http://www.isis-online.org/publications/southasia/ThirdKhushabReactor.pdf
http://www.scribd.com/doc/15651975/ThirdKhushabReactor

How can US relocate Paki nukes when US does NOT know where they are located?

Panetta: Location of all Pakistan nukes not known

By MICHAEL R. BLOOD Associated Press Writer

Posted: 05/18/2009 02:58:00 PM PDT

Updated: 05/18/2009 05:01:01 PM PDT

LOS ANGELES—Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta said Monday that the U.S. does not know the location of all of Pakistan's nuclear weapons but is confident there are "pretty secure" measures to keep them out of terrorists' hands.

Panetta's comments come just days after the top U.S. military officer told Congress that there is evidence that Pakistan is adding to its nuclear weapons systems and warheads.

Speaking at a downtown forum organized by the Pacific Council on International Policy, Panetta was asked if nuclear weapons in Pakistan are more safely guarded than those in the former Soviet Union.

"Obviously, we do try to understand where all of these are located," the director said. "We don't have, frankly, the intelligence to know where they all are located."

He added that the U.S. is confident that Pakistani government has a "pretty secure approach to try to protect these weapons."

"It is something that we continue to watch," the director said. "The last thing we want is to have the Taliban have access to nuclear weapons in Pakistan."

At a congressional hearing last week, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked whether there was evidence that Pakistan was adding to its nuclear arsenal. He replied: "Yes."

Pakistan later issued a denial. Pakistan is battling a growing insurgency by Islamist militants with links to al-Qaida and the Taliban. Washington is considering giving

it billions of dollars in aid to help fight the insurgents, who are blamed for attacks on U.S. and foreign troops in neighboring Afghanistan.

"I am not aware of any U.S. aid that has gone toward nuclear weapons, save that which is very focused in the last several years, last three or four years, on improving their security. Which is exactly what we'd like and they've done that," Mullen said in Washington Monday.

Pakistan is thought to possess more than 60 nuclear weapons under a program that began when its traditional enemy, India, started producing them.

The advance of the Taliban has raised fears in the West that the weapons could fall into militant hands. A more likely scenario, analysts say, is that Islamists may infiltrate its nuclear facilities and get hold of nuclear knowledge and material.

He never mentioned fallout from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's charge that she was misled in 2002 about the use of waterboarding. In a statement last week, Panetta defended the CIA, saying "it is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress."

The former California congressman said he wanted to improve relations with Congress and welcomed vigorous oversight from Capitol Hill. He urged Democrats and Republicans to put aside partisanship in an era of grave dangers around the globe.

"There's been a lot of poison in the well in these last few years," he said.

"If they start to use these issues as political clubs to beat each other up with, then that's when we not only pay a price, but this country pays a price."

In a wide-ranging discussion of national security, Panetta said the U.S. needs a "strong intelligence surge" to match military efforts against the Taliban, warned that nations like Somalia and Yemen must not become training grounds for a new generation of al-Qaida militants, and defended airstrikes aimed at al-Qaida leaders in Pakistan that have claimed some civilian lives.

Associated Press Writer Anne Gearan in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_12397388

 

Loose Nukes For Islamic Extremists?

by  Robert Maginnis

05/20/2009

 

Pakistan is building more atomic weapons, which our CIA believes are secure for now even though we don’t know where they are.  But should Islamic extremists threaten to topple that fragile government, the U.S. is reportedly preparing to capture and relocate that arsenal.

A frequently expressed concern is that Pakistan will fall to Islamic extremists and that nation’s nearly 100 atomic weapons will then belong to radicals like al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. CIA director Leon Panetta told Congress he is confident Pakistan has a “… pretty secure approach to try to protect these weapons.”  But he admits, “The last thing we want is to have the Taliban have access to nuclear weapons in Pakistan.”

The U.S. government works with Pakistan’s atomic guardians, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, providing them special atomic warhead locks known as permissive access links. We have also given Islamabad more than $100 million to help secure the weapons and sensitive materials from seizure by extremists.

But Pakistan’s nuclear stockpile is still vulnerable. Pakistan is battling a growing Islamic insurgency with links to al Qaeda and the Taliban.  Bruce Riedel, a Brookings institution scholar, warns Pakistan “… has more terrorists per square mile than anyplace else on earth, and it has a nuclear weapons program that is growing faster than anyplace else on earth.”  That’s a volatile mix, especially when one considers there are rogue elements inside Pakistan’s military and intelligence service who side with the extremists.

Why then is Pakistan building more weapons?  Perhaps Islamabad is trying to keep up with its atomic competitor, India.  Nuclear weapons corrode, which diminishes their reliability.  The Pakistanis may also want to increase their arsenal to provide more versatility -- lighter, smaller and more explosive.

Last week, Pakistan’s drive to invest in newer nuclear arms came up during a Senate hearing. Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked whether he had seen evidence of an increase in the size of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal.  “Yes,” Mullen said, but he didn’t elaborate.  

This response shocked lawmakers who are considering large aid packages to help Pakistan through the current chaos. Congress is considering $3 billion over five years to help Pakistan’s military fight the counterinsurgency war and another $7.5 billion to boost that country’s ailing economy.

Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) asked Mullen, “Do we have any type of control factors that would be built in, in terms of where future American money would be going, as it addresses what I just asked about?”  In other words, is American money being used to build more Pakistani warheads?

The Obama administration told Congress their intent was to assure Pakistan used our aid appropriately. Of course, American dollars spent for one purpose could free up funds for other purposes, such as Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.

The announcement that Pakistan is increasing its atomic arsenal comes on the heels of a Fox News story indicating the U.S. has a detailed plan for infiltrating Pakistan to secure its nuclear warheads if the country falls under the control of Islamic extremists.

That report indicates the operation would be conducted by Joint Special Operations Command, operating in Afghanistan on Pakistan’s western border.  “We have plans to secure them ourselves if things get out of hand,” said a U.S. intelligence source quoted by Fox News.

For now, Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal seems to be safe but growing without explanation.  It should remain secure as long as reliable personnel and procedures are followed and the government doesn’t implode.  But should “things get out of hand,” then JSOC operatives are ready to conduct a high risk mission to find and relocate them to a secure area…

Mr. Maginnis is a retired Army lieutenant colonel, a national security and foreign affairs analyst for radio and television and a senior strategist with the U.S. Army.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=31941

Pakistan denies nuclear expansion

By Syed Shoaib Hasan
BBC News, Islamabad

Pakistan has denied that it is expanding its nuclear arsenal after the US said that it has unearthed new evidence that it has done so.

The denial was issued by Pakistan's information minister a week after US Adm Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made the disclosure.

The response comes amid fears that the country's nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of the Taleban.

There are also concerns about Islamabad's weak proliferation record.

Pakistan, along with neighbour India, joined the club of declared nuclear weapons states in 1998.

'No compromises'

"Pakistan does not need to expand its nuclear arsenal," Qamaruz Zaman Kaira, Pakistan's information minister, told the Associated Press on Monday.

“ Pakistan's nuclear assets are safe and will remain safe ”
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani

"But we want to make it clear that we will maintain a minimum nuclear deterrence that is essential for our defence and stability.

"We will not make any compromise."

The comments came in the wake of a statement by Adm Mullen in front of a congressional committee last week.

He had replied with a simple "Yes", when asked if Pakistan was expanding its nuclear arsenal.

The statement came as international concerns were voiced over the security of Pakistani nuclear weapons.

Western countries, especially the US, have expressed fears that the weapons could fall into the hands of Taleban militants as they expand their control across northern Pakistan.

But government and military officials have rubbished these statements.

They say Pakistan's nuclear assets are well-guarded and beyond the reach of the militants.

In a recent statement, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani also tried to scotch these fears.

"I want to tell the world in categorical terms that, with the blessing of God, Pakistan's nuclear assets are safe and will remain safe.

"No one, no matter how powerful and influential, [who is] eyeing our national assets will succeed."

Meanwhile, the US state department has denied that Pakistan is using US aid in its goal to expand its nuclear arsenal.

"We shouldn't connect these dots, we shouldn't make this connection because this assistance package is for very specific purposes and we're going to work very closely with the government of Pakistan to meet our joint goals," Ian Kelly, spokesman for the US state department, said at a news briefing in Washington on Monday.

"We have complete faith in the command and control structure of Pakistan's nuclear programme."

Mr Kelly said that "one of the highest priorities" of the government in Islamabad was to make sure that the weapons "do not fall into the wrong hands".

His comments follow a report in the New York Times which said that Pakistan is rapidly expanding its nuclear arsenal.

The report says this was despite an expanding insurgency which could threaten the security of the weapons.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/8058401.stm

Published: 2009/05/19 19:33:40 GMT

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/05/20/world/20ammo.grafic.ready.html

Tracing Taliban arms to US military supplies to Paki armed forces.

Funding Paki terror

Monday, May 11, 2009 (Editorial, The News International, Pakistan)

 

Scant attention has thus far been paid to how the Taliban and some other extremist groups fund their operations. The ‘traditional’ picture is that there is a global network of informal funders and sympathizers, as well as at least two large state players in the Muslim world. Yet a picture is now emerging which tells a very different story as to how these groups get their money and sustain themselves – with three natural resources namely gemstones, timber and marble featuring strongly. The Afghan Taliban have long made their money in the opium trade, and to a small extent they do that in Pakistan; but Pakistan has always been a small-scale opium producer and the Taliban and others need bigger bucks. Necessity, goes the saying, is the mother of invention, and income diversity is now the name of the game.

Marble was their first target, starting in April 2008 when they took over the Ziarat marble quarry in Mohmand Agency. Around a million tons of marble a year are mined in FATA every year – and prior to the takeover the government had hoped to increase marble and granite exports to $500m by 2013; a hope now not to be realized with the profit now going into other pockets. The emerald mines of Swat were next. By late March of this year reports began to be confirmed that militants had taken control of government controlled emerald mines located in the mountains of Mingora. The occupation of the Mingora mine apparently took place sometime in February 2009, following the peace deal between the provincial administration and Sufi Muhammad. Taliban forces then seized the nearby Shamozai and Gujjar Killi mines and started mining and trading gems; probably at below market rates. Local people were reportedly happy with the takeover as it was said that the Taliban were sharing up to one-third of the profit with them. Swat is rich in timber, and a partnership between the long-established timber mafia in Swat and Dir has been rapidly established. In addition to whatever havoc they are able to wreak with the profit from their economic operations, the environmental impact of unregulated logging is likely to be severe. A further income stream is being established via the non-commercial route of the jiziya tax - a poll tax levied on non-Muslim minorities living under Islamic rule and sanctioned by the Sharia law. The Sikhs of Orakzai Agency have been early targets of this initiative, a consequence of which being that many of the small Sikh community have now fled and their property and houses have appropriated by the Taliban.

It is not possible to put a definitive figure on how much the Taliban are making from their excursion into economic activity, but the government estimates that it is losing 65 billion rupees annually from the illegal timber trade and indiscriminate deforestation alone. Not all of this will be going to the Taliban, but whatever they make from the gem and marble business, will. Once again, they have demonstrated an ability to adopt and adapt, to profit from the weaknesses of the civil administration and get the most out of the lands they now control. Underestimating their abilities is a mistake we all lose by.

