The 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks were launched by al Qaeda with the help of the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT), with an objective of precipitating a war between India and Pakistan that would force the latter to shift its troops from the tribal areas to the eastern border, slain journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad’s posthumously released book has revealed.
Pakistani investigative reporter Shahzad was killed days before his book, Inside al Qaeda And The Taliban: Beyond bin Laden And 9/11,’ hit Pakistan. The book is based on Shahzad’s intimate contacts within the network of terrorists aligned with al Qaeda and seeks to prove that terror associated with the Taliban is nothing but al Qaeda acting through its minions, ‘Newsweek’ reports.
The book, described as a bombshell, makes no bones about the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba, Pakistan’s “asset” against India, as an offshoot.
It was not Lashkar that attacked Mumbai in 2008, but al Qaeda with the help of Lashkar, about which Inter-Services Intelligence did not know — or at least the ISI leadership did not, the report said.
{{/usCountry}}It was not Lashkar that attacked Mumbai in 2008, but al Qaeda with the help of Lashkar, about which Inter-Services Intelligence did not know — or at least the ISI leadership did not, the report said.
{{/usCountry}}The objective was to precipitate a Pakistan-India war that would force Pakistan to move its troops out of the tribal areas and redeploy them on the eastern border.
After Mumbai, Baitullah Mehsud and Fazlullah declared they would fight India together with the Pakistan army, an offer that, the book says, was welcomed by ISI chief General Shuja Pasha.
The man who did this was Ilyas Kashmiri, Pakistan’s Kashmir related “asset,” who was once in lashkar, then in Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami and finally in al Qaeda as its top local commander.