Of Hitlists, Wishlists And Realists

On November 4, New Delhi woke up to find papers proclaim that the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) had been designated a Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO), even quoting the Indian ambassador to the US welcoming Washington's decision. Home minister L.K. Advani thought it a "step in the right direction" and external affairs minister Jaswant Singh congratulated the US for "showing determination to tackle global terrorism". Four days later, embarrassed papers clarified that the US State Department, after all, had yet to ban the LeT.

Says a State Department source, "Somebody jumped the gun. All that happened was that the attorney general recommended some names to be put on our FTO list. The Justice and State Departments obviously have different criteria. There is a specific legal process to be followed before a group can be mentioned in the FTO list."

Diplomatic sources blame the confusion to a poor understanding of the process the US follows and the bewildering number of lists of terrorist groups doing the rounds. There are at least two lists that are continually updated. One is the Office of Foreign Assets Control list, which came into being as a result of a presidential executive order of September 23.

The State Department list is compiled annually as required by the US Congress and has to be sent to the speaker of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate by April 30 every year. A State Department source told Outlook, "It is neither inevitable nor automatic that the Lashkar will be dubbed an FTO. There is due process to be followed." It is also not immediately clear if the secretary of state had asked that the process of such determination with regard to the LeT be quickened. Under the FTO listing process, one criterion to be met is that Americans or American interests should have been targeted.

There's the rub: New Delhi does not have a surfeit of evidence showing the LeT has significantly targeted US interests. Sources say Washington's attention was drawn a year ago to the fact that the Yawar camp in Khost (Afghanistan) trained both Al Qaeda and LeT militants; that the LeT's annual calendar (al Daawa) contains graphics of the World Trade towers, the Capitol Hill, the US, UK, Israeli and the Indian flag engulfed in flames; that the LeT's philosophical approach to terrorism and targeting is not very different from the Al Qaeda's. Consequently, sources say, it would amount to an extreme instance of hair-splitting to declare Al Qaeda a terrorist entity and not the LeT and that, anyway, the September 11 attacks made such differentiation redundant.

Once listed under the FTO, it is unlawful to provide funds or material support to the designated entity; representatives and certain members can be denied visas or excluded from the US; and US financial institutions must block funds of the designated ftos and their agents and must report such blockage to the US Treasury Department.

Government sources say that since the LeT is an "official tanzeem of the ISI", it is a politically tough call for the secretary of state, whose emphasis right now is coalition-building. They also feel that a mere characterisation will not staunch the flow of LeT operatives from across the border.

Incidentally, the State Department's 2000 report on "Patterns of Global Terrorism" mentions that all LeT cadres "are foreigners—mostly Pakistanis from seminaries across the country and Afghan veterans".

It also says that the Lashkar collects funds from the Pakistani community in the Persian Gulf, UK Islamic NGOs and "maintains ties to religious/military groups around the world, ranging from the Philippines to the Middle East and Chechnya through the Markaz ud-Dawa-wal-Irshad fraternal network". That, surely, is international.