 

http://www.thenews.com.pk/print1.asp?id=176843

Should Pakistan Exist?

 

Posted By Dr. Jack Wheeler

 

On May 9, 2009

 

Dr. Jack Wheeler is a leading conservativepro-western civilization intellectual. He runs the bog www.tothepointnews.com, andwrites intelligent and to the point articles. The following is a brilliant solution to the Gordian Knot of Pakistan.

http://www.tothepointnews.com/content/view/3618/2/

 

Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler

  

Let’s cut to the chase. The answer is no. Pakistan should never have existed in the first place. There is no reason for it to continue to exist now.

  

The place to start here is with The Lunacy of a British Legacy from July 2006, which gives you the background on Pakistan’s creation, and that of the Taliban.

  

You could follow that up with Moslem Terrorist Drug Lords With Nukes from November 2007, which explains the Afghan heroin production as a joint operation between the Taliban and the ISI - the Pakistan military’s InterServices Intelligence Agency - and how Afghan president Hamid Karzai and his family are in on the heroin take.

  

Mr. Karzai met with Mr. Zero in the White House yesterday (5/06), along with the leader of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari.All three men privately despise each other, and publicly professed mutual admiration and support.

  

Ostensibly, they were meeting because the Taliban are now destabilizing Pakistan as well as Afghanistan. You can be sure Zero did not insist on solving the heart of the Taliban problem, any more than did his predecessor. Mr. Bush refused to order Afghanistan’s poppy fields be wiped out via high-altitude spraying of a micro-herbicide developed by DARPA. And so has Zero.

  

The poppy-killing fungus will cause the entire Afghan poppy crop (which supplies 90% of the world’s heroin) to disappear for decades - with no other crop being affected. Doing so would wipe out the Taliban and the ISI financially. But as it would also wipe out lots of powerful folks on the take in the Afghan and Pak governments, it will not be used, and the Taliban will expand its power until it takes over both governments.

  

So let’s talk about India instead. There are indications India is about to take matters into its own hands, with or without Washington’s approval.This is particularly true since, as noted by former US ambassador to India Robert Blackwill in a speech in New Delhi this week (5/05), Zero is abandoning the efforts of George Bush to build a strong US-India relationship in favor of currying favor with China.

  

Pakistan is a make-believe country. Take a look at this official map which the Pak government delineates its borders:

  

First look at the area in the upper right labeled “Jammu & Kashmir.” See that faint dotted line starting at the China border, goes across the area underneath Skardu and wraps around Srinigar? That’s the real border: below it (Srinigar) is India, above it (Skardu) is Pak. The Skardu-Gilgit area is composed of ancient tribal peoples such as Baltits and Hunzukuts who just want to be left alone by the rest of the world, including Islamabad.

 

The NWFP, or North West Frontier Province is Pushtun, the same tribe that populates 42% of Afghanistan, forming that country’s largest ethnic group. That nice dark line between Afghanistan and the NWFP, which Islamabad pretends is its border, is an illusion. There is no border, the entire region on both sides of it are Pushtun, and Islamabad has never exercised any control over it.

 

The pretend line continues, claiming to divide Afghanistan and Iran from the Pak province of Baluchistan, a huge region that takes up almost 45% of Pakistan yet contains only 10% of the country’s population, mostly split between Pushtuns in the north and wild Baluchi nomads in the southern desert wastelands.

The Pak government has never controlled the Baluchis any more than the Pushtuns. It’s all Apache country over which it has little real sovereignty.

 

So we come to the core of the country, Punjab and Sindh, and the unending hatred between Punjabis and Sindhis.

 

First a famous story that I can’t resist relating. India, including what is now Pakistan, was created by the imperial British, and when the region of Sindh was conquered by British General Sir Charles Napier in 1842, he sent a one-word message back to Delhi headquarters announcing his victory: peccavi.

 

In those days, all British officers were classically educated, so they knew instantly what Napier was saying. Peccavi is Latin for “we sinned.” Napier had Sindh.

 

Sindh is a feudal region dominated by wealthy land-owning families (of which the Bhutto and Zardari families are among) who control the lives of 40 million poverty-stricken illiterate farmers.

It also contains Pakistan’s largest city (12m) and business center, Karachi, where the Mohajirs are concentrated, the Indian Moslems who fled to Pakistan during 1947 Partition and their descendents. The hatred is mutual between them and native Sindhis.

 

 

While Sindhis are farmers ruled by a land-owning aristocracy and Mohajirs are business folk, Punjabis consider themselves warriors. Half the Pak population is Punjabi, some 80m.90% of the Pak Army officer corps in Punjabi.

 

 

Not only is the Punjabi Pak military so politically powerful that , as Alex Alexiev observes this week in The Real Problem in Pakistan, “Pakistan is not a sovereign state with a military, but a sovereign military with a state at its disposal to use as it sees fit.” It is that the Punjabi Pak military is so economically powerful that it controls most business activity like a mafia.

 

 

There is no way to untie this Gordian Knot of ethnic hatreds, fanatical stone-age Islamism, a heroin-smuggling mafia military, corruption at every level of society, feudal poverty, and an arsenal of nuclear weapons. The solution is to let India cut the Gordian Knot of Pakistan asunder.

 

 

This is tricky. India has no desire to conquer and absorb Pakistan, which would double the number of Moslems within it (there are 160 million Moslems in each). It needs to rather break the place apart into pieces.

 

 

The first object should be a quick in-and-out military operation to seize Pakistan’s nukes.They are dispersed so it’s complicated - and more so because there will be no help from the US military under Zero. So India will be smart about it and take advantage of the Pak military’s greatest vulnerability: it’s officers and key personnel are for sale, they can be bought.

 

The Punjabis have always looked upon Afghanistan as theirs, and the Pushtuns as barbarian inferiors. (The disgust is returned.The greatest insult a Pushtun parent can give a misbehaving child is: “Stop that - you’re behaving as a Punjabi.”) Simultaneously, they are in constant fear of Pushtuns on either side of the border joining together to form an independent “Pushtunistan.”

 

Yet Pushtuns don’t want their own political entity apart from Afghanistan. The solution is to move the border east, so that Afghanistan encompasses the NWFP and the Pushtun region of northern Baluchistan.

 

This is not difficult to broker. The Pushtuns would jump at the chance to be unified, and it would deny the Taliban of the fig leaf of a Pak sanctuary. After India seizes the Pak nukes and engenders a period of chaotic destabilization, India has Kabul claim all of Pushtunistan and the Pushtuns declare for it.The US military, commanded by David Petraeus, is then free to nail the Taliban with no concern over violating “Pakistan sovereignty.”

 

During the same chaotic time, the Baluchis can get the independence from Islamabad they’ve fought decades for. The capital would be Quetta, and the Baluchis could make a go of it, as one of the world’s largest gold and copper deposits is at Reko Diq in the west near Iran (it’s being developed by the Australian mining giant BHP Billiton). Further, the Chinese have spent $2 billion developing the Baluchi port of Gwadar (spelled Gawadar on the map) with state-of-the-art import/export facilities.

 

What would be left is a rump state of Sindh-Punjab plus the Gilgit-Skardu northern territory. If the Sindhis and Punjabis and Mohajirs can get along sufficiently, they could still have a single country however reduced in size and power - for the chaos should be used to shrink concomitantly the size and power of the Punjabi Pak military.

 

Such a plan is being worked on right now at the South Block headquarters of the Indian Defense Ministry in New Delhi. The generals all realize now they have to act alone without America. It is the same situation that Israel is in regarding Iran.There is even some talk - for there is a great deal of communication between the Indian and Israeli militaries - of coordinating attacks, Israel upon Iran’s nukes, Indian upon Pakistan’s nukes, simultaneously.

 

“Your president would be like a deer in the headlights if this occurred,” says one US-educated Defense Ministry fellow I know.“He’d be paralyzed.”

 

Pakistan has become the world’s most dangerous failed state. It needs to be disarmed and dismantled. Just like Iran.Working together and ignoring Zero, India and Israel may kill two nuclear birds with one cooperative stone.

 

Share with others to save the Humanity:

 

http://www.faithfreedom.org/2009/05/09/should-pakistan-exist/print/

 

Dump Pakistan, back India: advise to USA

JUST WALK AWAY

By RALPH PETERS

May 4, 2009 --

WHAT Washington calls "strategy" is usually just inertia: We can't imagine not supporting Pakistan because we've "always" supported Pakistan.

No matter how shamelessly Pakistan's leaders looted their own country, protected the Taliban, sponsored terror attacks on India, demanded aid and told us to kiss off when we asked for help, we had to back the Paks.

Because that's just the way things are.

Well, now that Islamist marauders are sweeping the country with violence as the generals in Rawalpindi mull "To be or not to be" and President Ali Asif Zardari knocks back another scotch behind closed doors, perhaps we should consider an alternative approach to this splintering, renegade state.

A better strategy's obvious. But Washington has trouble with the obvious. At our pathetic State Department, habit trumps innovation every time. And the Pentagon can't seem to see beyond the immediate battlefield.

What should we do? Dump Pakistan. Back India.

Washington's deep thinkers will cry, "But China might move in!"

If China wants Pakistan, let Beijing have it. That would be fun to watch. Take on the Taliban? Given China's ghastly ineptitude in dealing with its Uighur Muslims, more power to 'em.

Anyway, China knows that India's the prize. Indian neutrality is essential to any future conflict with the United States. Beijing isn't going to do anything to drive New Delhi into a closer relationship with Washington (and the US Navy).

So set the "China syndrome" fears aside. Move on to the integrity issue: We claim -- or used to claim -- that we're serious about combating terrorists and punishing their backers.

Yet, we've been abetting the forces of terror by supporting Pakistan unreservedly. Islamabad merrily sponsors terror attacks on India, knowing that America will step in and convince New Delhi not to retaliate.

Apart from the myriad Pak-backed terror strikes in Kashmir, we've seen gruesome attacks in New Delhi and, most recently, in Mumbai. Pakistan's intelligence services did everything but put up billboards announcing that they were behind the terrorists.

India prepared to strike back. But we stepped in every time.

As long as Pakistan's obsessed India-haters know there won't be any penalties for terrorism, they'll keep at it. The formula isn't hard to figure out.

Suppose we just left Pakistan, even withdrawing our embassy personnel? Without us to protect them when they go rogue, would Pakistan's murky intel thugs still launch terror strikes on India?

Pakistan would have to behave responsibly at last. Or face nuclear-armed India. And Pakistan's leaders know full well that a nuclear exchange would leave their country a wasteland. India would dust itself off and move on.

Of course, there's also the issue of the Pentagon's bewildering incompetence in placing 50,000 of our troops at the end of a 1,500-mile supply line through Pakistan, rendering our forces virtual hostages of Islamabad.

The answer's another dose of common sense: Instead of increasing our troop numbers in Afghanistan, cut them. Instead of embracing the hopeless task of building a modern nation where no nation of any kind has ever existed, concentrate exclusively on killing al Qaeda terrorists and the hard-line Taliban elements who help them.

Instead of pretending the Kabul government has any validity, arm the factions with which we share common interests. We're really not obliged to cut massive welfare checks for our enemies.

Our sole mission in Afghanistan should be killing terrorists. To that end, we need a smaller, lethal, unfettered force, not more agricultural experts and con-game contractors.

