9 Is Not 11 (And November Isn't September)

by Arundhati Roy for Tom Dispatch

We've forfeited the rights to our own tragedies. As the carnage in Mumbai raged on, day after horrible day, our 24-hour news channels informed us that we were watching "India's 9/11." And like actors in a Bollywood rip-off of an old Hollywood film, we're expected to play our parts and say our lines, even though we know it's all been said and done before.

As tension in the region builds, U.S. Senator John McCain has warned Pakistan that, if it didn't act fast to arrest the "bad guys," he had personal information that India would launch air strikes on "terrorist camps" in Pakistan and that Washington could do nothing because Mumbai was India's 9/11.

But November isn't September, 2008 isn't 2001, Pakistan isn't Afghanistan, and India isn't America. So perhaps we should reclaim our tragedy and pick through the debris with our own brains and our own broken hearts so that we can arrive at our own conclusions.

It's odd how, in the last week of November, thousands of people in Kashmir supervised by thousands of Indian troops lined up to cast their vote, while the richest quarters of India's richest city ended up looking like war-torn Kupwara -- one of Kashmir's most ravaged districts.

The Mumbai attacks are only the most recent of a spate of terrorist attacks on Indian towns and cities this year. Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Delhi, Guwahati, Jaipur, and Malegaon have all seen serial bomb blasts in which hundreds of ordinary people have been killed and wounded. If the police are right about the people they have arrested as suspects, both Hindu and Muslim, all are Indian nationals, which obviously indicates that something's going very badly wrong in this country.

If you were watching television you might not have heard that ordinary people, too, died in Mumbai. They were mowed down in a busy railway station and a public hospital. The terrorists did not distinguish between poor and rich. They killed both with equal cold-bloodedness.

The Indian media, however, was transfixed by the rising tide of horror that breached the glittering barricades of "India shining" and spread its stench in the marbled lobbies and crystal ballrooms of two incredibly luxurious hotels and a small Jewish center.

We're told that one of these hotels is an icon of the city of Mumbai. That's absolutely true. It's an icon of the easy, obscene injustice that ordinary Indians endure every day. On a day when the newspapers were full of moving obituaries by beautiful people about the hotel rooms they had stayed in, the gourmet restaurants they loved (ironically one was called Kandahar), and the staff who served them, a small box on the top left-hand corner in the inner pages of a national newspaper (sponsored by a pizza company, I think) said, "Hungry, kya?" ("Hungry eh?"). It, then, with the best of intentions I'm sure, informed its readers that, on the international hunger index, India ranked below Sudan and Somalia.

But of course this isn't that war. That one's still being fought in the Dalit bastis (settlements) of our villages; on the banks of the Narmada and the Koel Karo rivers; in the rubber estate in Chengara; in the villages of Nandigram, Singur, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Lalgarh in West Bengal; and the slums and shantytowns of our gigantic cities.

That war isn't on TV. Yet.

So maybe, like everyone else, we should deal with the one that is.

Terrorism and the Need for Context

There is a fierce, unforgiving fault line that runs through the contemporary discourse on terrorism. On one side (let's call it Side A) are those who see terrorism, especially "Islamist" terrorism, as a hateful, insane scourge that spins on its own axis, in its own orbit, and has nothing to do with the world around it, nothing to do with history, geography, or economics. Therefore, Side A says, to try to place it in a political context, or even to try to understand it, amounts to justifying it and is a crime in itself.

Side B believes that, though nothing can ever excuse or justify it, terrorism exists in a particular time, place, and political context, and to refuse to see that will only aggravate the problem and put more and more people in harm's way. Which is a crime in itself.

The sayings of Hafiz Saeed who founded the Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure) in 1990 and who belongs to the hard-line Salafi tradition of Islam, certainly bolsters the case of Side A. Hafiz Saeed approves of suicide bombing, hates Jews, Shias, and Democracy, and believes that jihad should be waged until Islam, his Islam, rules the world.

Among the things he said are:

"There cannot be any peace while India remains intact. Cut them, cut them so much that they kneel before you and ask for mercy."

And: "India has shown us this path. We would like to give India a tit-for-tat response and reciprocate in the same way by killing the Hindus, just like it is killing the Muslims in Kashmir."

But where would Side A accommodate the sayings of Babu Bajrangi of Ahmedabad, India, who sees himself as a democrat, not a terrorist? He was one of the major lynchpins of the 2002 Gujarat genocide and has said (on camera):

"We didn't spare a single Muslim shop, we set everything on fire… we hacked, burned, set on fire… we believe in setting them on fire because these bastards don't want to be cremated, they're afraid of it… I have just one last wish… let me be sentenced to death… I don't care if I'm hanged... just give me two days before my hanging and I will go and have a field day in Juhapura where seven or eight lakhs [seven or eight hundred thousand] of these people stay... I will finish them off… let a few more of them die... at least twenty-five thousand to fifty thousand should die."

And where in Side A's scheme of things would we place the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh bible, We, or, Our Nationhood Defined by M. S. Golwalkar , who became head of the RSS in 1944. (The RSS is the ideological heart, the holding company of the Hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP, and its militias. The RSS was founded in 1925. By the 1930s, its founder, Dr. K. B. Hedgewar, a fan of Benito Mussolini's, had begun to model it overtly along the lines of Italian fascism.)

It says:

"Ever since that evil day, when Moslems first landed in Hindustan, right up to the present moment, the Hindu Nation has been gallantly fighting on to take on these despoilers. The Race Spirit has been awakening."

Or:

"To keep up the purity of its race and culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races -- the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here... a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by."

Of course Muslims are not the only people in the gun sights of the Hindu Right. Dalits have been consistently targeted. Recently, in Kandhamal in Orissa, Christians were the target of two and a half months of violence that left more than 40 dead. Forty thousand people have been driven from their homes, half of whom now live in refugee camps.

All these years Hafiz Saeed has lived the life of a respectable man in Lahore as the head of the Jamaat-ud Daawa, which many believe is a front organization for the Lashkar-e-Taiba. He continues to recruit young boys for his own bigoted jihad with his twisted, fiery sermons. On December 11, the United Nations imposed sanctions on the Jamaat-ud-Daawa. The Pakistani government succumbed to international pressure and put Hafiz Saeed under house arrest.

Babu Bajrangi, however, is out on bail and lives the life of a respectable man in Gujarat. A couple of years after the genocide, he left the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP, a militia of the RSS) to join the Shiv Sena (another rightwing nationalist party). Narendra Modi, Bajrangi's former mentor, is still the Chief Minister of Gujarat.

So the man who presided over the Gujarat genocide was reelected twice, and is deeply respected by India's biggest corporate houses, Reliance and Tata. Suhel Seth, a TV impresario and corporate spokesperson, recently said, "Modi is God." The policemen who supervised and sometimes even assisted the rampaging Hindu mobs in Gujarat have been rewarded and promoted.

The RSS has 45,000 branches and seven million volunteers preaching its doctrine of hate across India. They include Narendra Modi, but also former Prime Minister A. B. Vajpayee, current leader of the opposition L. K. Advani, and a host of other senior politicians, bureaucrats, and police and intelligence officers.

And if that's not enough to complicate our picture of secular democracy, we should place on record that there are plenty of Muslim organizations within India preaching their own narrow bigotry.

So, on balance, if I had to choose between Side A and Side B, I'd pick Side B. We need context. Always.

A Close Embrace of Hatred, Terrifying Familiarity, and Love

On this nuclear subcontinent, that context is Partition. The Radcliffe Line, which separated India and Pakistan and tore through states, districts, villages, fields, communities, water systems, homes, and families, was drawn virtually overnight. It was Britain's final, parting kick to us.

