Intelligence failure or state-managed "show"

[Neo]

Intelligence failure or state-managed "show" ​

Tuesday December 02, 2008

Killing of innocent people by terrorists whether it happens in India, Pakistan or elsewhere on any pretext is despicable. Recent carnage in Mumbai by the terrorists is indeed condemnable in strongest terms but describing a 9/11 of India is blowing it out of proportions.

Indian leadership keeping with its traditions gave a knee-jerk reaction and within an hour accused Pakistan of having masterminded the events even before any preliminary investigation. Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi was in India who had to face the media men and government officials who were accusing Pakistan of having a hand in the carnage. He was requested by India to send ISI chief, and within hours Pakistan government agreed to send ISI chief without convening emergency meeting of the cabinet. It has to be mentioned that the parties in power had condemned former President Musharraf that he joined war on terror without discussing the matter in the cabinet or the Parliament. Of course, the better sense had prevailed later and on second thought the decision to send ISI chief to India was revered.

An official on behalf of the army said that India is threatening Pakistan of dire consequences and war preparations are being made vis-a-vis orders to the Indian air force to be ready, it is not appropriate to send ISI chief or even representative of the ISI to India. Though Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi replying a question by a reporter in his press conference said that Pakistan is not on the defensive yet acceding to India’s request to send ISI was tantamount to being apologetic.

Before going into the details it has to be mentioned that common sense demands that before investigating the matter it should be pondered over as to who stands to gain from such tragic events. Pakistan is already the victim of terrorism and has suffered more than any other country in the world. Pakistan faced a volatile situation in FATA and Balochistan and cannot afford confrontation with India when its 100000 troops are deployed on Pak-Afghan border.

Secondly, Pakistan could not imagine of indulging in such provocative acts when composite dialogue was now moving from general to the specifics. And Sir Creek and Siachen issues were about to be resolved.

Thirdly, Pakistan expected that India would now discuss Kashmir issue, as its leadership had expressed the desire to resolve this issue for permanent peace in the region.

In the past also, whenever there was pressure to resolve Kashmir issue, something happened or was planned that roiled the dialogue. In fact India could not digest the US president-elect Obama’s statement that to end terrorism resolving Kashmir dispute is important. Then the question is as to who stands to gain? Of course, it is BJP because it was a security failure and also failure of the Congress government for which it has drawn flak. By pointing finger of accusation towards Pakistan, India has tried to deflect people`s anger and disenchantment with the government, especially when elections are a few months away.

According to government official as per story published in the Indian English daily, India’s intelligence services had delivered at least three precise warnings that a major terrorist attack on Mumbai was imminent. However, weaknesses in police, security personnel and training could not stall the attack.

Indian Official went on to say: “On November 18, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) intercepted a satellite phone conversation, in which a so-far unidentified caller notified his handlers that he was heading for Mumbai along with a certain cargo”. As reported in Indian media citing Indian army sources that interrogation of one terrorist has revealed that terrorists were provided arms and logical support by the underworld of Mumbai; they had come via Karachi and that they belong to Lashkar-e-Taiba who were given training at Lahore and Peshawar.

According to a version in Indian daily The Hindu, they were trained near Mangla. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had within hours after the incident said that foreign hand is involved. Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee had said that there is incontrovertible evidence that Pakistani group is involved. Chief Minister of Gujarat had gone to the extent of saying that Pakistan has violated the international maritime borders and India should plan to counter more.

Campaign against Pakistan is in full swing though hardly a few weeks ago India stood exposed when it was established that serving army Col Purohit and other extremists Hindus who swear allegiance to BJP were the perpetrators of bomb blast at Malegaon, Mozaht, Ajmer and Samjhauta Express. According to the figures compiled by terror watch portal show, India has 174 terrorist, insurgent and extremist groups out of which Manipur alone has 40 groups, followed by 36 in Asam, 32 in Jammu and Kashmir, and 30 in Tripura.

The list also includes left-wing groups like People’s War Group and the Communist Party of India-Maist and also other extremist groups like the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and the Deendar Anjuman. Maharashtra police’s unraveling of the plot behind the Ramazan blasts in Malegaon with the arrest of Hindutva activists including a Sadhvi was considered a blessing for Congress election campaign. And now the intelligence failure of the present government is a boon for the BJP. It should not present any difficulty in making an assessment as to who has been instrumental in recent carnage.

Repressive laws such as Armed Forces Special Powers Act have provided Indian forces the powers to kill with impunity any person in Northeast India. Indian forces have shot down several innocent persons in fake encounters as such it is involved in gross human rights violations. Because of inept policies of Indian government law and order situation in all 13 Naxal affected states such as Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Eastern Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, West Bengal, western Orissa and Bihar is hopeless. India faces insurgencies in Nagaland, Mizoram, Assam, Bodoland, Manipur and Tripura also where it is using heavy-handed methods and use of brutal force to quell the unrest, which fact has been censured by human rights organizations including Amnesty International. Although in most of the states, resistance is localized but like Tamil Nado there is possibility that any group could have ventured to go out of its area to convey the message that it could act wherever it wants.