Bottom line: Let India deal with Pakistan. If the Chinese want to engage, just smile. Focus on killing our enemies, not buying them ice cream. And get serious about strategy. How is it that the leaders of the most powerful state in history think like small-time operators?

Briefing Washington audiences, I warn them that, when the boss tells them to think outside the box, he really means, "Come back with new reasons why I was right all along."

It's time for some genuine outside-the-box thinking. Because the Pakistani box looks increasingly like a coffin.

Ralph Peters is Fox News' strategic analyst and the author of "Looking for Trouble."

http://www.nypost.com/php/pfriendly/print.php?url=http://www.nypost.com/seven/05042009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/just_walk_away_167489.htm

India is incapable of responding to the threat of terror: US report

 

Chapter 2. Country Reports: South and Central Asia Overview

Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism

Country Reports on Terrorism 2008

April 30, 2009

…India ranked among the world’s most terrorism-afflicted countries. It was the focus of numerous attacks from both externally-based terrorist organizations and internally-based separatist or terrorist entities. Several attacks inflicted large numbers of casualties, including the most devastating attack of the year on November 26 in Mumbai. Although clearly committed to combating violent extremism, the Indian government's counterterrorism efforts remained hampered by its outdated and overburdened law enforcement and legal systems. In the wake of the Mumbai terrorist attacks, India’s Parliament has introduced bills to restructure its counterterrorism laws and has proposed a new agency, the National Investigative Agency, to create national-level capability to investigate and potentially prosecute acts of terrorism. Since the Mumbai attacks, India has also greatly increased counterterrorism cooperation with the United States… 

India

In 2008, India ranked among the world’s most terrorism-afflicted countries. On November 26 in a pivotal moment that is now called "26/11", terrorists struck at a variety of locations in Mumbai on November 26, killing at least 183 people, including 22 foreigners, six of whom were Americans and 14 members of the police and security forces. Over 300 more were injured. 

The attacks in Mumbai targeted places frequented by foreigners and wealthy Indians. The attackers entered Mumbai from the sea and attacked people in two hotels, a Jewish center, the main train station, and additional locations. They also planted bombs in two taxis that later exploded in different locations in the city. The terrorists appeared to have been well-trained and took advantage of technology, such as Global Positioning System trackers. Local and state police proved to be poorly trained and equipped, and lacked central control to coordinate an effective response. This attack was the most recent in a long list of lethal terrorist incidents this year. 

Among the major events:

• On May 13, Jaipur experienced serial bomb blasts at crowded market areas and at Hindu temples. At least 60 people were killed, and more than 150 injured.
• On June 29, Maoist insurgents attacked and killed 33 security forces in Malkangiri district in the eastern state of Orissa.
• On July 7, Indian interests were attacked in Afghanistan when terrorists drove a vehicle-borne IED into the outer perimeter of the Indian Embassy in Kabul on July 7. Two Indian diplomats died, and a number of Afghan citizens were wounded.
• On July 25, serial bombs were set off in Bangalore in both business and industrial areas. At least one individual died, while eight were injured.
• On July 26, in Gujarat’s capital, Ahmedabad, 21 devices exploded killing 54 and injuring at least 156. These explosions took place in market areas, on buses and other vehicles, and at the hospital to which the wounded from the first serial bomb blast were being treated.
• On September 13, terrorists detonated serial bombs in New Delhi in a variety of market places and other crowded public areas. These attacks killed at least 20 individuals and wounded more than 80.
• On October 30, insurgents detonated a series of nine bomb blasts throughout the northeastern state of Assam killing approximately 110 people.

None of the perpetrators of these attacks has yet been prosecuted. The Indian government assessed that South Asian Islamic extremist groups including Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, and Harakat-ul-Jihad-i-Islami (Bangladesh) as well as indigenous groups were behind these events. The Government of India believed these attacks were aimed at creating a break-down in India-Pakistan relations, fostering Hindu-Muslim violence within India, and harming India's commercial centers to impede India's economic resurgence.

Eastern India has a long history of Maoist (left-wing extremism), and insurgent terrorist activity that has challenged state writ and control, governance structures, and the ruling political class. In 2008, there were 50 terrorist attacks in Eastern India that killed approximately 500 individuals. No American citizens were targeted or victims of terrorism in any of these incidents.

Insurgent groups, often fighting for recognition, political, and economic rights, or independence, were also active in the Northeast. Failure to properly accommodate the competing interests of diverse ethnic groups, low levels of development, and the success of previous insurgent movements in creating new Indian states were cited as explanatory factors for the appeal of insurgent movements. In 1990, the Government of India banned one of the most active insurgent groups, the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA). ULFA is alleged to have been involved in several terrorist attacks this year, including the bicycle bomb blast on September 18 in Chirang district, resulting in 20 injured Indian citizens, and the October 30 serial blasts mentioned above.

The Communist Party of India (Maoists), commonly referred to as Maoist/Naxalites, were active in the states of Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Orissa, Bihar, Jharkhand, and West Bengal, the so-called "Red Corridor." Companies, Indian and foreign, operating in Maoist strongholds were sometimes targets for extortion.

State governments have expressed interest in augmenting their security forces by either creating or buttressing state-level assets, or hosting central level units to address the increased terrorist threat. Chattisgarh's government has invested in counterinsurgency training for police and paramilitary forces at its Jungle Warfare Training Center. Nevertheless, there is no clear unified command structure between state and federal forces in counterinsurgency efforts, which hampers their effectiveness.

Specifically in response to the Mumbai attacks, the Indian government has proposed a new agency, the National Investigative Agency, to create national-level capability to investigate and potentially prosecute such acts. Also in response to the Mumbai attacks, the Indian government amended some existing laws to strengthen the hands of security and law enforcement agencies in fighting terrorism. Two themes have framed the public debate on the new legislation: states' rights vs. federal power, and civil liberties vs. stronger law enforcement powers.

Illicit funding sources that may have been exploited to finance terrorist operations were being closely investigated. Indian authorities believe that the Mumbai terrorists used various funding sources including credit cards, hawala, charities, and wealthy donors. In addition to the Mumbai attacks, the rise in terrorist attacks and their coordinated nature throughout India suggested the terrorists were well-funded and financially organized.

Indian officials, particularly in West Bengal and Assam, were concerned about the porous India-Bangladesh border, of which only 2500 of the 3000 km land border has been fenced (total land and water border is 4100 km). India's inability to protect its porous maritime border has been under media scrutiny since it came to light that the perpetrators of the November 26 Mumbai attacks arrived by sea. In Tamil Nadu, coast guard and police officials, as well as security analysts, all acknowledged that the government was unable to monitor sufficiently the thousands of small commercial fishing vessels that ply the waters between India and Sri Lanka.

The Indian government has implemented an advance passenger information system to receive inbound passenger information from air carriers operating in India. The system, however, is not compatible with or able to share data with the U.S. and EU equivalent systems. In addition, the Government of India and air carriers have shown an increased interest in receiving fraudulent document training from the United States and other countries. 

 

[1] A news report, Indian counterterrorism measures lacking: US, Hindusthan Times dated 01-05-2009.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?sectionName=HomePage&id=0bf4f593-84ce-4c42-96ec-3b93f3e26502&Headline=America%3a+Indian+counterterrorism+measures+lacking

[2] Country Reports on Terrorism 2008 see at: http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/2008/

Chapter 2. Country Reports: South and Central Asia Overview, Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, dfor details, see at:http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/2008/122434.htm

 Key judgments from the Mumbai jihadi terror attack

Excerpts:

Key Judgments (RAND study 2009)

 

India will continue to face a serious jihadi terrorist threat from Pakistan-based terrorist groups for the foreseeable future. However, India lacks military options that have strategic-level effects without a significant risk of a military response by Pakistan. Neither Indian nor U.S. policy is likely to be able to reduce that threat significantly in the short to medium term. Most likely, the threat will continue to grow. Other extremists in India inevitably will find inspiration and instruction from the Mumbai attack. Safe havens continue to be key enablers for terrorist groups. Safe havens allow terrorist leaders to recruit, select, and train their operators and make it easier for terrorists to plan and execute complex operations, such as the Mumbai attack. Therefore, at the strategic level, the Mumbai attack underscores the imperative of addressing the transnational sources of Islamist terrorism in India. How to do this is an extraordinarily difficult question that will require the reassessment of basic assumptions concerning policy toward Pakistan by members of the international community.

 

The focus on Pakistan in this case should not obscure the likelihood that the attackers had local assistance or that other recent terrorist attacks in India appear to have been carried wholly or partially by Indian nationals. Local radicalization is a major goal of the terrorists and will remain a major political and social challenge for India. The masterminds of the Mumbai terrorist attack displayed sophisticated strategic thinking in their choice of targets and tactics. The attack appears to have been designed to achieve an array of political objectives. This indicates a level of strategic thought—a strategic culture—

that makes this terrorist foe particularly dangerous.

 

Given that the terrorists seek to maximize the psychological impact of the attacks, we can expect that future attacks will aim at both large-scale casualties and symbolic targets. The jihadists have stated, and the Mumbai attack demonstrates, the determination of the terrorists to seek high body counts, go after iconic targets, and cause economic damage. The terrorists will continue to demonstrate tactical adaptability, which will make it difficult to plan security measures around past threats or a few threat scenarios. Terrorists innovate.

They designed the Mumbai attack to do what authorities were not expecting. There were no truck bombs or people attempting to smuggle bombs onto trains, as in previous attacks. Since attacks against high-profile soft targets are relatively easy and cheap to mount, such institutions will remain targets of future attacks. The protection of those targets presents particularly difficult challenges. Many of India’s older symbolic buildings were not built with security considerations in mind or are in exposed locations.

 

Iconic institutions that are likely to be potential targets of terrorist attack must work with local police and intelligence agencies to receive timely alerts about possible threats. They must work with local municipalities and police to curtail open vehicular access to their premises and must consider putting in place screening barriers at some distance from their physical premises where this is possible. They must also develop preplanned response strategies, in  oordination

with local law enforcement, to the wide variety of possible threats that can be reasonably envisaged.

 

One of the most important lessons of this attack is the continuing importance of an earlier operational form: the firearms assault. While the counterterrorism world has been focused almost exclusively on explosives, this attack demonstrates that firearms assault, while not as deadly as mass-casualty bombings, can be an effective tactic in creating prolonged chaos in an urban setting. Intelligence failure, inadequate counterterrorist training and equipment of local police, delays in the response of NSG commandos, flawed hostage-rescue plans, and poor strategic communications and information management all contributed to a less-than-optimal response. These gaps suggest the need for improved counterterrorist coordination between national-level and local security agencies and for strengthened counterterrorist capabilities on the part of first responders. Unless India can improve the quality and functioning of its entire internal security apparatus, it will remain acutely vulnerable to further terrorist penetration and attacks.

The Lessons of Mumbai

By: Angel Rabasa, Robert D. Blackwill, Peter Chalk, Kim Cragin, C. Christine Fair, Brian A. Jackson, Brian Michael Jenkins, Seth G. Jones, Nathaniel Shestak, Ashley J. Tellis

This study of the Mumbai, India, terrorist attack of November 2008 identifies the operational and tactical capabilities displayed by the terrorists and evaluates the response of the Indian security forces. The authors draw out the implications of the incident for India, Pakistan, and the international community and derive lessons learned from the attack and from the Indian response. Their goal is to develop findings that may help counterterrorism authorities in India and elsewhere to prepare for or counter future terrorist attacks on urban centers.