Partition triggered the massacre of more than a million people and the largest migration of a human population in contemporary history. Eight million people, Hindus fleeing the new Pakistan, Muslims fleeing the new kind of India, left their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

Each of those people carries, and passes down, a story of unimaginable pain, hate, horror, but yearning too. That wound, those torn but still unsevered muscles, that blood and those splintered bones still lock us together in a close embrace of hatred, terrifying familiarity, but also love. It has left Kashmir trapped in a nightmare from which it can't seem to emerge, a nightmare that has claimed more than 60,000 lives.

Pakistan, the Land of the Pure, became an Islamic Republic, and then very quickly a corrupt, violent military state, openly intolerant of other faiths.

India on the other hand declared herself an inclusive, secular democracy. It was a magnificent undertaking, but Babu Bajrangi's predecessors had been hard at work since the 1920s, dripping poison into India's bloodstream, undermining that idea of India even before it was born.

By 1990, they were ready to make a bid for power. In 1992 Hindu mobs exhorted by L. K. Advani stormed the Babri Masjid and demolished it.

By 1998, the BJP was in power at the center. The U.S. War on Terror put the wind in their sails. It allowed them to do exactly as they pleased, even to commit genocide and then present their fascism as a legitimate form of chaotic democracy.

This happened at a time when India had opened its huge market to international finance and it was in the interests of international corporations and the media houses they owned to project it as a country that could do no wrong. That gave Hindu nationalists all the impetus and the impunity they needed.

This, then, is the larger historical context of terrorism on the subcontinent -- and of the Mumbai attacks. It shouldn't surprise us that Hafiz Saeed of the Lashkar-e-Taiba is from Shimla (India) and L. K. Advani of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is from Sindh (Pakistan).

In much the same way as it did after the 2001 Parliament attack, the 2002 burning of the Sabarmati Express, and the 2007 bombing of the Samjhauta Express, the government of India announced that it has "incontrovertible" evidence that the Lashkar-e-Taiba, backed by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was behind the Mumbai strikes.

The Lashkar has denied involvement, but remains the prime accused. According to the police and intelligence agencies, the Lashkar operates in India through an organization called the "Indian Mujahideen." Two Indian nationals, Sheikh Mukhtar Ahmed, a Special Police Officer working for the Jammu and Kashmir Police, and Tausif Rehman, a resident of Kolkata in West Bengal, have been arrested in connection with the Mumbai attacks.

So already the neat accusation against Pakistan is getting a little messy.

Almost always, when these stories unspool, they reveal a complicated global network of foot soldiers, trainers, recruiters, middlemen, and undercover intelligence and counter-intelligence operatives working not just on both sides of the India-Pakistan border, but in several countries simultaneously.

In today's world, trying to pin down the provenance of a terrorist strike and isolate it within the borders of a single nation state, is very much like trying to pin down the provenance of corporate money. It's almost impossible.

In circumstances like these, air strikes to "take out" terrorist camps may take out the camps, but certainly will not "take out" the terrorists. And neither will war.

Also, in our bid for the moral high ground, let's try not to forget that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the LTTE of neighboring Sri Lanka, one of the world's most deadly terrorist groups, were trained by the Indian Army.

Releasing Frankensteins

Thanks largely to the part it was forced to play as America's ally, first in its war in support of the Afghan Islamists and then in its war against them, Pakistan, whose territory is reeling under these contradictions, is careening toward civil war.

As recruiting agents for America's jihad against the Soviet Union, it was the job of the Pakistani Army and the ISI to nurture and channel funds to Islamic fundamentalist organizations. Having wired up these Frankensteins and released them into the world, the U.S. expected it could rein them in like pet mastiffs whenever it wanted to. Certainly it did not expect them to come calling in the heart of the homeland on September 11. So once again, Afghanistan had to be violently remade.

Now the debris of a re-ravaged Afghanistan has washed up on Pakistan's borders.

Nobody, least of all the Pakistani government, denies that it is presiding over a country that is threatening to implode. The terrorist training camps, the fire-breathing mullahs, and the maniacs who believe that Islam will, or should, rule the world are mostly the detritus of two Afghan wars. Their ire rains down on the Pakistani government and Pakistani civilians as much, if not more, than it does on India.

If, at this point, India decides to go to war, perhaps the descent of the whole region into chaos will be complete. The debris of a bankrupt, destroyed Pakistan will wash up on India's shores, endangering us as never before.

If Pakistan collapses, we can look forward to having millions of "non-state actors" with an arsenal of nuclear weapons at their disposal as neighbors.

It's hard to understand why those who steer India's ship are so keen to replicate Pakistan's mistakes and call damnation upon this country by inviting the United States to further meddle clumsily and dangerously in our extremely complicated affairs. A superpower never has allies. It only has agents.

On the plus side, the advantage of going to war is that it's the best way for India to avoid facing up to the serious trouble building on our home front.

The Mumbai attacks were broadcast live (and exclusive!) on all or most of our 67 24-hour news channels and god knows how many international ones. TV anchors in their studios and journalists at "ground zero" kept up an endless stream of excited commentary.

Over three days and three nights we watched in disbelief as a small group of very young men, armed with guns and gadgets, exposed the powerlessness of the police, the elite National Security Guard, and the marine commandos of this supposedly mighty, nuclear-powered nation.

While they did this, they indiscriminately massacred unarmed people, in railway stations, hospitals, and luxury hotels, unmindful of their class, caste, religion, or nationality.

(Part of the helplessness of the security forces had to do with having to worry about hostages. In other situations, in Kashmir for example, their tactics are not so sensitive. Whole buildings are blown up. Human shields are used. The U.S. and Israeli armies don't hesitate to send cruise missiles into buildings and drop daisy cutters on wedding parties in Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan.)

But this was different. And it was on TV.

The boy-terrorists' nonchalant willingness to kill -- and be killed -- mesmerized their international audience. They delivered something different from the usual diet of suicide bombings and missile attacks that people have grown inured to on the news.

Here was something new. Die Hard 25. The gruesome performance went on and on. TV ratings soared. Ask any television magnate or corporate advertiser who measures broadcast time in seconds, not minutes, what that's worth.

Eventually the killers died and died hard, all but one. (Perhaps, in the chaos, some escaped. We may never know.)

Throughout the standoff the terrorists made no demands and expressed no desire to negotiate. Their purpose was to kill people, and inflict as much damage as they could, before they were killed themselves. They left us completely bewildered.

Collateral Damage

When we say, "Nothing can justify terrorism," what most of us mean is that nothing can justify the taking of human life. We say this because we respect life, because we think it's precious.

So what are we to make of those who care nothing for life, not even their own? The truth is that we have no idea what to make of them, because we can sense that even before they've died, they've journeyed to another world where we cannot reach them.

One TV channel (India TV) broadcast a phone conversation with one of the attackers, who called himself "Imran Babar." I cannot vouch for the veracity of the conversation, but the things he talked about were the things contained in the "terror emails" that were sent out before several other bomb attacks in India. Things we don't want to talk about any more: the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, the genocidal slaughter of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, the brutal repression in Kashmir.

"You're surrounded," the anchor told him. "You are definitely going to die. Why don't you surrender?"

"We die every day," he replied in a strange, mechanical way. "It's better to live one day as a lion and then die this way." He didn't seem to want to change the world. He just seemed to want to take it down with him.

If the men were indeed members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, why didn't it matter to them that a large number of their victims were Muslim, or that their action was likely to result in a severe backlash against the Muslim community in India whose rights they claim to be fighting for?

Terrorism is a heartless ideology, and like most ideologies that have their eye on the Big Picture, individuals don't figure in their calculations except as collateral damage.