Pakistan is also facing insurgency in Balochistan and Pakistan’s foreign office has more than once accused India’s RAW of planning and helping insurgents. Both India and Pakistan should stop the blame-game and resolve the outstanding disputes like Siachen, Sir Creek and Kashmir. They should also resolve the issues of Baglihar and Kishanganga dams, etc. and focus on poverty alleviation and improving the living standards of the teeming millions living below the poverty line. This is the right way to fight terrorism. India is upping the ante by making accusations against Pakistan and in all probability will move the army to forward positions, but it should bear in mind that war is not an option between the nuclear states.

 

[Kharian_Beast]

State managed show.

 

[haviZsultan]

State managed show.

I second that!

 

[ejaz007]

After going through all available information the event has become suspicious.

 

[Flintlock]

Yeah, yeah, keep believing whatever makes you feel better.

When the FBI announces its findings, include them in the conspiracy as well.

When the MOSSAD completes their investigation, call it a Hindu-Christian-Zionist conspiracy.

When Scotland Yard does the same....well....you know the drill.

 

[BanglaBhoot]

The Mumbai Attacks: More Than Meets The Eye

By Jeremy R. Hammond

04 December, 2008
Foreignpolicyjournal.com

Details have emerged regarding who was responsible for the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, with the evidence pointing to the Pakistani-based terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). But the trail doesn't end there.

Indications of a coming attack were reportedly received by intelligence agencies well in advance. US signals intelligence (SIGINT) picked up a spike in “chatter” indicating something was brewing, which was supported by information from assets in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Some of the information that was received by US intelligence was passed on to India as early as September.

The details were specific. The CIA station chief in Delhi reportedly met with his counterpart at India’s intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), to pass on intelligence that LeT was planning a major attack that would come from the sea.

Less than a week before the attacks, a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan purportedly killed a British citizen of Pakistani descent named Rashid Rauf, who was suspected of planning to blow up commercial airliners flying from Britain to the U.S. He fled Britain in 2002 after being suspected of stabbing to death his uncle, Mohammed Saeed. He settled in Bahawalpur, Pakistan, and married a relative of Maulana Masood Azhar, the leader of another militant group, Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM).

Besides being linked to JeM, he was also suspected by some intelligence sources of having connections to the ISI. Pakistani authorities arrested him in Bahawalpur in August 2006 at the behest of British authorities, but he escaped police custody when they allowed him to enter a mosque ostensibly to say afternoon prayers. While police waited outside, Rauf walked out the back door. He may have just escaped, but there were also rumors that he was secretly taken into custody by the ISI in a plan that kept him under wraps while preventing him from being extradited to Britain.

The location of Rauf was reportedly given to U.S. officials by the Pakistani government, and may have been a move calculated to appease the U.S. over charges that elements of the ISI are still assisting militants engaged in cross-border attacks into Afghanistan. Earlier this year, terrorists bombed the Indian embassy in Kabul, and both India and the U.S. claimed that the ISI had been involved in the attack.

The airstrike that killed Rauf may also have been the result of early information obtained on the attack on Mumbai, as intelligence agencies reportedly had learned that he was involved in the planning of a major upcoming terrorist event. They may have sought to take him out before such an attack could occur.

Indian intelligence had obtained its own warnings of an attack. One indication was a request from a LeT operative to obtain international SIM cards for an upcoming operation. There was also information that a LeT team was training at a camp near Karachi, and that part of their training was to prepare for launching attacks from the sea. The team was trained under Zakir-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, also known as “Chacha”. Also among the information received was that the Taj Mahal hotel was pinpointed as a major target.

As a result, security at the hotel was increased, but was lessened again just a week prior to the attacks because of complaints from the hotel’s clients. Ratan Tata, chairman of the Tata Group, which owns the hotel, acknowledged that warnings of a possible attack had been received.

The Tata Group is also invested in the energy sector, and stands to gain from the recent deal between the U.S. and India, which would provide India with nuclear resources outside of the framework of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards system. Pakistan has voiced its opposition to the U.S. deal with its nuclear-armed neighbor.

On November 18, RAW intercepted a satellite phone conversation made to a number in Lahore, Pakistan, known to be used by the military commander of LeT known alternatively by the names Yusuf Muzammil or Abu Hurrera, also known as “Yahah”. The caller notified his handlers that he was heading for Mumbai with unspecified cargo.

As a result of the intelligence it had received, India’s Navy and Coast Guard were on the lookout for suspicious ships entering Indian territorial waters, and were specifically told to watch for an unidentified ship coming from Karachi.

Only one of the terrorists in the Mumbai attacks was captured alive, Azam Amir Kasab, a resident of the territory of Punjab in Pakistan. According to reports, he has told his interrogators a great deal about how the attacks went down.