FOR RELEASE
Friday
January 16, 2009

Mumbai Terrorist Attacks Show Rise of Strategic Terrorist Culture

The Mumbai terrorist attacks in India suggest the possibility of an escalating terrorist campaign in South Asia and the rise of a strategic terrorist culture, according to a study issued today by the RAND Corporation.

The RAND study identifies the operational and tactical features of the attack, evaluates the response of Indian security forces, and analyzes the implications for India, Pakistan and the United States.

“India will continue to face a serious jihadist threat from Pakistan-based terrorist groups, and neither Indian nor U.S. policy is likely to reduce that threat in the near future,” said Angel Rabasa, lead author of the study and a senior political scientist with RAND, a nonprofit research organization. “Other extremist groups in Pakistan likely will find inspiration in the Mumbai attacks, and we can expect more attacks with high body counts and symbolic targets.”

Mumbai is India's commercial and entertainment center, and the attacks on landmark properties amplified the psychological impact, according to the report. The selection of multiple targets — Americans, Britons and Jews, as well as Indians — suggests that the terrorists intended the attack to serve multiple objectives that extended beyond the terrorists' previous focus on Kashmir and India.

“The defining characteristic of the Mumbai attack, and what makes it so alarming, is not just the ruthless killing, but the meticulous planning and preparation that went into the operation,” said Brian Michael Jenkins, a leading terrorism expert and senior advisor at RAND.

“The goal was not only to slaughter as many people as possible, but to target specific groups of people and facilities with political, cultural and emotional value. This indicates a level of strategic thought — a strategic culture — that poses a difficult challenge: not whether we can outgun the terrorists, but can we outthink them?”

Other authors of the study are former U.S. Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill, now a senior fellow at RAND; Peter Chalk, Kim Cragin, C. Christine Fair, Seth Jones, Nathaniel Shestak, all of RAND, and Ashley Tellis, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The Mumbai attacks are significant in their audacity and ambition, as well as the complexity of the operation and the diversity of targets, according to researchers. Evidence suggests that planning for the attacks began as far back as mid-2007. The terrorists were heavily armed, and had detailed maps and information about each of the targets they hit. The multiple targets were carefully chosen for their religious, political and cultural values in order to make a statement.

One of the main lessons of Mumbai is that it exposed numerous weaknesses in India's counter-terrorism and threat mitigation structure, according to the report. Indian intelligence officials had received prior warnings from their own staff, as well as U.S. sources, that a major attack was probable, but did not take any specific action.

The report analyzes key weaknesses in the country's general counter-terrorism and threat-mitigation structure, including gaps in coastal surveillance, inadequate “target hardening,” incomplete execution of response protocols, response timing problems, inadequate counter-terrorism training and equipment for the local police, limitations of municipal fire and emergency services, flawed hostage-rescue plans, and poor strategic communications and information management.

The Mumbai terrorist attack has significant and potentially far-reaching implications for India, Pakistan, and the international community, according to researchers. The terrorists have been linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba, a banned Islamist terrorist group based in Pakistan with connections to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.

India is likely to hold the state of Pakistan responsible for the attacks and may look for a way to punish Pakistan to deter future attacks. Both countries have nuclear weapons, making any military action a dangerous course, but if India does not respond, that would signal a lack of Indian resolve or capability, according to the report.

Without an appropriate response, Pakistan, or at least those elements of its military and intelligence leadership that are supportive of the activities of groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba, are likely to conclude that these operations, in some measure, yield benefits that exceed the cost. For these and a myriad other reasons, researchers say, India is likely to remain a target of Pakistan-based and indigenous Islamist terrorism for the foreseeable future.

But the focus on Pakistan should not obscure the fact that the terrorists likely had help from inside India. Local radicalization is a major goal of the terrorists, and will be a major political and social challenge for India.

The repercussions for Pakistan will depend largely on what India and the international community do. Thus far, Indian and American officials recognize that Pakistan's civilian government does not control the policies that its military and intelligence agency hold toward militant groups operating in and from Pakistan.

According to the RAND researchers, the best outcome would be for Pakistan's civilian government to slowly and incrementally exert civilian control over its military and intelligence agencies. But this will be difficult as many in those agencies view the Taliban and other extremists as their natural allies, and the United States and India as threats to Pakistan's security.

The Mumbai attack underscores the imperative of addressing the transnational sources of Islamist terrorism in India. How to do this is an extraordinarily difficult question that will require the reassessment of basic assumptions in policy toward Pakistan by members of the international community.

http://www.rand.org/news/press/2009/01/16/

http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/2009/RAND_OP249.pdf

Wars with Pakistan

Don’t forget, don’t forgive

A Surya Prakash (Pioneer, Tuesday, December 30, 2008)

Of late, Mr Pranab Mukherjee has been adopting a tone and tenor worthy of the Foreign Minister of a great nation like India while dealing with a rogue state like Pakistan, which has made sponsorship of terrorism a key instrument of state policy. But if Mr Mukherjee is to take these threats to their logical conclusion and make our country terrorism-proof, he and the Union Government need to get an unambiguous signal from across the country that India will neither forget nor forgive Mumbai 26/11. 

This can happen only if we shake off the tentativeness and confusion that has permeated national discourse in regard to Pakistan, and come face to face with reality. Though Pakistan was created on the premise that Muslims constitute a separate nation, it broke up into two within a quarter century of its birth and most South Asian experts predict a further disintegration of that country. Second, unlike India, which has become a vibrant democracy, Pakistan chose to become an Islamic state and this had a major social and political impact. For example, on the social side, Pakistan has virtually extinguished its Hindu population. The Hindus, who constituted 25 per cent of Pakistan’s population at the time of its birth, are now reduced to just 1.64 per cent. On the political front, the absence of democracy has encouraged the Army to often take control and to display belligerence towards India to retain its hold on the Government. 

Often, even when there is a civilian Government, the Pakistani Army has resorted to unilateral military action. It made the first attempt to grab Indian territory when it sent in infiltrators into Jammu & Kashmir in October 1947. Instead of following the advice of top class military men like Field Marshal Cariappa and Gen Thimmiah, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru foolishly rushed to the United Nations complaining about Pakistan’s aggression. The UN promptly ordered a cease fire and India lost 30,000 square miles of territory to Pakistan.

Indians soon forgot what Pakistan had done. Worse, they even forgave Pakistan for this act of aggression. This suicidal Indian trait tempted Pakistan to do an encore in August 1965. The Indian Army pushed back the infiltrators and captured strategic positions in Haji Pir and Tithwal areas to effectively prevent further incursions. This clash resulted in a war, which concluded after the UN called for a cease fire. As the hostilities ended, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto swore in the Security Council that Pakistan would launch a ‘thousand-year war’ against India. When the Indian delegation walked out in protest, Bhutto said, “The Indian dogs are going home.”

This may seem incredible, but soon after Mr Bhutto showered these abuses on us, we bartered away the key territorial acquisitions at the negotiating table at Tashkent. This encouraged Pakistan to attack India yet again in 1971 when the latter objected to the brutality unleashed by the Pakistani Army in what is now Bangladesh, leading to the influx of 20 million refugees into our country. This led to a full-scale war in which the Pakistani Army was disgraced. India captured 93,000 Prisoners of War and 5,000 square miles of territory.

But all this was returned to Pakistan by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi during the Simla Summit without reclaiming even a part of the 30,000 square miles of territory that we lost in 1947. Everything was given back on a platter to Mr Bhutto, who by now had become Pakistan’s Prime Minister. Why? Because we did not want to ‘humiliate’ this uncouth politician who had classified us as ‘dogs’! We would never have suffered the embarrassment of 26/11 if only we were in the habit of reminding ourselves and every successive generation of Indians of Mr Bhutto’s abuses and bravado. 

Strangely, even those who appeared wise when they sat in the Opposition benches have made terrible compromises on national security. The prize for the best somersault by an Indian politician vis-à-vis Pakistan goes to Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He had opposed the policy of appeasement followed by the Governments of the day after the 1965 and 1971 wars and scoffed at then Foreign Minister Swaran Singh for saying that the Simla Accord was the ‘first step’ towards durable peace.

Speaking in the Lok Sabha on July 31, 1972, Mr Vajpayee had said: “In the last 25 years, we have always been taking the first step. We took the first step when Nehru met Liaquat Ali Khan, then yet again when Nehru met Ayub Khan. We again took the first step when Shastri met Ayub Khan at Tashkent. And now, again at Simla we are taking the first step. How many times do we keep taking the ‘first step’ towards durable peace with Pakistan?” 

Twenty-seven years later, Mr Vajpayee became the Prime Minister. It was now his turn to forget and forgive. Succumbing to pressure, Mr Vajpayee started speaking the language of Swaran Singh. So he ventured on an ill-advised bus ride to Lahore that culminated in that spurious bear hug with Mr Nawaz Sharif. Pakistan returned the compliment by invading Kargil. We lost hundreds of brave soldiers while reclaiming our territory. Soon thereafter, Mr Vajpayee was again under pressure and he invited Gen Musharraf to Agra for an ill-fated summit. Pakistan gave us a return gift by way of the assault on our Parliament House on December 13, 2001. In a short span of three years, Pakistan betrayed Mr Vajpayee thrice. 

Now that the Congress is back in power and is, as usual, under the influence of many resident non-Indians, those of us who wish to secure India for posterity need to remind the Government of the following: If we had not forgotten the loss of 30,000 square miles of territory in October 1947, August 1965 would not have happened; if we had been firm and unyielding in 1965, Pakistan would not have had the courage to wage war on us in 1971; if we had driven in the knife in 1971, when we had 93,000 Pakistani Prisoners of War and territory, Pakistan would never have had the nerve to intrude into Kargil in 1999; if we had not forgotten Kargil, December 13, 2001 would not have happened; if we had not forgiven Pakistan for the audacious attack on our Parliament House, India would not have suffered the humiliation it did on 26/11.

The terror attacks in Mumbai offers us yet another opportunity to get our act together to protect our unity and territorial integrity. But we cannot achieve this unless we shun the policy of forget and forgive when it comes to Pakistan.

 

http://dailypioneer.com/146798/Don’t-forget-don’t-forgive.html

The war against India

Tavleen SinghPosted online: Dec 28, 2008 at 2356 hrs (Indian Express)

In the month that has gone by since the attack on Mumbai have we got any closer to dealing with Islamist terrorism? I fear not. We have a new Home Minister, a new central agency to deal with national security and there is talk of scattering commando units across the country but will all this make a difference? No. I say this because there is no indication that the Prime Minister has understood that what happened in Mumbai was an act of war. In Pakistan they have understood better the meaning of what happened so we have the Taliban-e-Pakistan announcing that it will lend its full support to the Pakistan Army if there is a war with India. When it comes to the jihad against India ranks close.