It has always been a part of, and often even the aim of, terrorist strategy to exacerbate a bad situation in order to expose hidden fault lines. The blood of "martyrs" irrigates terrorism. Hindu terrorists need dead Hindus, Communist terrorists need dead proletarians, Islamist terrorists need dead Muslims. The dead become the demonstration, the proof of victimhood, which is central to the project.

A single act of terrorism is not in itself meant to achieve military victory; at best it is meant to be a catalyst that triggers something else, something much larger than itself, a tectonic shift, a realignment. The act itself is theater, spectacle, and symbolism, and today the stage on which it pirouettes and performs its acts of bestiality is Live TV. Even as TV anchors were being condemned by other TV anchors, the effectiveness of the terror strikes was being magnified a thousand-fold by the TV broadcasts.

Through the endless hours of analysis and the endless op-ed essays, in India at least, there has been very little mention of the elephants in the room: Kashmir, Gujarat, and the demolition of the Babri Masjid.

Instead, we had retired diplomats and strategic experts debate the pros and cons of a war against Pakistan. We had the rich threatening not to pay their taxes unless their security was guaranteed. (Is it alright for the poor to remain unprotected?) We had people suggest that the government step down and each state in India be handed over to a separate corporation.

We had the death of former Prime Minster V. P. Singh, the hero of Dalits and lower castes, and the villain of upper caste Hindus pass without a mention.

We had Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City and co-writer of the Bollywood film Mission Kashmir give us his version of George Bush's famous "Why They Hate Us" speech. His analysis of why religious bigots, both Hindu and Muslim, hate Mumbai: "Perhaps because Mumbai stands for lucre, profane dreams and an indiscriminate openness."

His prescription: "The best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Mumbai more than ever."

Didn't George Bush ask Americans to go out and shop after 9/11? Ah yes. 9/11, the day we can't seem to get away from.

A Shadowy History of Suspicious Terror Attacks

Though one chapter of horror in Mumbai has ended, another might have just begun. Day after day, a powerful, vociferous section of the Indian elite, goaded by marauding TV anchors who make Fox News look almost radical and left-wing, have taken to mindlessly attacking politicians, all politicians, glorifying the police and the army, and virtually asking for a police state.

It isn't surprising that those who have grown plump on the pickings of democracy (such as it is) should now be calling for a police state. The era of "pickings" is long gone. We're now in the era of Grabbing by Force, and democracy has a terrible habit of getting in the way.

Dangerous, stupid oversimplifications like the Police are Good/Politicians are Bad, Chief Executives are Good/Chief Ministers are Bad, Army is Good/Government is Bad, India is Good/Pakistan is Bad are being bandied about by TV channels that have already whipped their viewers into a state of almost uncontrollable hysteria.

Tragically this regression into intellectual infancy comes at a time when people in India were beginning to see that, in the business of terrorism, victims and perpetrators sometimes exchange roles.

It's an understanding that the people of Kashmir, given their dreadful experiences of the last 20 years, have honed to an exquisite art. On the mainland we're still learning. (If Kashmir won't willingly integrate into India, it's beginning to look as though India will integrate/disintegrate into Kashmir.)

It was after the 2001 Parliament attack that the first serious questions began to be raised. A campaign by a group of lawyers and activists exposed how innocent people had been framed by the police and the press, how evidence was fabricated, how witnesses lied, how due process had been criminally violated at every stage of the investigation.

Eventually, the courts acquitted two out of the four accused, including S. A. R. Geelani, the man whom the police claimed was the mastermind of the operation. A third, Showkat Guru, was acquitted of all the charges brought against him, but was then convicted for a fresh, comparatively minor offense.

The Supreme Court upheld the death sentence of another of the accused, Mohammad Afzal. In its judgment the court acknowledged that there was no proof that Mohammed Afzal belonged to any terrorist group, but went on to say, quite shockingly, "The collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender."

Even today we don't really know who the terrorists that attacked the Indian Parliament were and who they worked for.

More recently, on September 19th of this year, we had the controversial "encounter" at Batla House in Jamia Nagar, Delhi, where the Special Cell of the Delhi police gunned down two Muslim students in their rented flat under seriously questionable circumstances, claiming that they were responsible for serial bombings in Delhi, Jaipur, and Ahmedabad in 2008. An assistant commissioner of police, Mohan Chand Sharma, who played a key role in the Parliament attack investigation, lost his life as well. He was one of India's many "encounter specialists," known and rewarded for having summarily executed several "terrorists."

There was an outcry against the Special Cell from a spectrum of people, ranging from eyewitnesses in the local community to senior Congress Party leaders, students, journalists, lawyers, academics, and activists, all of whom demanded a judicial inquiry into the incident.

In response, the BJP and L. K. Advani lauded Mohan Chand Sharma as a "Braveheart" and launched a concerted campaign in which they targeted those who had dared to question the integrity of the police, saying to do so was "suicidal" and calling them "anti-national." Of course, there has been no enquiry.

Only days after the Batla House event, another story about "terrorists" surfaced in the news. In a report submitted to a Sessions Court, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said that a team from Delhi's Special Cell (the same team that led the Batla House encounter, including Mohan Chand Sharma) had abducted two innocent men, Irshad Ali and Moarif Qamar, in December 2005, planted two kilograms of RDX (explosives) and two pistols on them, and then arrested them as "terrorists" who belonged to Al Badr (which operates out of Kashmir).

Ali and Qamar, who have spent years in jail, are only two examples out of hundreds of Muslims who have been similarly jailed, tortured, and even killed on false charges.

This pattern changed in October 2008 when Maharashtra's Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), which was investigating the September 2008 Malegaon blasts, arrested a Hindu preacher Sadhvi Pragya, a self-styled God man, Swami Dayanand Pande, and Lt. Col. Purohit, a serving officer of the Indian Army. All the arrested belong to Hindu nationalist organizations, including a Hindu supremacist group called Abhinav Bharat.

The Shiv Sena, the BJP, and the RSS condemned the Maharashtra ATS, and vilified its chief, Hemant Karkare, claiming he was part of a political conspiracy and declaring that "Hindus could not be terrorists." L. K. Advani changed his mind about his policy on the police and made rabble rousing speeches to huge gatherings in which he denounced the ATS for daring to cast aspersions on holy men and women.

On November 25th, newspapers reported that the ATS was investigating the high profile VHP chief Pravin Togadia's possible role in the blasts in Malegaon (a predominantly Muslim town). The next day, in an extraordinary twist of fate, Hemant Karkare was killed in the Mumbai attacks. The chances are that the new chief, whoever he is, will find it hard to withstand the political pressure that is bound to be brought on him over the Malegaon investigation.

While the Sangh Parivar does not seem to have come to a final decision over whether or not it is anti-national and suicidal to question the police, Arnab Goswami, anchorperson of Times Now television, has stepped up to the plate. He has taken to naming, demonizing, and openly heckling people who have dared to question the integrity of the police and armed forces.

My name and the name of the well-known lawyer Prashant Bhushan have come up several times. At one point, while interviewing a former police officer, Arnab Goswami turned to the camera: "Arundhati Roy and Prashant Bhushan," he said. "I hope you are watching this. We think you are disgusting."

For a TV anchor to do this in an atmosphere as charged and as frenzied as the one that prevails today amounts to incitement, as well as threat, and would probably in different circumstances have cost a journalist his or her job.

So, according to a man aspiring to be the next prime minister of India, and another who is the public face of a mainstream TV channel, citizens have no right to raise questions about the police.

This in a country with a shadowy history of suspicious terror attacks, murky investigations, and fake "encounters." This in a country that boasts of the highest number of custodial deaths in the world, and yet refuses to ratify the international covenant on torture. A country where the ones who make it to torture chambers are the lucky ones because at least they've escaped being "encountered" by our Encounter Specialists. A country where the line between the underworld and the Encounter Specialists virtually does not exist.

