Amir Mir - LeT Profile

The Lashkar happens to be an Al Hadith (Wahabi) group which was born as the military wing of Dawatul Irshad (MDI) or Centre for Proselytisation and Preaching. The MDI was set up in 1988 by three Islamic scholars -- Prof. Hafiz Mohammad Saeed and Prof. Zafar Iqbal, who were teachers of the Islamic studies at the University of Engineering Technology, Lahore, and Dr Abdullah Azzam, a professor at International Islamic University, Islamabad. Azzam is also described by many as the ideologue for the Palestinian militant group, Hamas, besides being the religio-political mentor of Osama bin Laden. The main purpose of the MDI was to promote the purification of the society, and to build a society on the basis of Quran and Sunnah.

Toward the end of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the MDI set up an armed wing called Lashkar-e-Toiba. With the launching of the Lashkar in 1991, several military training camps were, reportedly, set up in the eastern Afghanistan provinces of Kantar and Paktia, both of which had a sizable number of Al Hadith (Wahabi)followers of Islam, with the aim of participating in the jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The participation of the cadres in Afghan jihad is believed to have helped its leadership gain the trust of the Pakistani intelligence establishment.....