This is one of the few good consequences of the attack on Mumbai. The affiliation of the Pakistani Army to the Islamist groups that so hate India has become clear as has the inability of the civilian government to decide matters of war and peace. All we have heard from Asif Ali Zardari and his Prime Minister is demands for ‘proof’ that the terrorists who came to Mumbai were from Pakistan. There is such an overwhelming amount of proof including that given by survivors of the attacks on the Taj and Oberoi that it is puzzling that the head of Interpol should have said that he has been given no proof by the Indian Government. This has hugely emboldened Pakistan’s case and it now portrays itself as the victim. Last week the National Assembly passed a resolution asking India to dismantle its terrorist network. How bizarre is that.

If we want to stop the Islamists in their jihad against India we should be talking directly to the Pakistani Army instead of pussyfooting around a civilian government that appears powerless and confused. One civilian politician, Nawaz Sharif, made one honest statement when he said that if Ajmal Kasab was not Pakistani, then why was his village cordoned off and his family made to disappear. Within 24 hours he was forced to backtrack. Only fools will ask by whom.

The only Indian political leader who seems to have understood what we are up against is our new Home Minister. When P. Chidambaram said what happened in Mumbai was an attack on the ‘idea of India’ he got close to understanding the nature of the war that is being waged against us. India is the opposite of everything the Islamists stand for and in their sick minds, pickled in 7th century Arabia, anything that is not Islamist is evil and must be destroyed in the name of Allah. What made Mumbai a special target is that it is the city that represents the success of all things heathen. It is the city of Bollywood and billionaires and women who flaunt their bodies shamelessly and drink openly in the bars of the Taj and the Oberoi. When you compare this with the Pakistani Taliban’s drive to close down girls schools in Swat because ‘female education is against Islamic teachings’ you begin to understand a little of what the average Islamist hates about India. More than a hundred girls schools have been closed down in Waziristan in the past two years.

If the Islamists were just a bunch of India-hating religious fanatics the problem we face would not be so grim. It is the support they so openly get from the Pakistan Army that is the real problem. Last week tensions on our borders built up and it looked for a few moments as if there would be a real war. There is not going to be one because the real war is the one that is being waged against India in the name of the jihad. Behind the Lashkar-e-Toiba, the Jaish-e-Mohammad and the Taliban-e-Pakistan is the might of the Pakistani army. And, the truth is that because our namby-pamby government has not fully understood this we continue to dither in our response. One minute we ask the Americans to ‘put pressure’, another minute we are off to the United Nations for help and at the very next minute we ask China to put pressure on Pakistan.

We need to stop dithering and concentrate on building up our defences exactly as we would if we were fighting a real war with Pakistan. We need the Prime Minister, or his lady boss, to stand up publicly and acknowledge that the jihad against India is as serious as the other wars Pakistan has fought against us. If they did every Indian would stand up and be counted. Most Indian Muslims would stand up with them and anyone who doubts this is admitting that the sympathy of India’s Muslims lie with Pakistan. Is this what our ‘secular’ Prime Minister believes?

http://www.indianexpress.com/story_print.php?storyid=403706

Closet terrorists, Jaichands, in PM’s team?

A remarkable, insightful article by Kanchan Gupta exposing the closet islamists in the South Block. Congratulations.

The next expose should be about close terrorists, Jaichands, in PM’s team?

The most serious allegation of 'treason' has been made by Narayan Rane. How come, the media is shoving it under the carpet? The report where Rane asks for a Commission of inquiry is attached. Why is it that journalists are not pursuing this with Rane to get the truth out? In fact, ATS/RAW/IB should suo moto go to Rane and ask for the details.

The charge made is absolutely serious, refers to a politician providing finances and safe haven to terrorists..

Ever since he made this charge, the Congress dogs are not let loose on Rane.

kalyanaraman:

Politicians sponsoring terrorism with foreign support: Rane

Saturday, 06 December , 2008, 19:23 Last Updated: Saturday, 06 December , 2008, 19:27

Mumbai: Suspended Congress leader Narayan Rane on Saturday hit out at his rivals within the party, saying some Indian political leaders were supporting external forces and financing terror activities in the country. "The government must conduct an inquiry into this aspect and if required, I can provide evidence. I am making this statement with full responsibility," Rane told a packed media conference at his residence here. He said that these political leaders not only financed terrorists but also provided them safe haven in the country. He, however, declined to name any leaders or parties, saying: "When the right time comes, I shall provide all these details." He also alleged that Congress leaders were only interested in making money and had no regard for public sentiments or the development of the country.

http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=14813223

Closet Islamists in PM's team?

Kanchan Gupta (Pioneer, December 14, 2008)

Even before Mumbai's first night of horror was over, by early morning of November 27 Islamist websites were flush with claims that the multiple attacks had been planned and executed by Hindus, Jews and Christians to malign Muslims. The Muslim Brotherhood's website, www.ikhwanweb.com, had an article on its home page, allegedly written by a certain 'Amaresh Misra' (misra.amaresh@gmail.com) which said, "It is clear that Mossad is involved in the whole affair. An entire city has been attacked by Mossad and probably units of mercenaries (sic). It is not possible for one single organisation to plan and execute such a sophisticated operation." Fear of libel laws prevents me from reproducing other more outrageous excerpts from the article. Later that day, the website posted a message from one 'FM Shah' (lion.of.khyber@gmail.com) in response to the article. According to the 'Lion of Khyber', the fidayeen raid on Mumbai had been "made and produced in India with the help of CIA/Mossad in order to make Pakistan the scapegoat". The Ikhwan website also provided the 'evidence' for this preposterous claim: "The firing by terrorists began from Nariman House (Chabad House, the headquarters of a local Jewish outreach programme). And that for two years suspicious activities were going on in this house. But no one took notice… A photograph published in Urdu Times of Mumbai clearly shows that Mossad and ex-Mossad men came to India…"

With Islamists of all varieties increasingly using the Internet to propagate their vile ideology and subvert the truth, such messages are read by millions of Muslims, many of them with impressionable minds. They are replicated on other websites, picked up by propagandists who use the pulpit to preach hatred, and reproduced in community — and even 'mainstream' — Arabic and Urdu newspapers. Soon, a blatant lie becomes the dominant truth. Recall how what began as an absurd campaign of calumny after 9/11 — that the attacks on America had been 'masterminded by Zionists' and 'Jews had been alerted not to turn up for work at the World Trade Center' on that day — is now widely perceived as fact by many Muslims, including in India. A Jamia Millia Islamia professor once told me that the images we saw live on our television screens on 9/11 were "studio simulated". He emphatically said, "There were no aircraft involved in the incident. Controlled explosions, in which the Israelis excel, were used to blow up the twin towers. All this was done to justify the invasion of Afghanistan and later Iraq." I am sure he has repeated more lurid versions of this story to his students. I wouldn't be surprised if he has picked up the Ikhwan's 'Mossad is behind the Mumbai attack' story and spun a 'Islam is in danger' yarn out of it.

What lends credibility to such Goebbelsian propaganda is the bunkum that appears in Western media. For instance, The New York Times carried a 'news story' written by Fernanda Santos on November 27, which said that Chabad House was "an unlikely target of the terrorist gunmen who unleashed a series of bloody coordinated attacks at locations in and around Mumbai's commercial centre… It is not known if the Jewish centre was strategically chosen, or if it was an accidental hostage scene". Perhaps Ms Santos is of the view that the six Jewish hostages who were trussed up, brutally tortured and then slaughtered by the two jihadis who had taken over Chabad House, were 'accidental' victims of the terror strike. It would, however, be unfair to blame Ms Santos and her ilk, among them 'star' journalists and anchors whose bilge we get to read in 'mainstream' newspapers and hear on 'national' news channels here in India, alone for such perversion. The Government headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is equally guilty.

On December 9, Minister of State for External Affairs E Ahamed read out a statement in the United Nations Security Council, pleading India's case for action against Pakistan-based terrorist groups. Here is an excerpt from the official text of the statement: "A group of ten terrorists from the global terrorist organisation Lashkar-e-Tayyeba reached Mumbai in the evening of 26th November 2008. The group divided themselves into four smaller groups and proceeded to pre-selected targets which included a café, popular with Indian and foreign tourists, and two major hotels." There was no mention of, or allusion to, the fourth group's pre-selected target, Chabad House, and the fact that the Jewish centre was attacked by the jihadis for obvious reasons. It's almost as if nothing happened at Chabad House, that no Jews were tortured and killed by the terrorists for the simple reason that they were Jews. What makes the omission stand out like a sore thumb is the global outpouring of Jewish support for India, the outrage in the West over the targeted killings which we have used to our advantage, and the Israeli Government's unequivocal endorsement of the tough commando action.

Whose decision was it to excise this detail from the statement? Did Mr Ahamed of the Muslim League decide not to mention it? Did he find the words 'Israel' and 'Jews' too distasteful to utter? Or was he trying to gloss over the Islamists' visceral hatred of Jews? It is unlikely that Mr Ahamed would have decided on his own to leave out the specific detail of the Jewish centre being attacked while alluding to Leopold Café, Taj Mahal Palace and Oberoi-Trident Hotel. Given the sensitivity of the issue, the statement would have been cleared by the Minister for External Affairs and approved by the Prime Minister. So, who decided to drop the reference to Chabad House? And for what purpose? Was it done with an eye to Muslim 'sentiments' — like those of the Jamia professor and his tribe for whom Jew-baiting is a noble virtue — at home? Or was it meant to serve as a message to Islamists at large that this Government has no complaints against them so long as they don't indulge in what Mr Tom Vadakkam of the Congress described on television as a "light and sound show"?

Meanwhile, late Saturday evening I decided to check whether www.jamatdawah.org, the website of Jamaat-ud-Dawah, the nom de plume of Lashkar-e-Tayyeba, had been blocked subsequent to the Security Council's sanctions on the organisation and its amir, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed. The website, with its inflammatory contents, remains unaffected. A statement issued by Saeed has just been posted. It says, "The UN sanctions against Jamaat-ud-Dawah, only one day after India's demand, are a clear proof of its malice and enmity towards Islam." Don't laugh at the claim. It's sure to find a resonance with those who believe that Mossad organised the "light and sound show" in Mumbai. So much for the efforts of the closet Islamists in the Prime Minister's team to suppress the detail about Chabad House.

http://www.dailypioneer.com/143246/Closet-Islamists-in-PM%e2%80%99s-team.html

Resolve to win the war on terror and ask the Jaichands to quit

 

It has been demonstrated, with evidence, that talk of M.A.D. is an excuse for pussyfooting by UPA chamchas or a red herring falsely foisted by policy-strategy pundits and bureaucrats to stop India on its tracks in the ongoing war on terror. http://sites.google.com/site/hindunow/m-a-d

 

It is time to call the bluff of islamist jihadi terrorists, the failed Paki state and the secular media (sometimes even Uncle Sam’s sound-biters) who have no shame in secularizing even terror which kills innocent citizens who are declared kafirs by the jihadis.

 

B.Raman has repeatedly shown that Lashkar-e-Toiba or Jaish-e-Mohammad are in cahoots with Al Qaeda against whom a NATO operation is ongoing in Afghanistan and Pakistan. (a). LET--AL Qaeda's Clone     http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers30/paper2961.html   
(b). The Mumbai Terrorist Strike: The Anti-Israeli Angle  http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers30/paper2964.html 

 

Make no mistake. The final victory in the war on terror will be achieved on this punyabhumi, the sacred soil of Hindusthan.