The Monster in the Mirror

How should those of us whose hearts have been sickened by the knowledge of all of this view the Mumbai attacks, and what are we to do about them?

There are those who point out that U.S. strategy has been successful inasmuch as the United States has not suffered a major attack on its home ground since 9/11. However, some would say that what America is suffering now is far worse.

If the idea behind the 9/11 terror attacks was to goad America into showing its true colors, what greater success could the terrorists have asked for? The U.S. military is bogged down in two unwinnable wars, which have made the United States the most hated country in the world. Those wars have contributed greatly to the unraveling of the American economy and who knows, perhaps eventually the American empire.

(Could it be that battered, bombed Afghanistan, the graveyard of the Soviet Union, will be the undoing of this one too?)

Hundreds of thousands of people, including thousands of American soldiers, have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. The frequency of terrorist strikes on U.S. allies/agents (including India) and U.S. interests in the rest of the world has increased dramatically since 9/11.

George W. Bush, the man who led the U.S. response to 9/11, is a despised figure not just internationally, but also by his own people.

Who can possibly claim that the United States is winning the War on Terror?

Homeland Security has cost the U.S. government billions of dollars. Few countries, certainly not India, can afford that sort of price tag. But even if we could, the fact is that this vast homeland of ours cannot be secured or policed in the way the United States has been. It's not that kind of homeland.

We have a hostile nuclear-weapons state that is slowly spinning out of control as a neighbor; we have a military occupation in Kashmir and a shamefully persecuted, impoverished minority of more than 150 million Muslims who are being targeted as a community and pushed to the wall, whose young see no justice on the horizon, and who, were they to totally lose hope and radicalize, will end up as a threat not just to India, but to the whole world.

If 10 men can hold off the NSG commandos and the police for three days, and if it takes half a million soldiers to hold down the Kashmir valley, do the math. What kind of Homeland Security can secure India?

Nor for that matter will any other quick fix.

Anti-terrorism laws are not meant for terrorists; they're for people that governments don't like. That's why they have a conviction rate of less than 2%. They're just a means of putting inconvenient people away without bail for a long time and eventually letting them go.

Terrorists like those who attacked Mumbai are hardly likely to be deterred by the prospect of being refused bail or being sentenced to death. It's what they want.

What we're experiencing now is blowback, the cumulative result of decades of quick fixes and dirty deeds. The carpet's squelching under our feet.

The only way to contain -- it would be naïve to say end -- terrorism is to look at the monster in the mirror. We're standing at a fork in the road. One sign says "Justice," the other "Civil War." There's no third sign and there's no going back. Choose.

Arundhati Roy was born in 1959 in Shillong, India. She studied architecture in New Delhi, where she now lives, and has worked as a film designer, actor, and screenplay writer in India. A tenth anniversary edition of her novel, The God of Small Things (Random House), for which she received the 1997 Booker Prize, will be officially published within days. She is also the author of numerous nonfiction titles, including An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire. This piece was published by Outlook India, which is sharing it with TomDispatch.com.

Former ISI chief Hamid Gul - Mumbai attacks, 911 "inside jobs"

The former head of the Pakistani ISI was interviewed by CNN's Fareed Zakaria recently. He had interesting things to say. Here is the transcript of the interview:

ZAKARIA: General Gul, you know that the United States has given four names to the United Nations of ISI officers whom it would like to place on an international terrorist list. You are one of those four names.

What's your reaction to that.

GEN. HAMID GUL, FORMER PAKISTANI INTELLIGENCE CHIEF (via broadband): I think this is a frame-up, a total frame-up. I have - I have my own (ph) voice. And I raise. I have a position which I express freely, openly. I'm like an open book.

This is preposterous. This is wrong. This is fallacious. And if my government does not ...

ZAKARIA: What are the charges against you?

GUL: ... XX me, they ...

ZAKARIA: What are the charges against you?

GUL: Their charges are that I am helping the Taliban and al Qaeda. And what - this is so generalized. And particularly, there is the mention of Sarajo Din Nohani (ph), whom I have never seen in my life. I don't know who he is. I knew his father, Jalal ud-Din Nohani (ph), way back when I was D.G. ISI. But that's been a long time ago.

I have nothing to do - I have no means to help them. But, of course, my position is that Americans have aggressed in Afghanistan. And whoever is resisting, the resistance there is justifiable.

So, that is my position. I will maintain that position. If that becomes the basis of dubbing me as terrorist, then I would say, it's all right.

But other than that, to say that I'm practically involved in any kind of help - absolutely wrong. I am not that at all. ZAKARIA: General Gul, when you read about these attacks in Mumbai, and you see - when you read about the attacks in Mumbai, this is a three-stage, amphibious assault in which the boats were commandeered, the captain and crew then killed.

They maintained radio silence. They split up into pairs. They know their locations. They make a few false targets to draw the first responders there.

This seems like a military operation.

Isn't it likely that there was some special forces or intelligence assistance given to these attackers?

GUL: Indeed. I think that this was a very sophisticated operation. There is no doubt about it. It has rocked the - and I have all my sympathies for India - they rock this huge country for 72 hours. And they really don't know how to react and respond to this.

But when you look at the full spectrum of possibilities, who could have done it, then one knows that Samjhauta Express was a similar case, in which Pakistan ISI was accused. But it turned out that it was the militant Hindus themselves who had killed 68 passengers in that train, and that it was an inside job.

Now Colonel Srikant Purohit, who is a serving army officer, he has been caught in this particular case. And the whole thing has turned around.

So, obviously, there is an inside job.

ZAKARIA: If it turns out, as the one surviving terrorist says, that these people were trained in Pakistan in four separate locations, do you think it would be retired ISI people? Who would be training these groups?

GUL: Not necessarily. It is a question of motivation only. If somebody is motivated, then it is - because what kind of weapons did they use? That's very important. They used flashing (ph) calls (ph). They used the hand grenades. And this is - this doesn't require a great deal of training. And, of course, these weapons are also available in the open market.

If the evidence is there, then I am one of the people who would say, yes, India really has been done a great deal of wrong. We have said - and Pakistan government policy has been very clearly enunciated - that we will punish them. Bring the evidence, we'll take them to task. But so far, no bodies have been shown, no faces have been shown. And this man has not also been brought before the cameras.

I think the evidence has to be, because you cannot, on the basis of accusation alone, start taking actions which can unleash historical kind of changes. And this would be a watershed in the relationship between India and Pakistan, and we have to be very careful about it.

ZAKARIA: But are you confident that the ISI does not have links, formal or informal, with Lashkar-e-Taiba?

GUL: I have no linkages with them. But I do understand the character of an organization. It's a highly disciplined organization, unlike the other organizations. Their political appointees can be infiltrated.

In the ISI, it is only the uniformed personnel who come and serve for two to three years. And then they revert back to their parent services. So, they are bread-and-butter. Their career advancement, their promotion chances - they all lie with the three armed services, that is, navy, army and the air force.

So, there is one organization, intelligence organization, which would remain absolutely on the line. That would be the ISI.

Unless you say that, OK, the army is behind it, the Pakistan government's policy is this. ISI cannot do a maverick job like this. It is unbelievable.

ZAKARIA: The president of Pakistan, Mr. Zardari, the day after the attacks, said that he would send the head of the ISI to India to cooperate. The next day it was revealed that, effectively, the army chief of staff had overruled him.

Is that appropriate for the elected head of state to be overruled by the head of the army?

GUL: Well, I think it was a good thing that they withdrew their decision. And besides, sending the D.G. ISI is something totally - Indians should not have demanded this, and Pakistan should not have accepted to send him, because it was only an accusation at that time.

