What is the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba?*

Abstract This chapter provides a detailed history of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) beginning with its establishment in Afghanistan at the very end of the war to oust the Soviet Union from Afghanistan (1979–1989) up to and including the organization’s contemporary role in Pakistan’s domestic security and in prosecuting its revisionist agenda in Afghanistan, Kashmir, and elsewhere in India. While the exact year in which LeT (Army of the Righteous) coalesced is unknown, scholars tend to agree that it began to take form when Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi gathered several Pakistani Ahl-e-Hadees adherents to wage jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan at the very end of that conflict (1979–1989). Around 1985, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and Zafar Iqbal founded Jamaat ud Dawah (JuD, Organization for Proselytization) with the intent of promulgating the Ahl-e-Hadees creed. A year later, Lakhvi’s LeT amalgamated with Saeed and Iqbal’s JuD to form the Markaz-ud-Dawah-wal-Irshad (MDI, Centre for Preaching and Guidance), which had three preoccupations: jihad, proselytization of the Ahl-e-Hadees maslak, and the creation of a new generation of Muslims committed to their ideology. After providing a history of the organization, this chapter also explains what makes LeT different from the many other groups operating in and from Pakistan, and the unique support it enjoys from Pakistan’s security establishment. It also details the various other front organizations that LeT spawned to subvert sanction regimes.