Kasab confessed to being a member of LeT. He and his fellow terrorists were instructed to target foreigners, particularly Americans, British, and Israelis. They had set out from Karachi in a ship called the “MV Alpha”, which is allegedly owned by Dawood Ibrahim, a terrorist wanted by India in connection with bombings in Bombay in 1993 that resulted in 250 deaths. Ibrahim is also wanted by Interpol, and has been designated a global terrorist by the U.S.

Confronted with increased naval patrols that were boarding and searching suspect vessels, the team hijacked a fishing trawler called the “Kuber”, registration number 2303, and killed most of its crew except for Amarsinh Solanki, whom they kept alive to help navigate.

On November 26, as the terrorists neared their target destination, they killed Solanki by slitting his throat. An associate of Ibrahim’s in Mumbai had arranged to pick the team up in inflatable rubber dinghies. They went ashore at about 9pm. Witnesses reported seeing them land in the dinghies, which were unusual among the common wooden fishing boats, and unloading a number of large bags.

Once on shore near the Gateway to India, Mumbai’s main landing point near the Naval dockyard, the team split up. Four men went to the Taj Mahal hotel, where an advance team had already checked in on November 22 and set up a control room. Two went to the Nariman House, the Mumbai headquarters of Chabad Lubavitch, an ultra-orthodox Jewish group. Another acquisitioned a taxi and drove to the railway station. Two others headed to the Leopold restaurant, a hot spot for foreign visitors to Mumbai.

At about 9:20pm, one team arrived at the Nariman House, where they took hostages, while another opened fire at the Leopold café. At 9:45, terrorists entered both the Taj Mahal and Trident Oberoi hotels, where hostages were again taken. At 10:15, two of the men began firing indiscriminately outside the Cama hospital. At 10:30, terrorists entered the Chhatrapati Shivaji railway station and again opened fire.

According to Pakistan’s Daily Times, the terrorists identified and killed two U.S. intelligence officers at the Taj Mahal hotel.

Indian officials are now saying that just 10 men were responsible, indicating that two-man teams were able to strike one target and move on to the next. Teams held out under siege the the Nariman House and the hotels, with the Taj Mahal the last to be cleared. By the end, it had taken Indian forces 60 hours to kill or capture the attackers, with their reign of terror finally ending on the 29th with nearly 200 people reported dead.

According to police, the men were aged 18 to 28. They were found to have drugs in their system, and traces of cocaine and LSD were found at one or more scenes of their attack, which they apparently had taken for an additional adrenaline boost to keep them going for the long siege and battle with Indian special forces.

A Mauritian government identity card was discovered with the terrorists who attacked the Taj Mahal hotel, along with credit and debit cards of a number of different banks, including HSBC (headquartered in London and named after its founding member, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, with global branches), HDFC, and ICICI (both banks in India). The Republic of Mauritius is a former British colony and member of the Commonwealth off the east coast of Africa, near Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.

They were reported to be using AK-47 assault rifles. Photos shown in the press reveal what appear to be variants with a folding stock. They were also reported to have handguns and grenades. Additionally, police recovered sub-machine guns used by the terrorists. An Associated Press photo of the confiscated guns reveals what appear to be Heckler & Koch MP5-N sub-machine guns. The “N” model is a version of the MP5 designed specifically for the U.S. Navy and used by Navy Seals teams.

BlackBerry cell phones were also recovered from the terrorists, containing international SIM cards investigators believe correlate with the early intelligence further connecting the team to LeT. During the attacks, they received calls from outside the country, which is apparently among the evidence leading government officials to early on state publicly that the terrorists had ties to a foreign nation.

A global-positioning system (GPS) and satellite phone were found in the abandoned Kuber fishing trawler. Navigation routes plotted in the GPS revealed the planned route from Karachi to Mumbai and back again, indicating that the terrorists hoped they might possibly be able to escape and return to Pakistan. Investigators determined that this was the phone used to contact Muzammil, the LeT military commander. Calls from the phone were also traced to Lakhvi, the LeT training specialist.

The MV Alpha was also intercepted after the attacks by the Indian Navy.

Responsibility for the attacks was claimed via e-mail by a previously unknown group calling itself Deccan Mujahideen. This appears to be a front, apparently designed to direct blame upon groups within India and give the appearance of a home-grown terrorist attack. Deccan may refer to a neighborhood in the city of Hyderabad or to the Decaan Plateau that dominates the middle and south of India.

The RAW traced IP addresses used to send the e-mail to an account in Russia that was opened on the Wednesday just prior to the attack and used to relay the message to media in India. The e-mail was further traced to a computer in Pakistan, and investigators have also said that it was generated by dictation using voice recognition software.

India has called for Pakistan to hand over 20 individuals it has alleged were involved in the attacks. Among the wanted men are Dawood Ibrahim, Hafiz Saeed, and Maulana Masood Azhar.

As noted, Ibrahim is among Interpol’s most wanted. The U.S. designated him as a global terrorist in 2003, stating that he had ties to al Qaeda and that he funded attacks by militant groups, including LeT, aimed at destabilizing the Indian government. Ibrahim’s organization is known as the D-Company and is known to be heavily involved in drug trafficking. According to the U.S. government, D-Company is involved in large-scale shipment of narcotics into the U.K. and Western Europe. He is also alleged to have ties to the CIA through casino operations in Nepal.