And it was not a question of cooperation, it was a question of interrogating, summoning him. In fact, the word "summon" was used. And that was an affront to the national honor of Pakistan and that of the Pakistan armed forces.

ZAKARIA: Do you think we should be thinking of al Qaeda as a terrorist group? I know that there was a conference in January 2001, which you attended, at which you felt that bin Laden was better described as a religious warrior, and should not actually be thought of as a terrorist.

GUL: No. We said, unless the evidence is brought up against him, then he is not a terrorist. It's wrong. 9/11's full evidence has still not emerged. It is still shrouded in mystery.

A lot of people have a lot of misgivings about that. And it's not only me. I think a lot of people in America would be thinking the same way. There are scientists, there are scholars, who have written articles on it.

So, I think to dub a man as terrorist - because I know, I heard him twice say on radio, or something like that, and I think it was Osama - not only that, but Mullah Omar also said that he did not believe that Osama had carried out that act. So, that is still a mystery, and it needs to be resolved. Americans have still to set up a proper commission, an inquiry commission, into this event. I think that's very important. And I think President-designate Obama would do well to set up an inquiry commission into this.

ZAKARIA: What is your hunch as to who did - who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks?

GUL: Well, I have been on record, and I said it is the Zionists or (ph) the neocons. They have done it. It was an inside job.

And they wanted to go on the world conquerors. They were looking upon it as an opportunity window, when the Muslim world was lying prostrate. Russia was nowhere in sight. China was still not an economic giant that is has turned out to be.

And they thought that this was a good time to go and fill (ph) those strategic areas, which are still lying without any American presence. And, of course, to control the energy tap of the world.

Presently, it is the Middle East, and in future it is going to be Central Asia. So, there are many, many XX. And, of course ...

ZAKARIA: But you think ...

GUL: ... XX.

ZAKARIA: But you think who would be ...

GUL: That's what I also think, yes.

ZAKARIA: Who is at the heart of - who do you think was at the heart of plotting 9/11?

GUL: At the - it's very difficult, really. I wouldn't point my finger at it.

But I think it was planned in America. And at least one knows that it was done in Germany, as far as the reports go.

But I think the heart of planning was inside America, because the job was done there. But not a single person so far has been captured, caught, interrogated inside America, even though this entire episode took place there.

ZAKARIA: But you've said that the people behind it were the Zionists, neocon conspiracy. Do you mean by that American Jews? Do you mean Israel?

GUL: No Israel. I will not - because Jews are also divided into - not all Jews are bad. Of course, there are a lot of things common between Jews and Muslims.

In fact, they are the closest to us religion-wise, because some of their scriptures are respected by us. Their prophets are our prophets. They have the injunctions in Torah are very much similar to injunctions in the Holy Quran. So, there are things which are very common.

But there are those people who are very ambitious, who have a certain agenda of their own. And I think they have turned the world upside-down, because of those ambitions or their fears.

So, fear and ambitions are two things which have come together as far as Zionists are concerned. And they are trying to drive the policies of America. And unfortunately, the American people are suffering because of that.

Mumbai massacre story unfolds in terrorist’s interrogation

The Hindu reports:

For the past week, newspaper readers across the world gazed at photographs of the dark young man who, sack slung over his shoulder, was caught on closed-circuit camera minutes before he opened fire at commuters at a busy Mumbai railway station.

Based on interviews with key officers involved in the investigation and on the interrogation records of the terrorist, The Hindu has been able to assemble key parts of the story behind the face.

Mohammad Ajmal Amir Iman (wrongly identified earlier as Kamaal and Kasav) began his journey to Mumbai on September 15, 2008. He was part of a group of ten men who had spent months training in marine combat and navigation skills in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and Punjab.

Lashkar military commander Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi, Iman has told investigators, showed them detailed maps of south Mumbai, and films of the targets they had been tasked to hit. Iman and his partner ‘Abu Umar’ — whose name, he learned, was in fact Mohammad Ismail — were tasked with attacking the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus.

Iman and the other terrorists were set to leave for Mumbai on September 27.

For reasons he claims to be unaware of, they were ordered to hold back. Late on November 22, Lakhvi finally gave the team a heads-up. At 4:15 a.m. on November 23, Iman and Ismail rowed out to sea along with four other groups: men Iman knew as Abu Akasha and Abu Umar; ‘Bada’ [Big] Abdul Rehman and Abu Ali; ‘Chhota’ [small] Abdul Rehman and Afadullah; Shoaib and Umar.

Each man was equipped with a Kalashnikov rifle and 200 rounds of ammunition and grenades. The group also had at least one state-of-the art Garmin global positioning system set, and several mobile phones fitted with SIM cards, which have now been determined to have been purchased in Kolkata and New Delhi. Three men had larger bags, packed with five timer-controlled Improvised Explosive Devices.

Near Indian coastal waters, the men hijacked a fishing boat. On reaching Mumbai, they rowed the last few nautical miles to Budhwar Park in an inflatable dinghy. From Budhwar Park, they travelled on to their targets by hailing taxis. Iman and Ismail reached CST as planned, and opened fire on the assembled commuters. While Ismail was killed when policemen at the site returned fire, braving grenades thrown at them, Iman was injured and is now in the Mumbai hospital.

Mumbai police officials were able to defuse two of the IEDs planted at the Taj Mahal hotel and a third at the Oberoi hotel, even as fighting broke out. This police action saved dozens of lives. However, two bombs went off in taxis used by the group, possibly after being abandoned in the vehicles.

Iman has told interrogators that right through the fighting, the Lashkar headquarters remained in touch with the group, calling their phones through a voice-over-internet service. In all likelihood, Indian investigators were able to intercept these calls, which would then form part of a compelling body of evidence to corroborate Iman’s account. In addition, Mumbai police sources said, investigators have succeeded in reconstructing the group’s journey through the Garmin GPS set that has been seized.

Opinion: Al-Qaeda wants Pak to divert army to Indian border

(thanks to alibi "a" for sending me this piece!)

by Dinesh Narayanan for ibn live:

In the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attacks, the question that everyone is asking is 'Why'. India already claims it has evidence of Pakistani hand. On Friday, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had made a stern call to Pakistan and had asked them to send the head of its intelligence agency, the ISI, to India. However, Pakistan has refused to do the same.

But is it a bit too soon to jump to conclusions? In an attempt to get some answers, we speak to Lahore-based journalist Ahmed Rashid, an expert on South and Central Asia who authored bestsellers such as Jihad, Taliban and Descent into Chaos. He tells Forbes Network 18's Dinesh Narayanan on phone from Rome that the attacks are a conspiracy to drive a wedge between the two neighbours. Excerpts from the interview:

QUES: Do you think the attack on Mumbai was planned to de-stabilise the conciliatory efforts of the Indian and Pakistani governments?

Ahmed Rashid: I think the attacks were strategically planned by al-Qaeda through the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) militants they train. It is trying to work out a space for itself in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). They have been hurting very badly in there because of pressure from the Pakistani army and US missile attacks.

QUES: What is the objective?

Ahmed Rashid: It is a military strategic objective to get the army out of Bajour and stop the US from stepping in. If tensions between India and Pakistan escalate, the army will be moved to the Indian border, as happened in 2002. After the attacks on the Parliament House in Delhi, India built up troops on the border. Pakistan responded by moving its army from the Afghanistan border to the Indian one. And al-Qaeda had a free run of FATA. They are looking to repeat the exercise.

QUES: Do you think they are likely to succeed?

Ahmed Rashid: The danger is the escalation of India-Pakistan accusations. They should not fall into the al-Qaeda trap. The Indian Government has already jumped the gun a bit. It is a weak government and is under pressure to do something.

QUES: What would happen if the Indian and Pakistani governments see through the trap?

