The flow of CIA warnings on the attack on the Indian Consulate in Herat suggests the attack may have been planned to take place in the weeks after the new Indian government took office, but was speeded up to create a crisis as Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif met his new Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, defying warnings from jihadis in Pakistan.
Lashkar chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed had warned Mr. Sharif, at a May 26 rally, against travelling to India, saying it would “bleed the cause of Kashmir’s freedom and irreparably hurt the sentiments of Kashmiris and millions of other Muslims living in India.”
The head of Pakistan’s Jamaat-e-Islami party, Liaqat Baloch, also addressed the rally, telling Mr. Sharif that “these Hindu Banias, these Pandit-Brahmins, cannot be anyone’s friends.”
Long seen as mainly an anti-India group, the Lashkar has been active in Afghanistan in 2006 — beginning operations in that country’s Korengal valley even as it scaled back attacks in Kashmir. Lashkar leaders had stayed out of the fighting in Afghanistan after 9/11, deferring to pressure from Pakistan’s pro-U.S. military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf.
However, as the insurgency in Afghanistan escalated, it began providing logistical support to a sister organisation, the Jamiat al-Dawa al-Quran wal’Sunna.
