In a dramatic pre-dawn attack on Wednesday, Indian military attacked nine terror training camps situated all over Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), directly following the Pahalgam terror strike of April 22 in which 26 civilians, the majority of them tourists, were killed.
India’s military initiated Operation Sindoor, a well-planned operation against infrastructure employed by terror organizations such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM). Of the nine sites targeted, four were in Pakistan: Bahawalpur, Muridke, and Sialkot and five in Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was directly monitoring the operation.
In its release, the Ministry of Defence explained: “Our actions have been targeted, calibrated and non-escalatory in nature. No Pakistani military targets have been struck. India has shown significant restraint in target choice and method of delivery.”
LeT’s Power Base in the Crosshairs
One of the strongest blows was on the mosque complex in Muridke, just outside Lahore in Pakistan’s Punjab. Widely regarded as the hub of Lashkar-e-Taiba’s activities, Muridke Markaz has been a centre for radicalisation and terrorist training since its establishment in 2000.
Muridke serves as much more than an indoctrination and militant training base because it also accommodates religious and residential facilities. About 1,000 students take its different courses each year, according to intelligence sources. It is armed to the teeth with facilities for training in arms, recruitment, and religious propagation.
Most importantly, the Markaz is also found to have hosted 26/11 Mumbai attacks preparators. One of the terrorists, Ajmal Kasab, underwent intelligence training Daura-e-Ribbaf at this very center. Co-conspirators David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana had gone to Muridke on the instructions of Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi.
Intelligence inputs also found that Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden had funded Rs 10 million for the construction of a mosque and guesthouse in the Markaz Taiba complex.
Strategic Significance and Terror Heritage
Strategically placed only 25–30 km from the Attari-Wagah border and near an important highway connecting Lahore, Muridke Markaz can quickly mobilise itself, being an ever-present danger. Initially constructed in the 1980s to aid Afghan militants against the Soviets, the location became an important anti-India operational facility after the Soviets withdrew.
Though Pakistan officially proscribed LeT after 9/11 following international pressure, the camp was redubbed a religious seminary known as Jamaat-ud-Dawa.
Lashkar-e-Taiba was established by Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, Zafar Iqbal, and Abdullah Azzam as a reaction to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Its parent organization, Markaz-ud-Dawa-wal-Irshad (MDI), established in 1987, was dedicated to spreading Salafism, a Sunni fundamentalist interpretation.