Ahmed Rashid: Then there will be more attacks in Pakistan. This is a very critical period for al-Qaeda. It has only a few months. The US is preparing to send 20,000 troops into Afghanistan by April. The al-Qaeda is under tremendous pressure. They need to do something.

QUES: Will the new government in Pakistan be able to genuinely change the relationship with India?

Ahmed Rashid: It is a weak civilian government, just like the Indian Government. It is a Government that is besieged by a collapsing economy and tensions with the army. But it has its heart in the right place. The army needs to come under a democratic government for the outlook on national security to change.

Dinesh Narayanan is Associate Editor at the new business magazine to be launched by Network 18 in alliance with Forbes, USA.

India on "war level" security alert

By Bappa Majumdar for Reuters India:

India will increase security in the country and on its borders to a "war level" in the wake of the deadly attacks in Mumbai that killed nearly 200 people, a government minister said on Sunday.

"Our intelligence will be increased to a war level, we are asking the state governments to increase security to a war level," Sriprakash Jaiswal, India's minister for state for home affairs, told Reuters in an interview.

India said on Sunday it had proof of a Pakistani link to the Mumbai attacks, while officials in Islamabad said it would move troops to the Indian border if tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals spilled over.

"They can say what they want, but we have no doubt that the terrorists had come from Pakistan," Jaiswal said.

India has already boosted coastal security with the Indian Navy and the coast guard carrying out coordination patrols.

The Mumbai attackers are said to have come to the city by sea from the Pakistani port of Karachi, according to security officials.

They have said they were from the Lashkar-e-Taiba a Pakistan-based group that has been blamed for previous attacks in India.

"We have evidence of their nationalities. We will reveal everything soon," Jaiswal added.

Press reveals gruesome details about the Mumbai attacks

Rediff India Abroad reports:

Doctors shocked at hostages's torture

by Krishnakumar P and Vicky Nanjappa in Mumbai

They said that just one look at the bodies of the dead hostages as well as terrorists showed it was a battle of attrition that was fought over three days at the Oberoi and the Taj hotels in Mumbai.

Doctors working in a hospital where all the bodies, including that of the terrorists, were taken said they had not seen anything like this in their lives.

"Bombay has a long history of terror. I have seen bodies of riot victims, gang war and previous terror attacks like bomb blasts. But this was entirely different. It was shocking and disturbing," a doctor said.

Asked what was different about the victims of the incident, another doctor said: "It was very strange. I have seen so many dead bodies in my life, and was yet traumatised. A bomb blast victim's body might have been torn apart and could be a very disturbing sight. But the bodies of the victims in this attack bore such signs about the kind of violence of urban warfare that I am still unable to put my thoughts to words," he said.

Asked specifically if he was talking of torture marks, he said: "It was apparent that most of the dead were tortured. What shocked me were the telltale signs showing clearly how the hostages were executed in cold blood," one doctor said.

The other doctor, who had also conducted the post-mortem of the victims, said: "Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks. It was clear that they were killed on the 26th itself. It was obvious that they were tied up and tortured before they were killed. It was so bad that I do not want to go over the details even in my head again," he said.

Corroborating the doctors' claims about torture was the information that the Intelligence Bureau had about the terror plan. "During his interrogation, Ajmal Kamal said they were specifically asked to target the foreigners, especially the Israelis," an IB source said.

It is also said that the Israeli hostages were killed on the first day as keeping them hostage for too long would have focused too much international attention. "They also might have feared the chances of Israeli security agencies taking over the operations at the Nariman House," he reasoned.

On the other hand, there is enough to suggest that the terrorists also did not meet a clean, death.

The doctors who conducted the post mortem said the bodies of the terrorists were beyond recognition. "Their faces were beyond recognition."

There was no way of identifying them," he said. Asked how, if this is the case, they knew the bodies were indeed those of the terrorists, he said: "The security forces that brought the bodies told us that those were the bodies of the terrorists," he said, adding there was no other way they could have identified the bodies.

An intelligence agency source added: "One of the terrorists was shot through either eye."

A senior National Security Guard officer, who had earlier explained the operation in detail to rediff.com, said the commandos went all out after they ascertained that there were no more hostages left. When asked if the commandos attempted to capture them alive at that stage, he replied: "Unko bachana kaun chahega (Who will want to save them)?"

The Mirror reports:

The only terrorist to be captured alive in the Mumbai massacre has revealed how he was ordered to: “Kill until your last breath.”

Azam Amir Kasav – dubbed the Smiling Assassin after his grinning face was flashed around the world as he gunned down commuters at Mumbai’s CST railway station – said he and his fellow terrorists were told by their commanders to carry on firing until they themselves were dead.

Nine of the 10 men who set sail from Pakistan on Wednesday did just that – but Kasav survived with bullet wounds.

Yesterday it emerged he cracked in hospital when he saw the mutilated body of another terrorist being wheeled towards the morgue and begged: “I do not want to die. Put me on saline.”

Under interrogation Kasav, who speaks fluent English, made a series of dramatic confessions to Indian police.

He revealed terrorist planners had visited Mumbai a month ago to take photos and film the spots they wanted to hit, including the Taj Mahal Palace hotel where it is now suspected two “sleeper” terrorists were working as a chef and waiter.

He also revealed that his Pakistani gang had slit the throat of a coastguard before sailing into Mumbai to launch their killing spree.

Once holed up inside the Taj they texted their fanatic pals to brag they were eating curry while slaughtering guests.

News of the confession came as the first pictures emerged from inside the luxurious hotel where the bloody three-day siege ended yesterday.

Indian police will use the evidence of 21-year-old Kasav, from Gipal Pura in Pakistan, to help track the brains behind the plot which is now feared to have claimed more than 300 people.

Kasav was captured alive after fleeing Mumbai’s railway station in a stolen Skoda on Thursday evening. As he sped off he was involved in a gun battle with a police officer. Kasav took two bullets, the officer was killed.

The young killer had pretended he was also dead, but as his body was taken to hospital police saw him move and anti-terror officers pounced.

Kasav eventually told detectives that he was among a group of 10 who left Karachi in Pakistan on one boat for the 500-mile journey to Mumbai.

Six miles from Mumbai they overpowered a fishing vessel called Kuber, hoping to use the local boat to pass through a checkpoint. But the plan failed when a coastguard cutter approached them.

When the cutter was alongside they struck and one of the coastguard had his throat slit while the other was made to navigate the men onwards to Mumbai.

Four miles out, they dumped the vessel before switching to dinghies to enter India. Each man had an AK47 machine gun, 50-bullet magazines and eight hand grenades.

Kasav told police their aim had been to create another 9/11: “The Taj was to be reduced to rubble – and we had the ammunition to do it,” he said.

Last night more details began to emerge of the horror inside the Taj and the Oberoi Trident hotels during the siege.

Terrorists had ordered the chefs to cook them chicken and lamb curry, which they feasted on while picking out hostages to kill. Groups of terrified guests were tied and bound with bed sheets, marched into rooms and ordered to urinate on one another.

Before people were shot they had their wallets emptied and were stripped of all their jewellery.

According to survivor reports, the gang had whooped with joy as news broke that intelligence chief Hemant Karkare and other policemen had been killed outside.

A police source told the Sunday Mirror: “The ballroom was the control room used by the attackers. They packed it with satellite phones, mobile phones, computers and TVs. We are going through all the information now to see what we can find.”

The Indian Army finally brought the siege at the Taj to an end yesterday when hundreds of soldiers stormed the building just after 7am, killing the remaining three terrorists.

Now the grim task of calculating the final death toll in the city will begin. The current estimate is 195 but many officials expect it to reach over 300.

Lines of ambulances queued outside the Taj ready to move the 100 or more dead bodies which are still inside.

