Lashkar’s new playbook: Rebranding terror through mosques, youth, and electoral politics

New Delhi, Jan 21 (LatestNewsX) The Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is desperate for a revival post Operation Sindoor, has set off a massive mobilisation drive in Pakistan, with the centric themes focused more on the youth, politics, and construction of mosques.

The Lashkar, which is designated as a terror outfit by several countries, wants to undertake an image makeover. The intention is to become a group that lives normally among the people.

For this, it has shed its normal drives that were more focused on radicalisation and terror recruitment.

The construction of mosques is an ambitious plan of the Lashkar, by which it wants to signal that it is focusing on religion and building places of worship for the people.

The mosques would not be used as radicalisation centres in the immediate future, but would function normally.

In recent weeks, the outfit’s youth leader, Haris Dar, has become very active. He is focusing on building unions and floating the same at the universities. These would act as normal student unions at least for now, whereby the focus would be on student-related problems, among others.

These unions would back other student unions for now. Those who join these unions would be encouraged to contest in the elections. This would be very much on the lines of the Jamaat-e-Islami’s Islamic Chhatra Shibir (ICS).

Today, the ICS controls almost every union in Bangladesh. Thanks to this, it is able to mobilise students in large numbers and orchestrate a mass protest at the drop of a hat.

There is also work ongoing to strengthen the Lashkar’s political wing, the Milli Muslim League.

Officials say that among all the things that the outfit is planning, the strengthening of the political and student wing remain the most significant.

By strengthening its political wing, the Lashkar is encouraging more and more people to join it. It wants to contest in a large number of seats and have good political representation. Such things normalise operations, and the people of Pakistan would tilt more towards it and not view it as a terror group.

An Intelligence Bureau official explained that the plan is a lethal one.

The Lashkar is trying to capture the landscape of Pakistan and make it a people’s movement and not a terror movement. It would be a slow start as they have just started to build these outfits. Over a period of time, the outfit plans to have such a massive presence in Pakistan that the people would back it fully every time it carries out a terror strike in India.

Today, there are many voices in Pakistan who criticise the terror groups operating from their soil.

During the campaigns that the outfit plans to carry out through its political and student wings, the main focus would be on Jammu and Kashmir and Bangladesh.

By bringing Bangladesh into the picture, the Lashkar plans to expand its reach beyond Pakistan. It also plans on carrying out similar drives in Bangladesh, and it has already been welcomed by the Jamaat. For the Lashkar, the biggest need at the moment is community support. In order to do so, it needs some rebranding and has decided to undertake these multiple exercises.

The people who normally hesitate to join a terror outfit would gladly join the Lashkar’s new ventures. This would give them credibility and power while also not being branded as members of a terror outfit. Officials say that this is a big game that the Lashkar is playing. The cause may look normal and peaceful for now. But the larger aim is creating a base for a massive recruitment ground once those who join become entrenched in the system.

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