US May Apply Terrorism Label to Offshoot of Pakistan Group, Ex-Official Says
A former National Security Council official said June 26 that she believes the U.S. government is preparing to designate South Asia’s The Resistance Front (TRF) a terrorist group.
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“I think the U.S. government is in the process of designating them,” said Lisa Curtis, who worked at the NSC during the first Trump administration and is now a senior fellow and director of the Indo-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security.
TRF, which took responsibility for a deadly attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir in April and later withdrew the claim, is an offshoot of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT), Curtis told the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on South and Central Asia. The U.S. designated LeT a foreign terrorist organization in 2001.
“These offshoots come up, and then you have to actually designate that group, so I think they’re in the process of doing that,” Curtis testified.
The State Department declined to comment on TRF. “We do not comment on deliberations, or potential deliberations, related to terrorist designations,” a spokesperson said.