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Kashmir's Islamic Guerrillas See Little to Fear From U.S.
Sunday, December 23, 2001
By John F. Burns
The New York Times

Islamic guerrillas in Pakistan who challenge India's rule over Kashmir (news - web sites) appear unconcerned that they could be the next target in America's war on terror.

MURIDKE, Pakistan -- The New York Times
The signboard has disappeared now, gone from the clutter of brightly painted ads for American soft drinks and tire vulcanizers and the merchants who live off the traffic that thunders down the Grand Trunk Road, which starts on the Afghan border 400 miles from here and ends 1,000 miles away, in Calcutta.

The town of Muridke was never much more than a dusty way-station on the strategic highway built when Pakistan and India were part of British-ruled India. If the town has had a claim on the consciousness of 140 million Pakistanis, it lay in the missing sign, for an Islamic militant organization known in English as the Army of the Pure, in Urdu as Lashkar-e-Taiba, whose spiritual headquarters lies a mile or so off among the green rice paddies and grazing buffalo that flank the highway.

The sign came down some time last week, just before President Bush announced that he was adding Lashkar-e-Taiba to the United States' official list of terrorist organizations, and asking Pakistan's military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, to arrest Lashkar's leaders and disband it.

Mr. Bush cited India's accusations that the group was behind an attack on Dec. 13 on the Indian Parliament in which 14 people died, including all 5 attackers. Lashkar has denied any involvement, and Pakistan, implying Indian mischief, has demanded that India produce its evidence.
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2001 © The New York Times.

Dan