A fireman battling the blaze inside the 530-room Taj said: “There are bodies everywhere, I have never seen anything so bad. We have to work around all the bodies to put the fires out.”

Thousands of Indians arrived at the gates of the hotel and spontaneous applause broke out when exhausted-looking soldiers walked out of the building at the end of the siege. Some people wandered around quietly clutching images of friends feared dead in the attack. But others cheered as they celebrated an end to the terror.

The British Embassy in Mumbai said about 40 Britons caught in the attacks flew home yesterday.

Millionaire British businessman Andreas Liveras, 72, was shot dead during the atrocities and another 16 Britons were injured.

Seven are still in hospital, at least two with serious injuries. At least 22 foreigners are known to have died, including victims from Germany, Japan, Canada, Australia, Italy, Singapore, Thailand and France.

A spokesman for the British Embassy said: “We believe all the British victims have now been accounted for.”

He said the embassy did not believe any of the terrorists are from the UK, ending speculation of a British link to the attacks.
-------
Comment: the corporate media likes to sensationalize, in particular any "patriotic" media, that is a given, but these reports are important not only because they could be true, but also because even if they are exaggerated or fabricated (and I am *not* saying that they are!), this is what the Indian public is reading and one can easily imagine the outrage felt by every reader.

While I have no way of knowing how accurate these reports are, I will say this: everything described here is full consistent with kind of vicious atrocities Wahabis elsewhere have committed many times (including in Chechnya, Afghanistan or Bosnia). Slitting throats and torturing before executing is something we should expect from Wahabi crazies, be it in India or elsewhere.

Pakistan may pull out nearly 100,000 troops from Afghan to Indian border

Press TV reports:

Pakistan may pull out nearly 100,000 troops from its western borders with Afghanistan and will deploy them on the eastern border with India.

Media reports quoted Pakistan's defense ministry officials on Sunday that Islamabad had already stated the decision to the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

The officials added that Pakistan's priority on the so-called 'war on terror' would shift and it would to take care of the more immediate threat to its security on the eastern border with India.

Pakistan has deployed thousand of soldiers in its troubled northwestern tribal belt along the Pak-Afghan border to combat al-Qaeda and Taliban linked insurgency.

The developments come after India's Foreign Minister Prefab said that initial evidence in the Mumbai terror attacks show that the militants who carried out the terror spree had links with Pakistan.

India has already put its air force on high alert, the unnamed Pakistani officials said, adding that Pakistan would take measures to ensure its security and safeguard its interests.

The Indian Air Force has been put on high alert following the Mumbai terror attack. The defense sources also noted the next 48 hours would be crucial.

India has in the past accused elements in Pakistan of supporting militants battling against Indian rule in the disputed Kashmir region, and of involvement in bomb attacks elsewhere in India.

Pakistan's top officials have condemned terrorist acts in India and promised full cooperation in fighting terrorism, however.

The two nuclear-armed neighbors have fought three wars since gaining independence from Britain in 1947.

Gunmen targeted several places across the port city of Mumbai late Wednesday, killing almost 200 people and injuring 300 others.

Predictably, Pakistani papers blame Mumbai attacks on Mossad "false flag" operation

This was to be expected: Pakistani websites are blaming Mossad for the Mumbai attacks.

Russians have a small aphorism which makes fun of pathological Jew-haters which see "the Jews" as always responsible for everything:

If there is no water in the faucet - then the Jews must have drunk it
If there is water in the faucet - then the Jews must have peed in it

(it rhymes in Russian)

Seriously, it could have been Mossad, I am not saying it ain't so, but let's wait to get some facts before jumping to the usual knee jerk conclusions...

Indians had advanced warning, Pakistani connection becoming clear

(Thanks to Shashank for sending me the link to this article. VS)

by Saikat Datta for Outlook India

By mid-September, Indian agencies knew that the attack would come from the sea, by mid-November, they knew that the Taj hotel would be targeted... And yet... and yet... A blow by blow account of how the plan to attack Mumbai by sea was hatched and executed:

In mid-September this year, the CIA station chief in Delhi sought an urgent meeting with his counterpart in R&AW to pass on some critical inputs. This was part of an understanding that Indian and American intelligence had institutionalised in the aftermath of 9/11. From its assets in Pakistan and Afghanistan, American intelligence had come to learn that the Lashkar-e-Toiba was planning to launch a major terrorist attack in Mumbai, which would be carried out from the sea.

This input was in conjunction with other inputs that Indian intelligence had received from various other sources. For instance, Riyasuddin, the son of Maulana Nasiruddin, who was under arrest for his alleged involvement in the assassination of the then Gujarat home minister Naren Pandya, had stated in his statements to the police that a sea-borne attack was being planned by certain terrorist groups abroad for an attack on Mumbai.

Similarly other vague inputs had also come in from Uttar Pradesh as well as other sources. But by September 24, Indian intelligence picked up several specific inputs. These were:

* An LeT module was being trained in a camp around Karachi for launching attacks from the sea for at least three months
* Yusuf Muzammil, the chief of operations of the LeT was in contact with an LeT operative stationed in Bangladesh (identified as "Yayah") who was being asked to procure international SIM cards for an operation that had been planned
* Information was also available that the team had been trained by Zakir-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, also known as "Chacha" an ageing ideologue who conducted most of the LeT's training modules.

By the middle of November, as Indian intelligence continued to check out further inputs, the pieces of an intricate jigsaw puzzle began to fall into place. Sources say they learnt that the attack would come from the sea and that the Taj Hotel would be a major target. However, it was not known whether this attack would be carried out by planting bombs in the hotel or by terrorists carrying small arms. Indian intelligence assessments were tilting towards bombs being planted and security at the hotel was beefed up accordingly to prevent terrorists from planting bombs inside the premises.

On November 18, R&AW passed on a specific advisory to the Coast Guard, which serves as the Lead intelligence Agency for the coastal area. The advisory asked the coast guard to intensify patrolling and look out for a suspicious vessel, probably of Pakistani origin, which had sailed off from Karachi. While the coast guard began to patrol the area with renewed intensity, the terrorists had an entirely different plan.

According to details available with Indian intelligence and the information given by the terrorist who was picked up by the Mumbai police in an encounter near Chowpatty, the terrorists hijacked an Indian fishing boat, the Kuber, somewhere near Pakistani waters. They beheaded the majority of the boat's crew of six and only allowed one crew-member, Amarsinh Solanki, to live so that he could help them with navigating the boat to Mumbai. The coast guard found a Global Positioning System abandoned on the fishing trawler that was drifting nearly four nautical miles off the coast of Mumbai early on Thursday, November 27 morning, several hours after the terrorist attack began.While the coast guard was looking for a Pakistani or unidentified vessel, the Kuber (registration number 2303) blended in with the thousands of registered Indian fishing vessels out at sea.

This enabled the terrorists to avoid detection and slip into Badhwar park in Cuffe Parade in Mumbai before they began their operations. Most of them got into waiting boats that had been arranged by Karachi-based underworld don Dawood Ibrahim's diesel smuggling network in Mumbai. Arms, ammunition and plastic explosives were quickly transferred to the waiting boats that took the terrorists to the Gateway of India which was the pre-arranged launching pad for the terrorist attack.

What has surprised investigators piecing together the details of the attack is that the GPS recovered from the abandoned trawler, Kuber, had two maps fed into it to aid navigation. One was a route from Karachi that was plotted quite close to the Indian coast, while a return route had also been mapped into the GPS from the Mumbai coast back to Karachi. "We think this was done to give the terrorists some semblance of hope that they would go back home after a successful raid," a top security official told Outlook. The fact that these two maps were fed into the GPS has confirmed that there was some help from people with a naval or army background, and had extensive knowledge of navigation at sea.

