Cheat Sheet

Over at The New Yorker’s Think Tank blog, Steve Coll has a must-read post on the Islamabad government’s relationship with Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based Islamist organization that Indian and American officials are now linking to the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last week. Coll testifies to the group’s “maritime” capability, writing: “I was not too long ago a passenger” on Lashkar’s pontoon boat fleet. In 2005, he visited facilities run by the group’s charity, Jamat-ud-Dawa, which the Pakistani government openly tolerates, though the US has banned it as a terrorist organization “on the grounds that it is merely an alias for Lashkar.” If it is proved that the events in Mumbai “were purposeful attacks endorsed by [Lashkar chief Hafez] Saeed and aided by elements of the Army, then the Pakistan government will have no choice but to at least make a show of closing down Jamat and arresting Saeed,” Coll writes.