Photo: Social Media

Pakistan Sends Extremist Preachers to Radicalize Afghan Youth

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – An Indian news outlet reports that Pakistan has been sending preachers linked to the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) to Afghanistan with the aim of radicalizing Afghans, especially schoolchildren, in the capital city of Kabul.

In a report released on Tuesday, April 30th, the Republic Media Network highlighted Pakistan’s ongoing dangerous game in promoting terrorism and radicalization with its neighboring countries. While the terrorist group has long been engaged in acts of terrorism in India, Pakistan now extends its activities to other neighboring countries.

“Pakistan has had to deal with incidents of terrorism in its own country. That has not deterred the rogue nation from continuing to pursue its coercive terror activities in the name of religion,” part of the report reads.

In recent days, a video has been circulating on social media featuring a man delivering religious lectures in Urdu, while another person translates them into Pashto language.

The Afghanistan Green Trend (AGT), an organization led by Amrullah Saleh, former Vice President of Afghanistan, claimed in a statement that the video is from Hazrat Ibrahim Khalilullah High School in Kabul. According to AGT, the Pakistani man in the video is educating the directors and teachers of the school.

AGT claims that the majority of these preachers are affiliated with Lashkar-e-Taiba, an extremist group in Pakistan known for its anti-Shia and anti-India stance.

Formed in the mid-1990s, Lashkar-e-Taiba, also known as “Army of the Righteous,” is a Sunni Muslim militant insurgent group based in Pakistan. Its primary aim is to liberate Jammu and Kashmir from Indian control.

The group employs violent tactics to achieve its goals, including armed attacks and bombings. Lashkar-e-Taiba is designated as a terrorist organization by numerous countries and the United Nations.

Since its establishment, the Salafist group has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks in India, including the attack on the Indian Parliament building in December 2001 and a series of deadly attacks in Mumbai in November 2008, which resulted in the deaths and injuries of hundreds of civilians.

The UN Security Council reported in 2022 that Pakistan-based terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad are consistently operating training camps in Afghanistan’s provinces. The report also indicated that some of these terror groups are directly under Taliban control.

According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based research institute, Lashkar-e-Taiba has maintained a complicated relationship with its host country. Although Pakistan has banned the group, there is ample evidence suggesting that the country has used the group as a proxy in the region. Furthermore, the group has established several training camps and religious schools within Pakistan, with thousands of active members primarily consisting of Pakistanis.

CSIS says that Lashkar-e-Taiba is an offshoot of Markaz-ud-Dawa-wal-Irshad (MDI), a Pakistan-based missionary and social welfare organization founded to oppose the Soviet Union’s presence in Afghanistan. However, following the Soviet withdrawal, the organization and its militant wing, LeT, focused on the annexation of Kashmir into Pakistan through violent means.

“There is also the possibility that LeT may turn to actions more in line with global jihad against Western targets, to include attacks against the United States.” CSIS said.

The Afghanistan Green Trend suggests that the connections between the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba run deep within madrasas, granting members of the group immunity to move about freely. “Middle-aged Afghan bureaucrats feel insulted and humiliated to sit and listen to such low-level Punjabi lecturers,” part of AGT statement reads.

Islamabad and the ruling regime in Afghanistan have yet to respond to this report and the video released by the Afghanistan Green Trend.