 

This is the nation which has borne the brunt of islamist jihadi terror and the resolve of the nation to win this war on terror should be strengthened and not weakened by ridiculously reducing the terror-war into a mere law-and-order problem to be tackled by the ill-equipped police. This is a war which has to be won by the army of Hindusthan and the people of Hindusthan.

 

Let the pundits start their strategy sessions on how Hindusthan should join the ongoing war on terror in the Afghanistan-Pakistan theatre.

 

Dhanyavaadah.

 

kalyanaraman

 

Isolate terror, do not secularise it!

http://indiasecular.wordpress.com

S. Gurumurthy, ExpressBuzz

 

“The mounting evidence” says The New York Times (28/11) quoting American intelligence and official, “indicate that Pakistani militant group based in Kashmir, most likely Lashkar-e-Toiba, or possibly another terror group in Kashmir, Jaish-e-Mohammed, was responsible for the dastardly attack” on Mumbai on November 26. ‘The Mumbai terror has been planned for the last six months’ and ‘the terrorists came from Karachi; they landed on the Indian coast through boats; they were trained by Pakistan Navy for 12 to 18 months; Dawood Ibrahim’s local infrastructure had provided the logistics for the attack; the terror bears the Inter- Services Intelligence (ISI) stamp’, say the media reports citing Indian intelligence and Mumbai police. All this point to the Jihadi character of the terror.

 

The Jewish religious head in Mumbai and the white foreigners staying in hotels as special targets of the terrorists who allowed Turkish Muslim inmates of Taj Hotel to escape because they were Muslims reinforced the view that the terrorists were part of the global Islamist terror network against non-Muslims (Kafirs).

 

Yet the Home Minister first and the Prime Minister later made statements on November 27, warning that the terrorists would pay for their crime, but, did not utter a word about who were the terrorists, and where they came from.  

 

Then entered the Minister of State for Home Affairs Sri Prakash Jaiswal. He provided the comedy in an otherwise grim tragedy that Mumbai was experiencing for nearly 48 hours. He told the media on November 28, ‘terror could be a conspiracy hatched by right-wing Hindu parties’. Hindu parties — read the BJP? Yes. So Pakistan, or Lashkar-e- Toiba or Jaish-e-Mohammed or other Jihadi outfits are not the prime suspects! Following this line the Chinese People’s Daily suspected Hindu terrorists as the culprits! But most secular media in India fortunately dismissed the junior minister’s statement as just a juvenile prank. As his state minister was striving to make those who cry laugh, the Prime Minister stepped in to supplement his junior minister’s efforts to humour the nation. On that very day, he invited the chief of the ISI — the main suspect in the terror on Mumbai — to come to Delhi.  

 

Why? To share info on the Mumbai terror with the main conspirator! Is it that the PM too was cracking a joke like his junior minister by inviting the ISI chief ? The ISI continues to be, as it always was since 1959 when it was born, hostile to India. On August 1, 2008, The New York Times reported, citing US officials, “American intelligence agencies have concluded” that Pakistan’s ISI had “helped plan the deadly July 7 bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul” that left 58 dead and 141 wounded. As his junior minister spoke of Hindu terrorists as suspects, the Prime Minister invited the ISI chief, a well known jihadi who was involved in the jihad in the July Kabul attack to assist in investigating the Mumbai terror. That is, the Prime Minister was asking the main conspirator, ISI, to catch the other perpetrators – namely, the Jihadis whom it had trained to attack India! Normally such an act would be a subject of a cartoon.  

 

Read together what Jaiswal said in Mumbai — namely, the terrorists were from Hindu political parties — on November 29 — and what Dr Singh did in Delhi on the same date – namely, invite the ISI chief to probe the Mumbai terror.  

 

Did the Prime Minister take his minister of state for home so seriously that he wanted the Hindu angle to the Mumbai terror — some Advani or Modi involvement — to be jointly investigated by the IB in India and the ISI in Pakistan? Or did he expect the ISI to confess to its involvement? Or did he think that the ISI has suddenly shed its enmity and turned its admirer under its secular leaders Sonia Gandhi, a Christian, and himself, a Sikh?

 

But fortunately for India, the Pakistan government refused to send the ISI chief to India. The world would have laughed at India if the ISI chief had come to India and declared to the media that the ISI would ‘co-operate’ with the IB to catch the culprits!

 

What has done India into this mess? It is the Indian polity’s inability to say plainly that Islamic terror is a global phenomenon, and it is extending itself into India through global Islamic network.  

 

Result, instead of isolating the terror, the national political discourse began secularising it. The seculars saw normal anti-terror laws as anti- Muslim laws by showing the number of detainees under the law which contained more Muslims.

 

They refused to acknowledge that global Islamic jihad appeals only to Muslims and not to other communities.

 

How then to maintain arithmetical parity between communities in the arrests under the anti-terror law? Once it is conceded that a terrorist has no religion, the person detained for acts of terror also has no religion.  

 

How then could detainees under POTA be seen as Muslims and others? More, this secular formulation has facilitated the free entry of global jihad. 

 

More, the national discourse, instead of protecting the local Muslims from global jihad, has not only exposed them to it, but also encouraged the process by integrating anti-terror laws within secular vs communal discourse. In the discourse anyone opposing strong antiterror laws became instantly secular, and any one supporting it instantly communal. Consequently, terror became secular, and anti-terror laws became un-secular.

 

Thanks to this debasing secular debate, the UPA repealed the POTA as its first job. The result is for all to see. In the last four years and more, the terror attacks have accounted for more than 4,000 lives and in the last one year our terror toll had been more than that of — believe it — Iraq.  

 

The next perversion followed the first.  

 

The secular discourse instead of isolating the jihadi outfits like the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) worked to make the unwary local Muslims identify with, own such outfits.  

 

Take the example of the ban on SIMI. The BJP-led NDA had banned it in 2001 and the Congress had opposed it, saying that the ban had targeted the Muslims. This secular perverted discourse made the unwary Muslims own the SIMI about which most of them perhaps knew nothing except that the ‘anti-Muslim’ BJP had banned it and the secular parties — read pro-Muslim parties — had opposed it!

 

The UPA first lifted the ban, but reimposed it but not before allowing the SIMI to grow into an Indian LeT. Why not ban the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, asked the Congress and the seculars, when SIMI was banned.

 

But little did they realise that VHP can and should be banned if it indulged in terror, but not to justify the ban on SIMI. See what this secular perversion translates into. One, the state cannot act against the SIMI unless they find some Hindu outfit to act against.  

 

Two, the state cannot detain or act against a terrorist unless it can find terrorists from all communities. QED: terror stands secularised, not isolated in secular discourse! How will India fight terror with this cerebral paralysis?  

 

http://tinyurl.com/57tqpr

Sonia’s presence in Delhi is costing India dearly

FRANCOIS GAUTIER 

 

In 1898, the French writer Emile Zola wrote an open letter to the then French president in the newspaper L’Aurore, titled j’accuse (‘I accuse’), where he accused the French government of anti- Semitism towards Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer unfairly condemned for treason.  

Now it is time for the people of India to say openly that which many, including within the Congress, think secretly and may utter in the privacy of their chambers.  

 

It is not about Manmohan Singh, it is not even about Shivraj Patil, the fall guy; it is about that one person, the Eminence Grise of India. She who pulls all the strings, She whose shadow looms menacingly over so many, She who holds no portfolio, is just a simple elected MP, like 540 others, but rules like an empress.  

 

Sometimes, one’s very physical presence at the top is enough to move things, to influence the course of events. One word from Her, a glance, a frown, are enough to put the whole heavy, inert, unwilling machinery of India’s bureaucracy and political system in full motion. Sometimes She need not say anything: in the true tradition of Bhakti, Her ministers, Her secretaries, interpret Her silences and rush to cater to Her western and Christian identity.

 Nevertheless, she has said and acted enough so that one day she may stand accused on the pages of History for what she must have done to India.  

 

I’accuse Sonia Gandhi as being responsible for the tragedy of Mumbai, having emasculated India’s intelligence agencies by stopping them from investigating terror attacks in the last four years, including the Mumbai train blasts. She has also neutralised the ATS by ordering them at all costs to ferret out ‘Hindu terrorism’, which if it exists, has wrought minuscule damage compared to what Islamic terror has done since 2004.

 

 Did the US send a warning to India that there may be an attack on Mumbai and that the Taj would be one of the targets? Were these ignored because the ATS was too busy chasing Hindu ‘terrorists’ on Sonia’s orders?

 

I accuse Sonia and her government of having made the NSG the laughing stock of the world.

 

How many times did the NSG (who took ten hours to reach Mumbai) claim that it had “sanitised the Taj and that the operation was over” and how many times did a bomb go off immediately after? For the last 20 years, the NSG has guarded VIPs and has become soft. See the comments of Israeli terror specialists, who said the NSG should have first sanitised the immediate surroundings of the places of conflict, kept the bystanders and press (who gave terrorists watching TV in the Taj rooms a perfect report of the security forces’ whereabouts) out of the place, gathered enough information about the position of the terrorists and hostages before taking action, instead of immediately engaging the terrorists, and ensuring the deaths of so many hostages. 

 

I accuse Sonia of having let her Christian and Western background, in four years, divide India on religious and caste lines in a cynical and methodical manner.

 

I accuse Sonia of weakening India’s spirit of sacrifice and courage, so that 20 terrorists (or less) held at ransom the financial capital of India for more than three days.  

 

I accuse Sonia Gandhi of always pointing the finger at Pakistan, when terrorism in India is now mostly homegrown, even if it takes help, training, refuge and arms from Pakistan; of not warning Indians of the grave dangers of Islamic terror for cynical election purposes.

 

I accuse Sonia of being an enemy of the Hindus, who always gave refuge to persecuted minorities, and who are the only people in the world to accept that God may manifest under different names, in different epochs, using different scriptures.  

 

I accuse Sonia Gandhi of taking advantage of India’s respect for women, its undue fascination with the Gandhi name, and its stupid mania for White Skin.

 

I’accuse Sonia of exploiting the Indian Press’ obsession with her. She hardly ever gave interview in 20 years, except scripted ones to NDTV, yet the Press always protects her, never blames her and keeps silent over her covert role.  

 

I’accuse Sonia and her government of trying to make heroes of subservient and inefficient men to hide the humiliation of Mumbai 26/11.

 

Before going to his death, Hemant Karkare, the ATS chief, was shown on television clumsily handling his helmet, as someone who uses it very rarely. Why did he die of bullet wounds in the chest when he was wearing a bullet-proof vest? Either Indian vests are inferior quality or he was not wearing one.

 

How did the terrorists who killed him and his fellow officer escape in the same vehicle used by the ATS chief ? Why did he and his officers go into Cama Hospital without ascertaining where the terrorists were? We honour his death, but these facts say a lot about the ATS’ battle-readiness.  

 

Will someone in the Congress, someone who feels more Indian than faithful to Sonia, stand up and speak the truth?

