Via Reuters:

Pakistan-based militants are preparing to take on India across the subcontinent once Western troops leave Afghanistan next year, several sources say, raising the risk of a dramatic spike in tensions between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan.

Intelligence sources in India believe that a botched suicide bombing of an Indian consulate in Afghanistan, which was followed within days last week by a lethal cross-border ambush on Indian soldiers in disputed Kashmir, suggest that the new campaign by Islamic militants may already be underway.

Members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant outfit in Pakistan, the group blamed for the 2008 commando-style raid on Mumbai that killed 166 people, told Reuters they were preparing to take the fight to India once again, this time across the region.

And a U.S. counter-terrorism official, referring to the attack in Afghanistan, said “LeT has long pursued Indian targets, so it would be natural for the group to plot against them in its own backyard”.

Given the quiet backing – or at least blind eye – that many militant groups enjoy from Pakistan’s shadowy intelligence services, tensions from a new militant campaign are bound to spill over. Adding to the volatility, the two nations’ armies are trading mortar and gunfire across the heavily militarized frontier that divides Kashmir, and accusing each other of killing troops. […]

At the core of that uncertainty is the pullback of militants from Afghanistan as U.S. forces head home.

Hafiz Sayeed, founder of the LeT, has left no doubt that India’s side of Kashmir will become a target, telling an Indian weekly recently: “Full-scale armed Jihad (holy war) will begin soon in Kashmir after American forces withdraw from Afghanistan.”

The retreat of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989 brought a wave of guerrillas into Kashmir to fight India’s rule there.