Ibrahim is the son of a police constable and worked as a police informant, only to become involved in crime. He rose through the ranks of the underworld in Bombay (now Mumbai) to become one of the city’s leading organized crime bosses. He later fled to Pakistan, where he is believed to have stayed in Karachi under the protection of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. Some Indian analysts have suggested that it was at the behest of the ISI that Ibrahim planned the Mumbai attacks. Pakistan has denied that he is in the country.

Wanted along with Ibrahim for the 1993 Bombay attacks is Aftab Ansari, also an Indian national. Ansari is linked to Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British national of Pakistani origin. Omar Sheikh is an associate of Osama bin Laden and has been accused of masterminding the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, a journalist for the Wall Street Journal.

Omar Skeikh was also the paymaster of the 9/11 hijackers and wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta in Florida. According to Indian intelligence, working with the FBI a link was established between Omar Sheikh and the head of Pakistan’s ISI, Lt. Gen. Mahmud Ahmed. Sources revealed to the media that the evidence obtained from Omar Sheikh’s cell phone indicated that it was at the behest of Mahmud Ahmed that the money was sent to finance the 9/11 hijackers. While this has widely been reported internationally, including by the Press Trust of India, Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper, Agence France-Presse, and UK’s The Guardian and The Times, it has not received any mention in the U.S. mainstream media.

Hafiz Saeed is the founder of LeT. He travelled to Peshawar to join the CIA-backed effort to overthrow the Soviet-backed government of Afghanistan. Peshawar served as the command base for both the CIA and Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK). Haiz Saeed became the protégé of Abdullah Azzam, who, along with Osama bin Laden, founded MAK to recruit and train foreign fighters to join the mujahedeen. The CIA worked closely with the ISI to finance, arm, and train the mujahedeen.

By about 1988, MAK had been evolved into the group known as al-Qaeda by bin Laden. The name “al-Qaeda” literally means “the base”, and may either refer bin Laden’s base of operations for the mujahedeen war effort or the actual database of names of jihadist recruits. While numerous terrorist attacks have been attributed to al-Qaeda over the years, it isn’t so much a centralized organization as a loose network of individuals and affiliate groups having roots or otherwise associated with the CIA-backed effort against the Soviet Union.

Maulana Masood Azhar is the head of Jaish-e-Mohammed, and is also wanted by Interpol. Like LeT, JeM is said to have close links with the ISI, which has used the groups to wage a proxy war against Indian forces in Kashmir.

Like Hafiz Saeed, Azhar was numbered among the veterans of the Soviet-Afghan war. He was educated at Jamia Binoria, a madrassa (religious school) in Karachi that also served as a recruitment center for the mujahedeen.

He later became a leader of Karkat-ul-Mujahideen, a Pakistani militant group, and was captured by India in Kashmir in 1994. He was tried and acquitted, but spent six years in jail before being freed in exchange for the release of the crew and passengers of a hijacked Indian Airlines plane in 1999. He formed JeM after returning to Pakistan.

Omar Saeed Sheikh was also caught and imprisoned by India for involvement in that hijacking, and was likewise released in exchange for the hostages. Like Azhar, Omar Seikh is reported to have close links to the ISI and, according to former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, was also an agent of MI6, Britain’s spy agency, which sent him to engage in operations in the Balkans.

Relations between India and Pakistan also reached a crisis point in December 2001, when gunmen attacked the Indian parliament. JeM and Let were held responsible for that attack as well, and both countries amassed troops on the border, a situation that led to fears of war between two nuclear-armed countries. The U.S. helped mediate an end to the crisis, pressuring Pakistan to crack down on militant groups and setting in motion the plan to assist India with its nuclear program that was finally realized this year.

LeT was banned in Pakistan in 2002 following the attack on the Indian parliament, but remained active in the country nevertheless. The group has denied responsibility for the attacks in Mumbai last week.

Pakistan has on one hand said it would formulate a response to India’s request to turn over the 20 wanted men, and on the other hand indicated it would not do so, insisting that the men are either not in Pakistan or that they have been under Pakistani surveillance and no indication seen that they were in any way involved.

While the evidence strongly points to LeT and a network of associates affiliated with the group or with each other, that web also includes the CIA and MI6. One early report said that some of the Mumbai terrorists were, like Rashid Rauf, British nationals. This was picked up by numerous press accounts around the globe, but the Indian government official this information was attributed to denied ever having said such a thing.

Theories that this was a false flag operation have already begun to spread around the internet, with varying culprits and motives. Whatever the truth is, what is clear from the facts one is able to piece together from media accounts is that there is more to the Mumbai attacks than meets the eye.