 

Who said, “Go after Hindu terrorists”? Who insisted on putting pressure on BJP governments in Karnataka or Orissa for so-called persecution of Christians, when Christians have always practised their faith in total freedom here, while their missionaries are converting hundreds of thousands of innocent tribals and Dalits with the billions of dollars given by gullible westerners? Who said, “Go soft on Islamic terrorism”? Who wants to do away with India’s nuclear deterrence in the face of Pakistani and Chinese nuclear threats, by pushing at all costs the one sided Indo-US nuclear deal, which makes no secret of its intention to denuclearise India militarily?

 

I am sure Sonia Gandhi has good qualities: she probably was a good wife to Rajiv, a good daughter in law to Indira and by all accounts, she is a good mother to her children. One also hears first-hand reports about her concern for smaller people, her dignity in the suffering that befell her when her husband was blown to pieces, and her courtesy with visitors.  

 Nevertheless, she is a danger to India.   

 

Her very presence, both physical and occult, open the doors to forces inimical to India.

 

Even Indian Christians should understand that she is not a gift to them: her presence at the top has emboldened fanatics like John Dayal or Valson Thampu, who practise an orthodox Christianity prevalent in the West in the early 20th century, but no longer, to radicalise their flock.

 

Indian Christians should recognise that they have a much better deal here than Christians or Hindus have in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia or Saudi Arabia.  

 

Under Sonia’s rule, Indian Muslims, too, have been used as electoral pawns. They have been encouraged to shun the Sufi streak, a blend of the best of Islam and Vedanta, for a hard-line Sunni brand imported from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Afghanistan. 

 

For the good of India, her civilisation, her immense spirituality and culture, Sonia Gandhi has to go and a government that thinks Indian, breathes nationalism and will protect its citizens must be voted to power.  — fgautier@auroville.org.in

 

Related stories :

 

1) India’s political leadership to blame: WSJ @ www.aol.in/news-story/Indias-political-leadership-to-blame-Wall-Street-Journal/2008112802139012000016

 

2) Govt. Acts Busy @ http://www.dailypioneer.com/138687/More-skeletons-tumble-out.html

 

3) Mumbai Lessons:Harvard @ http://honestreporting.wordpress.com/

 

4) Truth shall prevail @ http://indiaview.wordpress.com/2008/12/03/truth-will-prevailsadhvi/

 

MAKING SENSE OF THE MUMBAI ATTACKS

In the Triangle of Terror

By SPIEGEL Staff

The murderous attack on the city of Mumbai by Islamists shocked the world. It was coolly planned and coldly executed, and the trail supposedly points across the border to Pakistan, India's archenemy. Are the two nuclear powers on the verge of a new conflict?

It was a bizarre incident. Perhaps security officials should have seen what happened in March 2007 in the waters off Mumbai, a city of 18 million people, as a warning. That was when the crew of an Indian coast guard vessel noticed a fishing cutter coming from the north.

When the officers stopped the boat, they found, in addition to the crew, eight young Pakistani men who had no business being in Indian territorial waters. The men were so intent on being allowed to continue to Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay, that they offered the Indian officials a bribe.

http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,1371072,00.jpg 

AP

Indian paramilitary soldiers stand guard in front of the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai.

The Indians took the money and allowed the eight Pakistanis to continue, but they were not truly corrupt. Instead, they quickly placed a small homing device on board the fishing boat and notified Indian intelligence.

A short time later, the Pakistanis were apprehended and questioned. The intelligence agents soon realized that they were dealing with Islamists from the Pakistani organization Lashkar-e Taiba. But they never learned what the men were doing in India.

Today, more than one-and-a-half years later, Indian intelligence agents are connecting the dots between that incident and last week's attacks in Mumbai. They believe that the Islamists may have been on a test run to figure out the best way to bring a certain number of men from Pakistan to Mumbai by sea.

That trip was probably a dress rehearsal for the attack that began last Wednesday evening. It ended in more than 170 dead and almost 300 wounded, after Mumbai was attacked by at least 10 Islamists. They arrived in inflatable boats, wore athletic shoes, trendy cargo trousers and backpacks -- young men who looked like backpacking students.

With the ongoing fire from their Kalashnikovs, and with hand grenades and explosives, the attackers set off a panic in India's largest city and the rest of the country. To the horror of the rest of the world, they targeted Americans, Brits and Israelis. Some holed up in the enormous Taj Mahal Hotel in the eastern part of the city, others went on a murdering spree in the five-star Hotel Oberoi-Trident, a few hundred meters away in western Mumbai, while a third group killed commuters at a train station farther north. The streets between these sites were transformed into a triangle of terror.

This was no ordinary, al-Qaida-style bombing. It was a military commando action, precisely planned and carried out in cold blood, a nightmare that lasted more than 45 hours, until the police and military finally managed to end the massacre.

An Outpost of the West in the East

Mumbai represents the side of India it wants the world to see: modern, open, capitalist, global and affluent, the financial capital of a country seeking international recognition. For this reason, no other city in India has attracted as much of the destructive fury of Islamists as this halo on the Arabian Sea.

Mumbai is like an outpost of the West in the East, a city of stock markets and the Bollywood film industry, the financial center and dream factory for a country of one billion people, India's New York and Los Angeles rolled into one. For those who want no part of the West's focus on money, globalization and modernity, Mumbai is a Western den of iniquity. For those who yearn to be a part of it, Mumbai is a melting pot.

The city is a magnet for thousands arriving from rural areas, who end up in teeming slums, hoping to work their way up to the sunny side one day. Mumbai, with its 18 million people, could soon be the world's second-largest city after Tokyo. There is unbelievable wealth and devastating poverty, and even without religion, Mumbai offers plenty of material for conflict fueled by hate.

The Islamist terrorists apparently hoped to strike two enemies at the same time. They wanted to strike a blow at modern India, to avenge their oppressed fellow Muslims and wrest part of the divided region of Kashmir from Indian control. But it was also an attack on the West, as evidenced by the terrorists' singling out of British and American citizens, by their targeting of the famous luxury hotels where foreigners stay and by their attack on a Jewish center. Up to 20 of the dead are foreigners, three of them apparently from Germany. The German Federal Office of Criminal Investigation has sent four officers to Mumbai.

In committing the murders, the terrorists added a global charge to a regional conflict. There are three powder kegs lined up next to each other in this region: ethnically diverse India, embattled Afghanistan and unstable Pakistan. These three countries contain enough explosive material to shake the entire world, especially because India and Pakistan, archenemies, have nuclear warheads and this attack could propel them toward new hostilities.

This melting together of conflicts is typical al-Qaida strategy from the Osama bin Laden school. It breaks down international borders. From Afghanistan to Iraq to Palestine to Indonesia, wherever the supposed true believers are battling the supposed infidels, everything flows together into one great conflict, the "clash of civilizations" that US political scientist Samuel Huntington foresaw at the end of the Cold War. According to Huntington, the main battle lines would soon no longer be drawn between the two major blocs and ideologies, but between cultures and religions, especially between the Western and the Islamic worlds.

'Gateway to India'

The most recent battle in this war began when the Islamists' black-and-yellow inflatable boats set out -- presumably from a mother ship out at sea, as Indian investigators believe. They also speculate that some of the terrorists arrived by land a few days earlier, but that the men on the ship brought the weapons.

On Thursday, an Indian coast guard helicopter discovered the Kuber, a fishing trawler, unmanned and adrift in the Indian Ocean, with the body of a man believed to be the captain on board, his hands tied and his throat slit. The terrorists may have hijacked the boat. Investigators are currently analyzing the data on the ship's navigation system and satellite telephone. It could reveal where exactly the terrorists came from.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,grossbild-1368092-593770,00.html

Where the attacks took place.

Skyscrapers point the way to downtown Mumbai, where the famous "Gateway to India" monument stands. It would also serve as the terrorists' gateway to Mumbai. The city is on an island, and its downtown area is surrounded by water on three sides -- the ideal setting for attackers arriving by sea.

Once on land, the Islamists stole several cars and a police van. They separated into at least five groups and set off on their mission. Possibly the first shots -- officials have not yet been able to reconstruct the course of events leading up to Saturday morning -- fell at about 9:30 p.m. at the Chhatrapati Shivaji train station.

In the Victorian terminal, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, at least two terrorists pulled automatic weapons out of their bags and began shooting randomly and tossing hand grenades at commuters. "The men seemed calm and focused. They were not in a hurry at all. They did not seem to be afraid of anything," says an employee at a nearby café. One of the men would fire while the other one reloaded, according to the café employee. About 40 people were killed or wounded.

'Pure Horror'

At about the same time, their collaborators began shooting wildly in the lobby of the 105-year-old Taj Mahal, a hotel popular among the international elite, including politicians, millionaires and celebrities. A palace with more than 565 rooms, hand-woven silk carpets, alabaster ceilings and crystal chandeliers, the Taj Mahal has accommodated such famous guests as Prince Charles, Jackie Onassis, David Rockefeller, Bill Clinton and Mick Jagger.

The Taj is a world-class hotel managed by an international staff, including a German deputy director. One night in a room in the hotel's main wing costs about $500 (€400), breakfast not included. The Taj is almost always filled with foreigners.

When the first shots fell, Erika Mann, a German Social Democratic politician and member of the European Parliament, was sitting in the hotel restaurant with some Indian acquaintances. She was in Mumbai to conduct negotiations on trade relations. "Odd, we thought, perhaps this is the gun salute for a wedding," she said a few days later. But what happened next, says Mann, was "pure horror."

The exact whereabouts of Ralph Burkei -- the treasurer of the Munich branch of Bavaria's conservative Christian Social Union (CSU) and vice president of TSV 1860, a Munich football club -- in those first few minutes are still unclear. Burkei, 51, a partner in C.A.M.P. TV, a media company that produces the program "Bayern Journal," was vacationing with his girlfriend at the Taj. He attempted to flee when the Islamists arrived, a move that would lead to his horrific death.

Andreas Liveras, 73, a British national with an estimated net worth of close to half a billion euros, remained relatively cool at the beginning. He earned a portion of his wealth with a frozen pastry business, but later in life he derived his income from chartering his two motorized yachts: The 90-meter (295-foot) Lauren and the 85-meter (279-foot) Alysia are available for rent beginning at €696,000 ($870,000), VAT not included.

When the shots began, Liveras took cover under a table in the restaurant. A short time later, he called the BBC to report on the fighting and bomb explosions around him. By then, complete mayhem had erupted on the streets of Mumbai. A taxi blew up under an overpass, and a few terrorists drove through the streets, shooting indiscriminately into the crowds. Some victims who had been brought to a hospital were shot at a second time by the terrorists in front of the hospital.

Five Islamists stormed a famous restaurant, the Café Leopold. According to the "Lonely Planet," the Leopold attracts tourists from around the world like moths to a flame. "All of a sudden there was shooting coming from automatic weapons, and the whole place exploded," says Diane Murphy, a British citizen. "It was extremely loud, and my husband and I were hit" -- she in the foot and he between the ribs. Within minutes, the interior walls were covered with bullet holes and people were lying in pools of blood. The terrorists also threw hand grenades in the restaurant. All that remained of one victim were his shoes.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,grossbild-1369245-593770,00.html  A National Security Guard commando rappels from a helicopter near the Jewish center in Colaba district.

