The above image, the symbol of Lashkar-e-Taiba, signifies "the organization's belief that violent jihad will establish a society based on Islamic precepts."
Lashkar-e-Taiba, or "Army of the Pure," has been terrorizing India for more than a decade. In December, 2001, five suicide bombers of Lashkar-e-Taiba attempted to blow up the Indian government leadership in an attack on Parliament House in New Delhi. In that attack, using bombs, grenades and AK-47s, five suicide bombers attempted to enter the Parliament House where more than 200 legislators were meeting.
The Indian intelligence service was able to determine, after that attack, that Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad are both Pakistan-based organizations with active ties to the Pakistani Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
In a statement shortly after the 2001 attack, Indian Home Minister L K Advani said:
Last week’s attack on Parliament is undoubtedly the most audacious, and also the most alarming, act of terrorism in the nearly two-decades-long history of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in India. This time the terrorists and their mentors across the border had the temerity to try to wipe out the entire political leadership of India, as represented in our multi-party Parliament. Naturally, it is time for all of us in this august House, and all of us in the country, to ponder why the terrorists and their backers tried to raise the stakes so high, particularly at a time when Pakistan is claiming to be a part of the international coalition against terrorism.
The only answer that satisfactorily addresses this query is that Pakistan – itself a product of the indefensible Two-Nation Theory, itself a theocratic State with an extremely tenuous tradition of democracy – is unable to reconcile itself with the reality of a secular, democratic, self-confident and steadily progressing India, whose standing in the international community is getting inexorably higher with the passage of time.
Rahul Bedi, writing in the UK Telegraph, states that over 700 people have died and thousands injured in India, by Islamists with close ties to Pakistan or the disputed territory of Bangladesh over just the past three years.
