Two towns named “Mecca” and “Medina” have been developed near the headquarters of the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group in Muridke, Lahore, where plots of land are allocated exclusively to followers of Salafism and the gates are guarded by armed cadres to enforce “purity,” says retired Indian police officer Anju Gupta in her new book.
A 1990 Uttar Pradesh IPS officer who retired as a DGP of UP Police, Gupta is an expert security strategist with experience spanning posts with UNMIK, UNODC in Delhi, and her time as an officer working in the Union government’s Cabinet Secretariat.
These insights are part of her new book — “Domestic Terrorism in South Asia: Tracing the Roots in the Geopolitics and Tragedy of Afghanistan” — in which Gupta traces four decades of great power rivalry, regional politics, and ideological shifts that have fueled the rise of what she calls “domestic” terrorism.
The book, published by Simon & Schuster India, predicts several potential black swan events in the region, citing the historical interplay between geopolitics, internal power dynamics in Pakistan, and the use of terrorist proxies in South Asia.
A black swan event is an unpredictable but high-impact development that could destabilize the region.
To illustrate her claim, Gupta examines how Pakistan – a country she describes as “the epicenter of instability in South Asia” – got to where it is now, including the role of key terrorist figures in a chapter entitled “The Poster Boys of Local Jihad in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
Lashkar-e-Taiba founder Hafiz Saeed, JeM leader Maulana Masood Azhar, the 2008 Mumbai attack accused Sajid Mir and Al-Qaeda leader Ilyas Kashmiri, she wrote, of acting as key human nodes linking South Asia to Al-Qaeda’s global network, while they themselves were running local insurgencies.
Gupta wrote that Lashkar-e-Taiba has become the largest jihadist group in Pakistan.
“The group’s headquarters is located in Muridke, about 30 kilometers from Lahore. Two towns have been developed there, namely Mecca and Medina, for followers of the Salafist sect from all over the country in order to provide them with a pure atmosphere in accordance with Islamic law.”
She adds: “Plots are allocated only to followers of Salafism, and in order to keep them free from vices, residents do not have the right to read daily newspapers and watch television or pictures. In order to enforce this ‘purity’, armed youth from the LeT remain present at the gates of the two colonies. In Lahore itself, there are hundreds of points that function as recruitment centers as well as collecting donations for the group.”
India bombed the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s Muridke headquarters during Operation Sindoor on 7 May 2025, in response to the Pahalgam terror attack on 22 April.
The book charts an arc in the evolution of terrorism in Pakistan: from the roots of Afghan jihad in the late Cold War years, through regional conflicts provoked by groups such as the Pakistan-based Harkat al-Mujahideen and other Salafi groups linked to Al Qaeda, to linking the issue to Kashmir.
Gupta confirms that at some point, attempts were made to replicate the Afghan jihad model in Kashmir, but they failed, and the insurgency subsequently relied increasingly on foreign fighters and militants trained by organizations operating from Pakistan.
She writes that Pakistan has never succeeded in mobilizing real political support in Kashmir, relying instead on cross-border terrorism as a strategy of disruption.
Now, a series of recent events – including the Russia-Ukraine War, and the Israel-Iran conflict (the 12-day war in June 2025) – herald “a realignment of relations in South Asia and beyond” and “are likely to shape events in the months and years ahead.”
“In this context, it is important to put under the microscope the developments taking place in the epicenter of instability in South Asia – Pakistan,” Gupta wrote.
One of these problems is how Pakistan clashes with its neighbors on either side of it – Afghanistan to the east and India to the west. This makes security on Pakistan’s eastern and western fronts fragile and unstable.
Then there is the promotion of Asim Munir to the position of Field Marshal of Pakistan, a move that gives him complete freedom in security and foreign policy.
Gupta then links history to the present to argue that “a few potential black swan events” could occur in the “coming months or years.”
She expects that one of the possible black swan events is an internal revolution within the Pakistani army. “In Pakistan, the security and economic situation is precarious and the borders with India and Afghanistan are tense.”
Referring to the 26 suicide attacks witnessed in Pakistan in 2025 alone, the book adds that “if the situation worsens and the Defense Forces Commander (Munir) is unable to deal with it, internal rebellion in the army will be a distinct possibility.”
Gupta then suggests that Munir could go so far as to try to remove the Taliban from power, “even if it leads to a new phase of a long civil war or chaos in Afghanistan.”
