B.RAMAN
Forty-five days after the Mumbai terrorist strike of November 26 to 29,2008, India has failed to convince large sections of the internationalcommunity that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had orchestrated the terrorist strike in Mumbai by 10 terrorists of theLashkar-e-Toiba (LET). That is my conclusion after interactions with a wide spectrum of foreign counter-terrorism experts----governmental aswell as non-governmental.
2. The experts of the various countries whose nationals died at the hands of the terrorists are convinced on the basis of their ownsubstantial independent technical intelligence that the terrorist attack was carried out by 10 Pakistani nationals belonging to the LET, whocame to Mumbai by boat from Karachi for carrying out the strike. They are also convinced on the basis of the voluminous evidence in theirarchives about the privileged relationship between the ISI and the LET. But they claim not to have seen any conclusive evidence so far toshow that the ISI----or at least its present leadership---- had orchestrated the Mumbai terrorist attack. A question, which they pose, which islogical and compelling, is whether the terrorists would have killed nationals of the US, the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Canada and Australiaif they had been deputed by the ISI to indulge in the carnage.
3. Some of these experts, who were earlier convinced of the ISI hand behind the attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul in the first week ofJuly, 2008, when Lt.Gen.Nadeem Taj, the present Corps Commander at Gujranwala, was the ISI Director-General, are prepared to allow forthe possibility that Lt.Gen.Taj, before he was removed from the ISI on September 30,2008, allegedly under US pressure by Gen.PervezAshfaq Kayani, Pakistan's Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), might have also planned the Mumbai attack by the LET and got its cadres chosenfor the attack trained. In this connection, it is significant that Ajmal Amir, the Pakistani in the custody of the Mumbai Police, had reportedlystated during his interrogation that the attack was planned for September 26, but was postponed. These experts point out that Taj was stillthe DG of the ISI on September 26.
4. The Americans had allegedly got Taj removed because of their conviction that his was the brain behind the Kabul attack and that Taj,who has a reputation of being rabidly anti-Indian and anti-US, had leaked out some information shared by the Americans with him to theTaliban. It was generally presumed till now on the basis of some past reports in sections of the Pakistani media about Taj being related toGen.(retd) Pervez Musharraf that he must be a Mohajir, but some Western experts claim that he is actually a Punjabi-speaking Kashmiri. Ifthis is so, in its history the ISI had been headed by Punjabi-speaking Kashmiris twice. The earlier Kashmiri DG of the ISI was Lt.Gen.(retd)Javed Nasir, who headed the ISI during Nawaz Sharif's first tenure as the Prime Minister (1990-93). The Mumbai blasts of March,1993,were orchestrated by him. He was removed by Sharif from the ISI under US pressure because of his perceived non-cooperation in the USattempts to buy back the unused Stinger missiles from the Afghan Mujahideen. It was during his tenure that the Bill Clinton Administrationhad declared Pakistan as a suspected State-sponsor of terrorism. This designation was removed after six months after Sharif had removedfrom the ISI Nasir and some other officers disliked by the US.
5. While thus some American experts have an open mind on the possibility of the involvement of Taj in the Mumbai carnage, they areprepared to give the benefit of doubt to Lt.Gen.Ahmed Shuja Pasha, who has been the DG of the ISI since September 30,2008. He enjoys agood reputation in the West as a balanced person, who would not indulge in this type of operation, particularly when it is partly directedagainst Western nationals and Jewish civilians.
6. Every country, whose nationals died during the terrorist attack, has been making a detailed analysis of why its nationals were targetedand killed. For example, in addition to the Israelis and the nationals of the countries mentioned above, the terrorists also killed the nationalsof three countries in South-East Asia. One of them was a Chinese woman from Singapore. According to one version that one heard inSingapore, the terrorists forced her to ring up her Foreign Office in Singapore and request it to urge the Government of India not to send thesecurity forces into the hotels. According to the version prevalent in Singapore, when the Singapore Foreign Office refused to intercede inthis matter, the terrorists shot her dead. Why did they do so? What is the reason for their apparent anger against Singapore? This is aquestion, which kept propping up.
