Will Islamabad shut down LeT operations?

London: If Pakistan's battle against the Taliban seems difficult, a much tougher challenge lies ahead: deciding what to do about the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant group it once nurtured to fight India in Kashmir.

Security experts from the US and India believe the Pakistan Army and its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency could shut down the group blamed for last year's attacks on Mumbai - if they choose to do so.

"The Pakistan Army could do it and the ISI could tell them where to find those guys in a heartbeat," said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer who led a review of strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan for President Barack Obama.

"If they wanted to shut them down they could," said B. Raman, a former additional secretary at India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) intelligence agency. "They can do it, but they don't want to do it because they look upon it as a strategic asset."

But Samina Yasmeen, a professor at the University of Western Australia who is researching a book on the LeT, said the reality on the ground may be more complicated.

Over the years, she said, the LeT had given birth to splinter groups which had broken free both of the Pakistan Army and ISI, and even from the LeT leadership.

"There are elements within the Lashkar that are not under the control of the army anymore. They really moved on a trajectory that people did not expect," she said.

"After 9/11 there was a section that emerged within the Lashkar that may not be under the control of the Lashkar leadership."

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pushed the LeT to the top of the agenda last week by effectively telling President Asif Ali Zardari that India would not re-open peace talks until Pakistan acted against the organisation and its leaders.

He seems to have won support in the West, where the LeT is seen as potentially as big a danger as Al Qaida. "I think we have to regard the Lashkar-e-Taiba as much a threat to us as any other part of the Al Qaida system," said Riedel.

But finding a consensus on what Pakistan can, should and will do about the LeT is like asking people to agree on how to label many different shades of grey.

The LeT was born out of the CIA-backed jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan and then began operations in Kashmir in 1993.