WASHINGTON: Ninety Four percent of fresh recruits of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant group see Jammu and Kashmir as a “fighting front”, according to a US military report.
They hail mostly from Pakistan’s Punjab province and are well educated than the rest of Pakistani males, says the report quoted by the Press Trust of India (PTI).
The report from the US Military Academy in West Point is result of a multi-year research effort conducted by a lead team of five eminent authors including C Christine Fair, Don Rassler and Anirban Ghosh.
It is based on a study of over 900 biographies of the deceased LeT militants, the PTI reports.
The report says that while the LeT’s recruitment is done across the north, central and southern parts of the Punjab, the highest concentration of militants have come (in order of frequency) from the districts of Gujranwala, Faisalabad, Lahore, Sheikhupura, Kasur, Sialkot, Bahawalnagar, Bahawalpur, Khanewal and Multan.
LeT has historically conducted training in Muzaffarabad, the main city and capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir and in Afghanistan. Together the two locations have accounted for 75 per cent of LeT militant training over time, PTI quoted the report as saying.
“Ninety four per cent of fighters list Indian Kashmir as a fighting front,” the report said.
However, less relevant Afghanistan, Chechnya, Tajikistan and Bosnia are also identified in the biographies as other fronts.