Jeremy R. Hammond is the editor of Foreign Policy Journal, a website dedicated to providing news, critical analysis, and opinion commentary on U.S. foreign policy from outside of the standard framework offered by government officials and the mainstream corporate media, particularly with regard to the "war on terrorism" and events in the Middle East. He has also written for numerous other online publications. You can contact him jeremy@foreignpolicyjournal.com

This article was originally published at Foreign Policy Journal. It may be reprinted with attribution and a link to the source.

The Mumbai Attacks: More Than Meets The Eye By Jeremy R. Hammond

 

[Keysersoze]

Yeah, yeah, keep believing whatever makes you feel better.

When the FBI announces its findings, include them in the conspiracy as well.

When the MOSSAD completes their investigation, call it a Hindu-Christian-Zionist conspiracy.

When Scotland Yard does the same....well....you know the drill.

Flintlock when the above agencies come to a consensus I think you will find that then moderates would agree with you. The conspiracy crew won't, but then the Indian media hasn't exactly helped that.

But given the mickey mouse state of the "evidence" presented I doubt they are gonna agree with the first findings that you and your fellow Indian Pakistan bashers are keen to advocate.

Still you can always vote for the BJP again. That ought to reduce the number of race riots in your country and reduce recruitment for terrorist organisations.....

 

[Neo]

I wonder if FBI rules out GoP involvement in Mumbai blasts and shortlists a few rogue elements in Pakistani establishment like Hameed Gul and alikes and also reveals presence of AQ elements, will GoI change her stance. AQ is a bigger threat to India than ISI which is undergoing a huge makeover. It has already lost its political wing and new order is more moderate than before.

 

[Flintlock]

Still you can always vote for the BJP again. That ought to reduce the number of race riots in your country and reduce recruitment for terrorist organisations.....

There have been many, many religious riots under the Congress since indpendence.

The only reason why the Congress gets away with it is because they claim to be secular while using vote-bank politics to divide and further-subdivide the Indian populace.

Muslims have actually suffered and become the most backward and isolated group under 60 years of Congress rule.

The BJP is the only party which is looking to sort out the underlying issues which cause these riots in the first place.

 

[Flintlock]

Flintlock when the above agencies come to a consensus I think you will find that then moderates would agree with you. The conspiracy crew won't, but then the Indian media hasn't exactly helped that.

I wonder how many 'moderates' are left in Pakistan. Going by the popular sentiment, the HinJew Conspiracy seems to be the most popular explanation of what happened.

I doubt that is going to change with mainstream media channels pushing these theories to millions of people.

 

[BanglaBhoot]

India Acknowledges Errors in Security Response to Attacks

MUMBAI, India — The Indian police foiled an attempt to destroy landmarks and wreak havoc in Mumbai early this year, breaking up a cell of Pakistani and Indian men who were directed by the same two Pakistan-based militant leaders they have accused of organizing last week’s devastating attacks here, the police said.

The foiled plot in February also involved Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani group accused of last week’s attacks, the police said. That suggests that the militant group conceived its plan long in advance and that it has made deeper contacts with radical Indian Muslims than investigators have been willing to concede.

It also pointed up another significant security lapse by Indian intelligence and police forces, who months ago had glimpses of a blueprint for the Mumbai attack and even a strong indication of the intended targets.

Investigators have said they were looking into the possibility that the men who carried out last week’s assault — all believed to be Pakistani — had local, Indian accomplices.

They have not found any so far, but say they are looking at one of the men in the foiled plot, Faheem Ahmed Ansari, an Indian from Mumbai, as a possible suspect. Officials said that he and five men suspected as co-plotters were initially arrested in connection with an attack on a police station in northern India.

After his arrest, Mr. Ansari told investigators he had also carried out reconnaissance of targets in Mumbai.

It is not clear whether that research played a role in the planning of last week’s attacks, which authorities now say killed 163 people.

The six men arrested in February are still being held by the authorities.

Mr. Ansari was caught with hand-drawn sketches of 8 to 10 Mumbai landmarks, apparently based on his reconnaissance trips, said Amitav Yash, the superintendent of the special police task force in the state of Uttar Pradesh, where the men were arrested.

He and the other accused men had AK-47 rifles, pistols, grenades, and ammunition, Mr. Yash added, the same kinds of weapons carried by the 10 known attackers who terrorized Mumbai last week.

Other similarities in the plots are striking. The six men suspected in the February plot were accused of plotting an assault on Mumbai’s main train station — one of the first targets struck last week — along with the city’s stock exchange, major hotels, and other sites.

Like the men in last week’s attack, members of the earlier group did not expect to return alive, they told investigators.

They also told the police they had been directed by two Lashkar-e-Taiba leaders: Zaki ur-Rehman Lakhvi, and a man known alternately as Yusuf or Muzammil, documents show.

Those two men planned and coordinated last week’s attacks, and continued to guide at least 10 men who carried out the assault by phone as it unfolded, investigators in India say.

After his arrest in February, one of the six men told investigators he had received four months of training from Pakistan’s main spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, the police said.

Indian police officials said they had not been able to verify the claim.

The ISI helped found Lashkar-e-Taiba two decades ago, though its current links to the group, which has been officially banned, were not clear. The belief that the spy agency is colluding with Pakistan-based terrorists is nearly universal in India.