7. Apart from the way the attack was planned and executed, the most significant aspect of the attack was the targeting of foreignnationals----particularly the cream of the foreign business community who frequent these hotels. It was because of this that the technicalintelligence agencies of the Western countries diverted all their capabilities to cover the conversations between the terrorists and theirhandlers in Pakistan. It is said that the US moved one of its communication satellites over Mumbai during the 60 hours that the drama lastedin order to cover these conversations.
8. After the drama was over and the National Security Guards (NSGs) had rescued the surviving hostages, the Western countries had alltheir surviving nationals quietly flown to Europe where they were thoroughly debriefed by special teams from their intelligence agencies. Itis said that the French even sent a special plane for evacuating the French and other Western survivors from Mumbai to Paris. Westernexperts are surprised that neither the Mumbai Police nor the central intelligence agencies showed interest in detaining the survivingforeign hostages in India in order to debrief them thoroughly. If they had done so, the details collected by them would have formed animportant part of the dossier prepared by the Ministry of Home Affairs and disseminated to foreign Governments. It is said that such details,which could have been obtained by debriefing the foreign survivors, hardly figure in the dossier.
9. According to foreign experts, the Mumbai Police and the central intelligence agencies were so excited by the capture alive of one of thePakistani perpetrators that they seem to have devoted all their attention to interrogating him and getting as many details as possible, whichcould help them to fix Pakistan. They complain that other important aspects which might have helped them in reconstructing the terroristattack, drawing the right lessons from it and preventing a repetition of similar attacks in future have not received much attention.
10. Pakistan's argument that the Government of India has been trying to divert attention from the colossal failure of its counter-terrorismmachinery in Mumbai by focussing on the alleged involvement of the ISI has started having some takers abroad due to the unprofessionalmanner in which the sequel to the terrorist strike has been handled by the Govt.of India. It is important to hold Pakistan accountable for using terrorism against India through concrete evidence. At the same time, it is equally important to identify the deficiencioes in ourcounter-terrorism machinery and act quickly to remove them. This is not being done.
11. The Mumbai carnage has caused great concern in the Western countries for two reasons. Firstly, the jihadi terrorists in India, who had inthe past showed an increasing preference for explosives over hand-held weapons, have gone back to hand-held weapons for attackingprivate establishments such as hotels, which have anti-explosive checks, but no armed guards to foil an attack with hand-held weapons. Ofthe 163 fatalities in Mumbai, only five were reportedly caused by explosives. The remaining 158 were caused by hand-held weapons (assaultrifles and hand-grenades). This trend of the jihadi terrorists going back to hand-held weapons was first noticed in the Anbar province of Iraqafter 1993 when Al Qaeda killed a number of Americans and others with hand-held weapons. It was noticed in Pakistan in 2007. When thejihadis failed to kill Benazir Bhutto with an explosive device at Karachi in October,2007, they used a mix of a hand-held weapon and anexplosive to successfuly kill her at Rawalpindi on December 27,2007. This trend was noticed in Afghanistan in 2008. While there wasreportedly an one-third increase in the use of explosive devices in Afghanistan, there was a simultaneous increase in the use of hand-heldweapons for precision killings. This trend has now spread to the Indian territory outside Jammu & Kashmir.
12. Secondly, many Western experts feel that there was an Al Qaeda hand in the planning and execution of the Mumbai attack and that suchprecision planning and execution would not have been possible without the involvement of some local Muslims. While Indian experts havebeen able to quantify reasonably well the threat which they would continue to face in J&K, they have not been able to quantify in a similar manner the threat from sections of the Indian Muslim youth outside J&K because of a fear in political circles that such an exercise forquantification might have an adverse effect on the Muslim votes in the forthcoming parliamentary elections..
13. US Congressional committees and professional counter-terrorism organisations in the West are already examining the details of theMumbai carnage in order to draw lessons for themselves and to prevent a Mumbai-style attack in their country. Surprisingly, such anexercise is hardly to be seen in India. All the debate till now has been on what are the options against Pakistan. There has hardly been anypublic debate on what are the options against the terrorists in order to prevent another major attack. ( 12-1-09)
(The writer is Additional Secretasry (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For TopicalStudies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.cm )
