Benjamin, the State Department's co-ordinator for counter-terrorism, said the LeT is all the more worrisome because it has the size and global reach of Hezbollah. "The only group that you could really compare it to globally in terms of capability is (Lebanon-based) Hezbollah in terms of its size and ambition," he said. "It has a target set that al Qaeda would find ... perfectly fitting. It has an enormous number of men under arms, running into the thousands," Benjamin added.
Even if LeT keeps its sights on India and carries out another Mumbai-style attack or bigger, Benjamin said, it could drag India and Pakistan into a new war, possibly a nuclear one, with dramatic consequences for the global economy. "When you think about how much the world has benefited from the inclusion of south Asia in the global economy...the stakes are enormously high... both geo-strategically and economically," he said.
His comments echoed those of US Defence Secretary Robert Gates who warned in New Delhi on Wednesday that South Asian militant groups were seeking to destabilise the entire region and could trigger a war between Pakistan and India. Benjamin said he suspected that LeT may be changing tack because it views the United States as part of a western conspiracy against Islam. And taking into account LeT members' original aim to strike India, "they probably see us as having become much more pro-India," he warned.