India has not accused the Pakistani government of a hand in the Mumbai attacks, but it has furnished evidence of Lashkar’s involvement, and has pressed Pakistan to act decisively against the group.

With public anger at Pakistan swelling here, tensions between the two nuclear-armed rivals have risen to a level not seen in years.

Lashkar has denied any role in the attacks. But it has been trying in recent years to recruit more Indian Muslims to its cause, Indian officials said. It has been aided by local communal grievances against the Hindu majority, as well as the global growth of hard-line Islamism.

During the assault last week, one of the attackers is said to have mentioned a 2002 Hindu massacre of Muslims before killing one of the hostages, in an apparent attempt to identify his cause with that of Indian Muslims.

A senior American counterterrorism official said it was highly likely that local accomplices were involved. “They couldn’t have gotten to the places they did without local help,” the official said, speaking on the condition on anonymity because of the continuing inquiry. “They just moved too quickly. They had to have had more assistance on the ground.”

The American official said the investigation’s review on the site of where the attackers came ashore and any evidence recovered from the bodies of the dead gunmen may reveal additional clues regarding any local support.

After his arrest in February, Mr. Ansari told investigators he grew up in Mumbai, and in 2006 moved to Saudi Arabia for work, like many young Indians. An imam at the local mosque inspired him with talk of jihad.

Later, Lashkar recruiters approached him, and before long he was traveling by sea to Pakistan, where he underwent physical, military, and intelligence training in Lashkar camps, Mr. Yash, the police task force leader, said. He was given a Pakistani passport and other documents to ease his movements.

Mr. Yash added that interrogations of Mr. Ansari and his fellow suspects “told us a lot about the interactions of Lashkar and the ISI,” he said “They were absolutely intertwined.”

Under the direction of Mr. Lakhvi, the Lashkar commander, Mr. Ansari traveled to Mumbai in the autumn of 2007 to begin doing reconnaissance for an attack, officials said. Later, they said, he took part in a Dec. 31 attack on a police headquarters in Rampur, 100 miles northwest of Delhi, in which seven officers were killed.

By that time, he was part of a team of Lashkar militants: three from the Indian city of Lucknow; one from Bihar, in northern India; and the two Pakistanis, officials said.

The leader was an Indian Muslim named Saba’uddin Ahmed, a well-educated young man from an affluent family in Bihar. He was the one who had been given four months of training by an ISI operative, in addition to an earlier round of training in Lashkar camps, according to police documents.

Mr. Ahmed had also been involved in at least one prior mission, documents say: an attack on the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore in 2005 in which a scientist was killed.

After the attack on the police headquarters in Rampur, “we were told to go to Mumbai to do the suicide operation,” Mr. Ansari told the police, according to a charge sheet drawn up after his arrest.

Speaking in Mumbai on Friday, India’s new home minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, admitted that there had been “lapses” in the way India handled the crisis and said his government was trying to “improve the effectiveness of the security systems.”

Anger over last week’s attacks has been directed not only at neighboring Pakistan but also squarely at India’s own government for not having done more to prevent the attacks. In the most public outrage so far, tens of thousands have marched in Mumbai and other cities across the country.

“The people of India feel a sense of hurt and anger as never before,” the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, said in New Delhi.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/06/world/asia/06mumbai.html?_r=1&hp

 

[BanglaBhoot]

MIA in Mumbai

Indian officials, police and commandos must share the blame for mishandling the attacks.
By Edward N. Luttwak
December 5, 2008
» Discuss Article (4 Comments)

Those who live in Tel Aviv, New York or London need not fear a Mumbai episode. If 10 infantry-trained terrorists were to attack those cities, local police with their own hostage-rescue teams would quickly deal with them.

But in India, the reality is that local police cannot be expected to react usefully to a terrorist attack, or indeed any form of armed attack, as they would in many other countries -- for example, sealing off the area and summoning help. Instead, Mumbai and India's other mega-cities are policed by semi-illiterate constables who deal only with petty crime as they make their rounds, drinking free tea in cafes and accepting small gifts from shopkeepers for chasing away intrusive beggars. They hardly ever stop inter-religious or inter-caste violence and are reluctant to engage anyone with a firearm.

Accordingly, in Mumbai there was no police cordon around the huge Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel nor the quite small Nariman House of the Jewish Chabad-Lubavitch group during the sieges, so that terrorists could have been reinforced or could have escaped.

It's not that India is unfamiliar with terrorism. According to recent data from India's Home Ministry, about 7,000 Indians have been killed in terrorist incidents since 2004 -- mostly but not exclusively by Muslim extremists. Obviously the nation has needed a much better-educated, better-paid, better-trained national anti-terrorist police unit for years, but none has been established. Thus the forces available to fight the terrorists in Mumbai were pathetically inadequate in quantity, quality or both.

