Lashkar-e-Omar

LeJ

12/12/2006

Lashkar-e-Omar is a Pakistani Islamic fundamentalist group with links to a number of important terrorist organizations in the country. The club was assembled when Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf presumably cracked down on indigenous terrorist organizations in 2001 in hopes of receiving U.S. aid and arms. But all that actually happened was that the old established groups changed their names.

For example, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LJ) entered into a loose coalition with two other Islamic groups, Harkat-ul Jihad-e Islami (HJI) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JM), to form Lashkar-e-Omar (LO), sometimes called al-Qanoon. In addition to these groups, the coalition included some freelance terrorists such as Sheikh Omar and Amjad Hussain Faruqui of the HJI, who were both charged with participating in the abduction and murder of Daniel Pearl. In reality, all of these names are meaningless. The LJ, HJI, JM, and LO are Islamic, as are the Taliban, al-Qaeda, HAMAS, Hezballah, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Islamic Jihad.

The name al-Qanoon was first used when the group claimed responsibility for the June 2002 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, which killed 11 and injured 45 more. In a letter sent to a Karachi newspaper, Lashkar-e-Omar warned that "America, its allies, and its slave Pakistani rulers should be prepared for more attacks. The bomb blast is the beginning of Al-Qanoon's jihadi activities in Pakistan." But even according to senior Pakistani intelligence officials, that attack was carried out by Lashkar-e-Omar, with al-Qanoon being nothing more than an alias.

Lashkar-e-Omar, meaning the Army of Omar, is named after Mullah Mohammed Omar, the chief of the Taliban militia and a Pakistani schooled in Karachi. Some like to credit Syed Ahmed Omar Sheikh, a Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist who was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the abduction and murder of Daniel Pearl.

LO's ideology is a mixture of Islamist fundamentalism and fascism. Their version of Islam is similar to that of Pakistan's Taliban. Sheikh Omar, Faruqui, and Mullah Omar were all associated with terrorist training camps in Afghanistan during the Taliban's reign. Sheikh Omar was reportedly an instructor at one such camp. Reports indicate that the LO also includes some Islamist parties allied with Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front (IIF) that survived U.S. air strikes in Afghanistan and crossed over into Pakistan.