US is at war with Lashkar: ex-CIA official

The United States is now “at war with Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT)”, according to a former senior official of the Central Intelligence Agency.

In an article published by Washington-based Brookings Institution, Bruce Riedel also said the “LeT has now crossed the threshold of directly targeting American interests.”

This is supported by US Federal Bureau of Investigation’s then Chief Intelligence Officer Donald Van Duyn, who testified before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security in 2009 that the LeT, according to the FBI’s assessment, “remains a threat to US interests in South Asia and, to a lesser extent, the US Homeland.”

Riedel’s statement assumes significance since he is considered close to the Obama Administration and had, in fact, chaired the original White House review of America’s Afghanistan-Pakistan policy.

The commentary, authored jointly by Riedel and Aysha Chowdhry of the Brookings Institution, is titled, The Scariest Terror Plot and refers to a foiled LeT plot that led to Bangladeshi police arresting several terrorist group’s operatives in November and December 2009 for apparently planning attacks on the US embassy and the British and Indian high commissions in Dhaka.