That was clearly true of Maharashtra's state anti-terrorism squad, which is headquartered less than 10 minutes from the sites of the attacks but which had a total of 35 officers -- and fewer than 15 on duty. This, to protect a state population of 96 million, 18 million in Mumbai alone. The squad's commander, Hemant Karkare -- who was killed early in the attacks -- was a 54-year-old investigator, not a fighter even at the level of an ordinary infantryman.

By contrast, India's National Security Guards, formed in 1985, are well trained. But the guards are a military-style commando assault force, with no real experience in civilian hostage rescue, even though that is one of their official missions. With 7,500 trained men, they could have responded adequately in a military way, if only someone had managed to call enough of them in quickly.

The first terrorist attack was reported about 9:30 p.m. The strategy for alerting the central government failed, so it was Vilasrao Deshmukh, the chief minister of the Maharashtra state government, who got the call to decide what help was needed. He happened to be on a trip in the state of Kerala, hundreds of miles to the south. For 90 minutes, he did nothing of consequence while receiving calls on his cellphone about the attacks. Finally, at 11 p.m., he called Shivraj Patil, the home minister in charge of the nation's security and law enforcement. (After this colossal security failure, Patil resigned Sunday. It took Deshmukh until Wednesday to do the same.)



Because Patil had no information of his own -- a very peculiar situation for an interior minister anywhere -- he put the key question to Deshmukh: How many commandos of the National Security Guards were needed? Deshmukh replied 200. That may have been more than enough to fight against 10 or 15 infantry-trained terrorists (they were not ninjas or samurai, after all) but was grossly inadequate to deal with even one target as big as the immense Taj hotel. Patil had no competent staff to intervene to determine the right number, which was at least 1,000.

All the government commandos were in New Delhi, more than 700 miles from Mumbai. Even as the mayhem in Mumbai was being broadcast to the world, no one thought to send the commandos in the fastest way possible -- by commandeering several of the passenger jets at New Delhi's airport with crews ready to fly. Instead, an old and slow Ilyushin Il-76 and its sleeping pilots were summoned from the Chandigarh airport 150 miles away. The transport plane did not arrive in New Delhi until 2 a.m. By the time the commandos arrived in central Mumbai, it was 7 a.m., 9 1/2 hours after the first reports of attacks.

Even then, they had to act with almost no information -- not even an accurate floor plan of the massive Taj hotel -- and of course in grossly inadequate numbers, given the need to sweep the Taj room by room. As a result, the commandos didn't move on the lowest-priority Nariman House of Chabad, the smallest target by far, until Friday morning, more than 40 hours after it was first entered by the terrorists on Wednesday night. They blasted their way inside, and after an interval -- which could have proved fatal to any captives had any still been alive at that point -- other government commandos rappelled from helicopters, in full view of TV cameras and the uncontained crowd pressing in all around. They were greatly applauded as they left after killing the terrorists and finding the five hostages dead inside.

In the end, the attacks in Mumbai were a revealing confrontation between 10 to 15 trained soldiers willing to fight and die and a hopelessly inadequate security system. But India is a democracy with a free press, and what will happen soon, after all the usual recriminations and resignations, will be the creation of a properly decentralized system, backed by an information network. It is unfortunate that the thousands of previous deaths from terrorism didn't suffice to reform the system before the Mumbai tragedy.

MIA in Mumbai - Los Angeles Times

 

[BanglaBhoot]

Indian Police Foiled Earlier Plot Against Mumbai

MUMBAI, India — The Indian police foiled an attempt to destroy landmarks and wreak havoc in Mumbai early this year, breaking up a cell of Pakistani and Indian men who were directed by the same two Pakistan-based militant leaders they have accused of organizing last week’s devastating attacks here, the police said.

The foiled plot also involved Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani group accused of last week’s attacks, the police said. That suggests that the militant group conceived its plan long in advance and that it has made deeper contacts with radical Indian Muslims than investigators have been willing to concede.

It also pointed up another significant security lapse by Indian intelligence and police forces, who months ago had glimpses of a blueprint for the Mumbai attacks and even a strong indication of the intended targets.

Investigators have said they were looking into the possibility that the men who carried out last week’s assault — all believed to be Pakistani — had local, Indian accomplices.

They have not found any so far but say they are looking at one of the men in the foiled plot, Faheem Ahmed Ansari, an Indian from Mumbai, as a possible suspect. Officials said that he and five men suspected as co-plotters were initially arrested in connection with an attack on a police camp in northern India.

After his arrest, Mr. Ansari told investigators he had also carried out reconnaissance of targets in Mumbai.

It is not clear whether that research played a role in the planning of last week’s attacks, which authorities now say killed 163 people.

The six men who were arrested are still being held by the authorities. Mr. Ansari was detained in February.

Mr. Ansari was caught with hand-drawn sketches of 8 to 10 Mumbai landmarks, apparently based on his reconnaissance trips, said Amitabh Yash, the superintendent of the special police task force in the state of Uttar Pradesh, where the men were arrested.

He and the other accused men had AK-47 rifles, pistols, grenades and ammunition, Mr. Yash added, the same kinds of weapons carried by the 10 known attackers who terrorized Mumbai last week.