Soon the police arrived, followed by soldiers and later special forces -- heavily armed and dressed in black uniforms. By then the shooting was coming from all sides. The terrorists were firing so wastefully at anything that moved that some officials believe that they may have set up ammunition depots days before the attacks. By that time, another group of terrorists believed to consist of seven armed men had begun their attack on the Oberoi Trident, another luxury hotel that competes with the Taj. They singled out Britons, Americans and Israelis. Snipers went into position on surrounding rooftops. One hostage wrote "Save us" on a sheet and hung it from a window. Later on, a large fire erupted at the Oberoi, and fires soon broke out at the Taj Mahal, as well.

At roughly 9:45 p.m., a group of terrorists attacked a Jewish center in the Colaba tourist district. Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, 29, and his wife Rivka, 28, ran the center as a so-called Chabad House, sponsored by the ultra-orthodox Lubavitch Society in New York. Chabad Houses serve as shelters, synagogues and meeting places for Jews in dozens of countries around the world.

The rabbi and his wife were already asleep when the Islamists arrived. Others in the house included the devout couple's two-year-old son Mosche, a nanny and three other Jews. The nanny and one of the Jews escaped and hid in a storage room. After 12 hours in the hiding place, she heard the Holtzberg's young son crying.

The nanny ventured out and saw Mosche standing next to his parents, who were lying motionless in pools of blood. She grabbed the little boy and ran out of the building.

Later on, a special unit used a helicopter to storm the Chabad House and shot two terrorists. By then, the hostages had all been killed, most of them with their hands tied.

In the period following the attack on the Chabad House, several news agencies and newspapers in Mumbai received an e-mail in which a group calling itself the "Deccan Mujaheddin" claimed responsibility for the attacks. No one had ever heard of the group.

'You Have Wronged Us'

That night, a terrorist holed up in the Hotel Oberoi gave a telephone interview to the Indian broadcaster India TV, in which he demanded the immediate release of all Islamists imprisoned in India. "You have wronged us and forced us to suffer atrocities," he said, explaining that this was why he and his brothers were now willing to die as martyrs. The man, who called himself Sahadullah, spoke Punjabi with a Pakistani accent.

The reporter asked whether the Deccan Mujaheddin had ties to al-Qaida. No, the terrorist replied, al-Qaida had cut off ties with his group. How many weapons do you have left?, the journalist asked. We still have a few presents left over for you, the man replied, followed by the sound of shots being fired in the background.

The Deccan is a high plateau in southern India. But it was doubtful if a local, previously unknown terrorist organization could truly execute an operation of this magnitude without outside support. How much in the way of logistics does an attack of this nature require?

Not much, Indian security officials in Mumbai said on Thursday. Almost all of the targets were "soft targets," that is, places with little security and easy access for the assailants. The bombs, say Indian experts, were small and manageable, and the idea of arriving by sea, though clever, did not require the involvement of a large organization.

It was evident, said Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during the fighting, that the attacks were carried out by a "group based outside the country." Was it just an Indian reflex, to blame neighboring Pakistan? Or did the premier have more information than that? Singh said that he had proof to support his theory that the terrorists had come from abroad, although his government declined to say exactly what the evidence was.

A Region That Has Always Seethed with Violence

Some signs seemed to point in a completely different direction -- inward. There is plenty of anger and hate to go around among India's Muslims, just as there are plenty of men within that group who idolize al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

The decades-long good relationship between the Muslim minority and the Indian state was severely shaken in 2002, when a Hindu mob hunted down and killed about 2,000 Muslims in the western Indian state of Gujarat. Meanwhile, the international politicization of Islam has not gone unnoticed among Indian Muslims. In response to the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper in 2005, radical Muslims staged angry protests in India. And not every terrorist arrested by Indian security forces has completed his training in Pakistani or Afghan camps. There are also terrorist training camps in the forests of the southwest Indian province of Kerala and in central India.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,grossbild-1369738-593770,00.html  One of the gunmen who paralyzed Mumbai.

And then there was a more recent warning from inside India. On Saturday, Sept. 13, five bombs exploded in New Delhi, killing 20 people. On the same day, various newspapers received an email signed by a terrorist group known as the "Indian Mujaheddin." Many now assume that this group is behind the attack on Mumbai, and that is may be a sort of umbrella organization for the Deccan Mujaheddin.

In November 2007, the Indian Mujaheddin claimed responsibility for its first attacks -- in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Since then, it has also claimed responsibility for a number of attacks in recent months, killing 130 people this year. For the Islamists, the Indian Mujaheddin is battling the government to exact revenge for the persecution of Muslims in India.

In its hate-filled September e-mail, the group announced attacks in Mumbai: "As deadly as the attacks facing residents of Mumbai will be, the only elements responsible for this are the members of the Mumbai counterterrorism unit." The special force is considered violent in its treatment of Islamists. In their e-mail, the terrorists wrote that the names of police officers responsible for the violence were on a death list, and that this time they were very serious.

Shortly after the first shots were fired in the Taj Mahal Hotel on Wednesday evening, hotel security personnel ran into the restaurant. "Quick, quick," they shouted, herding the guests into the kitchen. "Then we hid, as well as we could," says German member of parliament Erika Mann, "always moving from one spot to the next, constantly fleeing." Next to her she saw Indians, Japanese and Arabs running for their lives. "There was one woman who was screaming horribly," says the politician, "she had been forced to leave her two babies behind in the lobby."

Mann and others ran down a spiral staircase into underground hallways. "There were shots behind us," says Mann. But eventually she ran into soldiers who were apparently shooting at the attackers behind her, and after that she was safe.

Unlike Mann, Andreas Liveras, the frozen pastry multimillionaire, never made it to safety with the soldiers. He was found dead later on, with several bullets in his body.

Traumatic History

Instead of following the rest of the group out of the restaurant, Ralph Burkei, the man from Munich, tried to climb down the outside of the hotel. He fell and landed on an awning. He must have been in terrible pain, but he was still alive when he used his mobile phone to call a friend in Munich. "I've broken all of my bones," he said. "Unless someone helps me now, I won't make it."

Burkei called his friend several times that night. But help did not arrive at the awning soon enough to save his life.

The attack on Mumbai has finally turned the world's attention to a region that has always seethed with violence, one in which murders of politicians occur periodically and where terror is practically part of daily life.

India is home to 150 million Muslims, more than in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia combined. Nevertheless, they are a minority of 13.4 percent in a country of more than one billion people, and many are still tormented by the traumatic memory of one of the biggest expulsions in world history.

When Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru led India to independence in 1947, the British colonial power ordered the division of the subcontinent into two nations, the Union of India and the much smaller Islamic Republic of Pakistan, from which East Pakistan seceded in 1971 to become an independent state, Bangladesh.

The announcement, on the day after independence, of the location of the new border marked the beginning of a conflict that expanded into the second ongoing international political crisis, next to the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians, brought on by the disintegration of the British Empire: the struggle between warring brothers, Pakistan and India. It was this same struggle that led to the Mumbai massacre.

It began with an ethnic cleansing campaign of previously unknown proportions, in which 5.5 million Hindus and Sikhs were drive south and about six million Muslims north across the new border. Pogroms erupted in villages, neighbors attacked neighbors and almost a million people lost their lives at the hands of violent, fanatical religious warriors. Since its bloody beginnings Pakistan has been plagued by the fear of being swallowed up by its much larger neighbor.

A constantly bleeding wound in this conflict between neighbors is the crisis over one of the most beautiful parts of the world, the Himalayan region of Kashmir. At the time of independence Kashmir, a former princely state, was ruled by a Hindu maharaja, despite the fact that it was 80 percent Muslim. Pakistan, eager to annex Kashmir, sent in Muslim irregular troops. The beleaguered maharaja turned to New Delhi for help and surrendered his realm to the Union of India, which also sent soldiers.

Since early 1949, Kashmir has been split along a United Nations-brokered ceasefire line. India and Pakistan have already waged two bloody wars over Kashmir and threatened each other with nuclear annihilation. Former US President Bill Clinton called the paradisiacal region "the most dangerous place on earth."

The Pakistani military believed it had a good opportunity to weaken India when, in 1989, a rebellion broke out among Muslims in the Indian part of Kashmir. The Pakistan intelligence agency, ISI, invited young Kashmiris to cross the border for training, only to send them back as trained fighters. India brutally struck down the rebellion.

In response, the ISI changed course. From then on, the intelligence agency no longer used primarily Kashmiri nationalists, but Pakistani and Kashmiri Islamists, who invoked jihad against India and sought to "Islamize" Kashmir. After having given the al-Qaida terrorists their start by supporting the fundamentalist Taliban in Afghanistan, the Pakistanis paved the way for Islamist terrorists to head south.

Even al-Qaida leader Bin Laden had close ties to Kashmiri terrorism. In a new book, former CIA agent Bruce Riedel, now an advisor to US President-elect Barack Obama, describes how Bin Laden and the ISI cooperated in the establishment of the Pakistani Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which has since expanded its attacks well beyond Kashmir to strike India directly.

Three months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, a suicide commando attacked the Indian parliament. The incident almost sparked a war between India and Pakistan, because the government in New Delhi saw the handwriting of Pakistani intelligence in the attack. It was only through pressure from Washington that a new war was prevented.

It is precisely those terrorists who apparently almost triggered a nuclear war at the time who the Indians now believe are behind the attacks on Mumbai.

The Pakistan Connection

If it turns out that the terrorists did in fact come from Pakistan, the world will face a new round in the dangerous dispute between the two archenemies. The conflict harbors the risks of a war between the two nuclear powers, which explains why Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has been so eager to show a willingness to cooperate. He is sending his foreign minister to meet with Singh and his intelligence chief and his staff to India to assist in the investigation.

Even before the hours of horror in Mumbai had ended, Indian authorities apparently found evidence of a connection between the attackers and the Pakistani terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba.

As the Indian special forces units advanced through the hotels, room by room, they witnessed grisly scenes, liberated the Islamists' hostages and shot one attacker after another. One terrorist at the Taj Mahal managed to hold out until the end.

"There were bodies lying all over the place, and there was blood everywhere," says one officer, describing the scenes when the Indian authorities stormed the hotel. They counted 50 dead in the lobby alone, and more bodies in a room on the third floor. They also discovered the Islamists' supplies: dates, almonds and bullet rounds. The attackers had apparently prepared for a prolonged siege.

While freeing the hostages, the Indian special units also captured at least one of the terrorists alive. At first the media reported three captured gunmen. On Friday the PTI news agency reported that they had confessed that they were members of Lashkar-e Taiba, or "Army of the Pure."

On Friday evening, the British Daily Mail newspaper reported that at least two of the men arrested were British citizens of Pakistani descent. Scotland Yard sent a team to Mumbai to help Indian investigators. However, the British connection seemed to be discounted over the weekend.

According to the latest media reports, there is one Islamist in police custody, a 21-year-old Pakistani named as Ajmal Qasab who says he was trained in Lashkar camps.

And Indian intelligence is claiming that the attackers, using satellite phones, spoke with men in Pakistan during the gun battles, even speaking directly with a Lashkar commander.

RÜDIGER FALKSOHN, CLEMENS HÖGES, HANS HOYNG, JULIANE VON MITTELSTAEDT, PADMA RAO, BRITTA SANDBERG, HANS-JÜRGEN SCHLAMP, BERNHARD ZAND

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,593770,00.html