Pakistan's active terror inside Afghanistan to stem Indian influence

NYT story simply makes clear what's been suspected by damn near everybody--and known by plenty--up to now:

A Pakistani-based militant group identified with attacks on Indian targets has expanded its operations in Afghanistan, inflicting casualties on Afghans and Indians alike, setting up training camps, and adding new volatility to relations between India and Pakistan.

The group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, is believed to have planned or executed three major attacks against Indian government employees and private workers in Afghanistan in recent months, according to Afghan and international intelligence officers and diplomats here. It continues to track Indian development workers and others for possible attack, they said.

Lashkar was behind the synchronized attacks on several civilian targets in Mumbai, India, in 2008, in which at least 163 people were killed. Its inroads in Afghanistan provide a fresh indication of its growing ambitions to confront India even beyond the disputed territory of Kashmir, for which Pakistan’s military and intelligence services created the group as a proxy force decades ago.

Officially, Pakistan says it no longer supports or finances the group. But Lashkar’s expanded activities in Afghanistan, particularly against Indian targets, prompt suspicions that it has become one of Pakistan’s proxies to counteract India’s influence in the country.

They provide yet another indicator of the extent to which Pakistani militants are working to shape the outcome of the Afghan war as the July 2011 deadline approaches to begin withdrawing American troops.

Recently retired Pakistani military officials are known to have directed the Mumbai attacks, and some Lashkar members have said only a thin line separates the group from its longtime bosses in the Pakistan security establishment.

How such behavior separates Pakistan from Iran is beyond me. They've got the bomb and they shared it indiscriminately for cash. They actively support terror groups that target our troops and our allies in a next-door war zone.  Worse, they take our money--and lots of it--to do it.

I bet Pakistan would love to see us get embroiled with Iran, but frankly, one of the reasons why I'm adamantly opposed to such logic is my sense that we eventually mix it up with Pakistan directly.

Because when the next 9/11 happens, that is where we will trace it to.

I choose India.