Other similarities in the plots are striking. The six men suspected in the February plot were accused of plotting an assault on Mumbai’s main train station — one of the first targets struck last week — along with the city’s stock exchange, major hotels and other sites.

Like the men in last week’s attack, members of the earlier group did not expect to return alive, they told investigators.

They also told the police they had been directed by two Lashkar-e-Taiba leaders: Zaki ur-Rehman Lakhvi, and a man known alternately as Yusuf or Muzammil, documents show.

Those two men planned and coordinated last week’s attacks, and continued to guide at least 10 men who carried out the assault by phone as it unfolded, investigators in India say.

After his arrest, one of the six men told investigators he had received four months of training from Pakistan’s main spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, the police said.

Indian police officials said they had not been able to verify the claim.

The ISI helped found Lashkar-e-Taiba two decades ago, though its current links to the group, which has been officially banned, were not clear. The belief that the spy agency is colluding with Pakistan-based terrorists is nearly universal in India.

India has not accused the Pakistani government of a hand in the Mumbai attacks, but it has furnished evidence of Lashkar’s involvement, and it has pressed Pakistan to act decisively against the group.

With public anger at Pakistan swelling here in India, tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals have risen to a level not seen in years.

Lashkar has denied any role in the attacks. But it has been trying in recent years to recruit more Indian Muslims to its cause, Indian officials said. It has been aided by local communal grievances against the Hindu majority, as well as the global growth of hard-line Islamism.

During the assault last week, one of the attackers is said to have mentioned a 2002 Hindu massacre of Muslims before killing one of the hostages, in an apparent attempt to identify his cause with that of Indian Muslims.

A senior American counterterrorism official said it was highly likely that local accomplices were involved. “They couldn’t have gotten to the places they did without local help,” the official said, speaking on the condition on anonymity because of the continuing inquiry. “They just moved too quickly. They had to have had more assistance on the ground.”

The American official said the investigation’s review on the site of where the attackers came ashore and any evidence recovered from the bodies of the dead gunmen may reveal additional clues regarding any local support.

After his arrest in February, Mr. Ansari told investigators he grew up in Mumbai, and in 2006 moved to Saudi Arabia for work, like many young Indians. An imam at the local mosque inspired him with talk of jihad.

Later, Lashkar recruiters approached him, and before long he was traveling by sea to Pakistan, where he underwent physical, military and intelligence training in Lashkar camps, Mr. Yash, the police task force leader, said. He was given a Pakistani passport and other documents to ease his movements.

Mr. Yash added that interrogations of Mr. Ansari and his fellow suspects “told us a lot about the interactions of Lashkar and the ISI,” he said “They were absolutely intertwined.”

Under the direction of Mr. Lakhvi, the Lashkar commander, Mr. Ansari traveled to Mumbai in the autumn of 2007 to begin doing reconnaissance for an attack, officials said. Later, they said, he took part in a Dec. 31 attack on a police headquarters in Rampur, 100 miles northwest of Delhi, in which seven policemen were killed.

By that time, he was part of a team of Lashkar militants: three from the Indian city of Lucknow; one from Bihar, in northern India; and the two Pakistanis, officials said.

The leader was an Indian Muslim named Saba’uddin Ahmed, a well-educated young man from an affluent family in Bihar. He was the one who had been given four months of training by an ISI operative, in addition to an earlier round of training in Lashkar camps, according to police documents.

Mr. Ahmed had also been involved in at least one prior mission, documents say: an attack on the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore in 2005 in which a scientist was killed.

After the attack on the police headquarters in Rampur, “we were told to go to Mumbai to do the suicide operation,” Mr. Ansari told the police, according to a charge sheet drawn up after his arrest.

Speaking in Mumbai on Friday, India’s new home minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, admitted that there had been “lapses” in the way India handled the crisis and said his government was trying to “improve the effectiveness of the security systems.”

Anger over last week’s attacks has been directed not only at neighboring Pakistan but also squarely at India’s own government for not having done more to prevent the attacks. In the most public outrage so far, tens of thousands have marched in Mumbai and other cities across the country.

“The people of India feel a sense of hurt and anger as never before,” the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, said in New Delhi.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/06/world/asia/06mumbai.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2&ref=asia

 

[rubyjackass]

Come on guys... what nation will attempt such a suicide, killing its own people just to show off its fears.
Also the places of attacks suggest the drastic effects that would fall upon the country. The GDP growth rate projections of India are already falling. Tourism is going to suffer a hit. In no way does any show help India.
Please think with common sense before making such baseless allegations.

 

[Neo]

Come on guys... what nation will attempt such a suicide, killing its own people just to show off its fears.
Also the places of attacks suggest the drastic effects that would fall upon the country. The GDP growth rate projections of India are already falling. Tourism is going to suffer a hit. In no way does any show help India.
Please think with common sense before making such baseless allegations.

Who would benefit from a total chaos in the country? Current government or the nationalists like BJP?