations on a lake at its vast headquarters campus, outside Lahore. The events in Mumbai have taken the humor of these âhumanitarianâ 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.
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