Aishwaria Sonavane and Anand Arni
The arrest of a Pakistani national linked to the U.N. proscribed Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) in Itaewon, a district in Seoul, by South Korean police in August underscores the spread of the terror group’s global tentacles — both in terms of its ambitions and operations. The LeT has been generally viewed through the prism of its anti-India militancy in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). However, the group’s ideological architecture also embodies a pan-Islamist and anti-Western worldview that has occasionally spilled into transnational plots.
The Pakistani national was arrested under the Counter-Terrorism Act and the Immigration Act. He reportedly joined the LeT in 2020 and received training in arms and infiltration tactics in Pakistan. While he has not been accused of plotting terrorist attacks in South Korea, his alleged affiliation is reflective of the LeT’s expansive network beyond Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Kashmir Valley.
From its inception, the LeT articulated an expansive vision stemming from the Ahl-e-Hadith sect. It sought both regional influence and relevance within the jihadist landscape. The group’s transnational intentions are not merely theoretical, but have manifested in networks across Asia, Europe, and North America, and in attacks and propaganda campaigns designed to target Western and Jewish targets as much as Indians.
A Pakistani Proxy
The LeT was formed as the militant wing of Markaz al-Dawa wal-Irshad (MDI) during the Afghan jihad of the 1980s against the erstwhile Soviet Union. Nurtured systematically by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the group became a crucial instrument in Islamabad’s strategic toolkit to check a far larger India, expand influence in Afghanistan, and maintain plausible deniability.
In India, the LeT has a deadly record with fingerprints on some of the most lethal urban terrorist attacks over the past three decades, including the 2000 Red Fort attack in Delhi, the 2005 Delhi bombings, the 2006 Mumbai train blasts that killed over 200, the 2008 Mumbai siege — a three-day operation that targeted Western and Jewish civilians, and the attack on tourists at Pahalgam this April. In 2019, the LeT rebranded itself under fronts such as The Resistance Front (TRF), which claimed responsibility and then distanced itself from the Pahalgam attack.
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