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...According to reports from the Pakistani Interior Ministry, the suicide bomber who killed Benazir Bhutto belonged to a domestic terrorist organization with links to al-Qaeda called Lashkar-i-Jhangvi. The group is responsible for dozens of attacks inside Pakistan over the past decade including sectarian killings of Shi'ites and Christians, a failed 1999 assassination attempt against then-Prime minister Nawaz Sharif, and involvement in the kidnapping and beheading of the Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl. An FBI and Department of Homeland Security bulletin sent out Thursday cited unsubstantiated reports that Lashkar-i-Jhangvi had claimed responsibility...
...Mehsud had been party to an agreement with the Pakistani government to cease his protection of al-Qaeda in his region. The Pakistani government has since then considered the agreement to have been broken. Says Frederic Grare, a former French diplomat in Pakistan and a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, "Mehsud is a very convenient [person to blame]. He?s the bad guy in the trouble areas." He asks, "Why would Mehsud be willing to kill Benazir? Beyond the stated fact that she?s against extremism. How do [Mehsud's people] benefit from Benazir?s assassination...
...absolutely clear if or how Mehsud and Lashkar-i-Jhangvi link up. But both the Taliban and Lashkar-i-Jhangvi emerged from the two decades of fighting in Afghanistan, where eventually a Taliban regime would give refuge to al-Qaeda. Pakistani intelligence services were also active in Afghanistan, encouraging Muslim fighters in their war against the Soviet occupation of that country. One of the groups that emerged from this group was Lashkar-i-Tayyba or the "Army of the Pure," which Pakistani intelligence agents, after the end of the Afghan war, would redirect toward Kashmir and the Indian troops stationed...
...group has close ties to al-Qaeda. The leadership of Lashkar-i-Jhangvi fought alongside many high-ranking al-Qaeda and Taliban operatives against the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan before Sept. 11, 2001. U.S. intelligence agencies believe many in its ranks trained in al-Qaeda-run camps in Afghanistan during the late 1990s. When al-Qaeda retreated from Afghanistan in 2002, many of its fighters are believed to have joined forces with Lashkar-i-Jhangvi and Lashkar-i-Tayyba, according to the State Department, which lists both groups as foreign terrorist organizations. Since then, the groups have targeted pro-Western...
...probable there are links between Lashkar-i-Jhangvi and al-Qaeda," says Grare, "but it is certain they do have links to the government." He adds, "If the government itself says Lashkar-i-Jhangvi is involved, it is suicidal because it opens the door to speculation about their own role." Indeed, while Pakistani authorities have had a hand in encouraging groups like Lashkar-i-Jhangvi and Lashkar-i-Tayyba, Islamabad has done little to systematically dismantle these jihadist "armies" now that their original purposes - fighting the Soviets and supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan or fighting the Indians in Kashmir...