Arrested terrorist Azmal Amir Qasab

What security officials have also confirmed is the fact that most of the terrorists were from Punjab in Pakistan. The arrested terrorist, Azmal Amir Qasab, a resident of Chippalpura Taluka in Ukkad Zilla, Punjab, Pakistan has told his interrogators that the terrorists had trained for over two months, much of it on the Karachi coast for the naval leg. They were trained in basic rudiments of conducting naval commando raids, given extensive biefings on the layout of South Mumbai with adequate footage for familiarity and CDs of alleged "atrocities" carried out against Muslims in India. Qasab has also given details of how two of their operatives checked into the Taj Hotel last Saturday, November 22, with a lot of equipment. The duo received several visitors with huge bags, apparently carrying RDX for the two IEDs which were defused by the Mumbai police on the night of the first attack.

Meanwhile, investigators are poring through the call data details downloaded from the satellite phone also recovered from the abandoned trawler. Many of the call details have revealed numbers that have been traced back to the LeT's chief of operations, Muzamil, as well as to Lakhvi. Interestingly, the international SIM cards recovered from the bodies of the killed terrorists correspond to the intelligence picked up earlier, when Muzamil had asked his Bangladesh operative Yayah, to procure them. He apparently also procured the fake Mauritian identity card recovered by the marine commandos.

Top security sources have also told Outlook that the intercepts made by the intelligence agencies while the NSG commando assault was underway clearly indicates that the terrorists were speaking to their handlers in Pakistan. Among the instructions passed on to them during the nearly 62-hour crisis were to throw grenades indiscriminately if they were in danger of being overpowered and to start fake negotiations to prolong the crisis.In fact, two such attempts at negotiations were made at Nariman Bhawan and the Oberoi-Trident hotel to stave off an impending assault, even though the terrorists had already killed the hostages.

In the days to come investigators will have to continue putting the pieces of the puzzle together to create a more comprehensive picture of the attack. Hidden among them will be key lessons on how to prevent similar attacks in the future.

Indians claim terrorists took orders from Pakistan

From the Times Online:

The Indian authorities yesterday claimed to have proof that the Mumbai terrorists were receiving instructions from Pakistan and discussing tactics with their handlers during the three days of attacks in which they killed at least 195 people.

The claims threaten further to embitter relations between the two nuclear powers. Tensions have been high since confirmation that the only captured gunman was a 21-year-old Pakistani.

It has also emerged that India had been warned that terrorists were planning an attack in Mumbai.

Up to 22 foreigners were among those killed in raids by 10-15 terrorists on sites across the city, including hotels, the main railway station, a Jewish community centre and two hospitals. The last of the gunmen was killed by Indian commandos yesterday morning, ending the siege at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel. One hotel worker was found alive and 22 bodies were removed. As many as 80 bodies may still be in the building.

One Briton has been confirmed dead and last night the Foreign Office refused to say whether more UK citizens could be among the victims in the wreckage of the hotel.

RR Patil, the deputy chief minister of Mumbai’s state government, said there was “proof” that the terrorists were on the phone to someone in Pakistan during the attack.

“All phone calls made by them were tapped. They were being instructed from outside regarding their movement inside the hotel - whether to go upstairs or come down or make a move left or right,” he said.

Patil also claimed that the terrorists had intended to kill at least 5,000 people, making for a greater atrocity than 9/11.

The Pakistan government denied any involvement in the attacks but backtracked on a decision to send the chief of its spy agency to India to help the investigation. Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan’s president, promised to take the “swiftest of action” if there was evidence the terrorists came from his country.

Yesterday the Indian authorities firmly denied reports that up to seven of the attackers were British. Intelligence sources in the UK said they were unaware of any evidence that British nationals were involved.

Police chiefs in Mumbai confirmed they had been aware as long ago as January that the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba was planning a terrorist spectacular.

The information came from Fahim Ansari, a captured operative for the group, who revealed under interrogation that he had carried out reconnaissance visits to the Taj and Oberoi hotels.

CCTV footage revealed that Ansari had visited the Oberoi. Both hotels said they had received warnings as recently as August about an attack and had stepped up security.

The Indian authorities intercepted a telephone call made from the Arabian Sea less than two weeks ago in which a terrorist suspect was heard saying “we’re coming to Mumbai”.

The Indian coastguard was alerted but Ajmal Aamer Kasav, the surviving gunman, is understood to have told his interrogators the terrorists had switched ships to evade detection. Kasav, who speaks fluent English, told investigators he and his fellow terrorists had trained at a camp at the Mangla dam between Pakistani Punjab and Pakistan-held Kashmir.

The group had travelled in pairs to Karachi where they boarded a boat. They had been told not to talk to each other on the journey.
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Comment: all this is bad, bad, bad. It is now becoming increasingly clear that the Indians SNAFUed all the warnings about what would happen. Even worse, the Pakistani connection is becoming even more crucial. For example, if it is true that the terrorists were getting instructions by phone during the attacks, then ISI must have been fully aware of this, if not through their own capabilities, then at least via the USA. As for the decision not to send Pasha to India, here is probably what happened: President Zardari, probably horrified by the news, decided to sent Pasha as a sign of his full collaboration, only to be over-ruled by the real bosses in Pakistan: the ISI brass whose role in what happened raises all sorts of very scary questions. I wonder how much more restraint India can show towards Pakistan and I am afraid that India cannot just take one terrorist attack after the other (all with strong Pakistani connections) without some kind of retaliation.

Bad news from Islamabad (UPDATED!)

According to Press TV Pakistan has reversed a decision to send its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief to India to help in Mumbai terror attacks investigation.

No explanation was given in a short statement issued by the premier's office in Islamabad for the change of plan, Press TV correspondent said Saturday.

Earlier Prime Minister Yourself Raze surprised many by announcing that the ISI Chief General Ahmed Shura Pasha would be sent to New Delhi to help the investigation into the Mumbai terror attacks that claimed at least 195 lives.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in a telephone conversation on Friday, urged his Pakistani counterpart to send the spy chief to New Delhi.

Sources said the change came after reservations in Pakistan's top military circles over the unprecedented move. "The military leadership was not consulted before an announcement was made to the media regarding the decision to send the ISI chief to India," a senior official said.

It is said that Pakistan will send a senior official to India instead of Pasha; however, there was no mention of when the official is likely to arrive in New Delhi.

India's Foreign Minister Prefab said Friday that initial evidence in the Mumbai attacks show the militants had links with Pakistan. Pakistan's president, premier and other top officials have condemned the attacks and promised full cooperation in fighting terrorism, however.

Gunmen targeted several places across the port city of Mumbai late Wednesday, killing 195 people and injuring 327 others.

UPDATE: according to the BBC, Indian security forces have captured at least one of the terrorists. His nationality? Pakistani.
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Commentary: this kind of zig-zagging by Pakistani officials is most unhelpful. Regardless of whether Pakistani national are involved in these attacks or not, Pakistan is playing with fire here and the initial decision to agree to send General Pasha to India was the correct one. This reversal, if confirmed, would send a terrible message to an already outraged Indian public opinion. Sure, the Indian press (and politicians) were probably too eager to point fingers at Pakistan, but considering the past history of terror attacks in India by individuals linked to Pakistan, the Pakistanis should not have been offended by that. The fact is that Pakistan is the single most dangerous and unstable country in the world right now and that it will need the full cooperation of all its neighbors to tackle its many causes of instability and outright danger. If there is one thing the Pakistanis cannot afford is a worsening relationship with India. Since the real power in the country is, and always has been, ISI - sending the ISI chief was a very good move. Keeping him in Islamabad is, I am afraid, a bad sign of ruffled nationalistic feathers, a luxury Islamabad simply cannot afford right now.