Is Indian Aggresive Posturing Prelude to a Fourth War with Pakistan

[fatman17]

Well I think it is too early to draw conclusions. May be your anger is justified, may be not.

May be it is India that would goof up in the investigations or may be it was Pakistan that failed to control terrorists and their supporters from using it's territory. Let us wait and watch for some time.

its a huge problem for us!

 

[Flintlock]

Nothing is being put to trash, did you ever wondered that even before any evidence, your media with the backing of the GOI starts putting all blames on Pakistan. What do you think then remains the creditability of such so called evidence that only India knows, never ever brought it up front, never ever shared with Pakistan. The only thing that India does however is to give Pakistan a list of people to hand them over to India and this time its no different either, if yes then let the investigation be made open, let the world know that indeed Pakistan is a terrorism sponsoring country and Pakistanis as a whole is a terrorist nation. But then again that would expose the real truth wouldn't it, then who will India make its scapegoat for the failures that have been committed by the security agencies of India.

Please, Pakistan very well knows who the suspects wanted by India are and what sort of activities they are involved in.

The reason why they weren't being arrested so far is because they were an integral part of Pakistani foreign policy of destabilizing India.

 

[U-571]

Please, Pakistan very well knows who the suspects wanted by India are and what sort of activities they are involved in.

The reason why they weren't being arrested so far is because they were an integral part of Pakistani foreign policy of destabilizing India.

again a typical indian kinda response!!, i think now every pakistani is sick of it, khalistan shuld be made, this with only end the trouble , then sighs will be the victims later not pakistanis!!

its like every indian here is a rep of indian govt, making judgements personally!!

 

[Kumar]

Solution for No war:

Scrap the Indus Water Treaty.

Just stop or block or reduce or divert the water at Indus, Jhelum and Chenab Immediate Raise on Baghilar Dam and go ahead for the other plans aleady in the table for the dams.

Still pakistan is asking for compensation for few days fill up at Baghilar Dam.

If pakistan stop the terrorists or freedom fighters like Let, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Hizbul Mujahideen, Dawood Groups .... etc and then india will release the water.

Simply just banning these groups its not enough serious action has to be taken.

 

[hasang20]

i dont think India wants to be wiped out of the earth because of Pakistan Defence Technology people are agnry but Indian govt will not go to war because they know 1965 1971 while India got lucky in 1999 if we had our PAF fought in 1999 that was the very end for India.

 

[smeaglegolum]

Indian air and missile forces on war footing, Pakistani armored units diverted from Afghan border
DEBKAfile - Indian air and missile forces on war footing, Pakistani armored units diverted from Afghan border

DEBKAfile Special Report
November 30, 2008, 2:17 PM (GMT+02:00)


Indian Air Force
DEBKAfile's military sources report that on Sunday, Nov. 30, Asia's two nuclear powers, India and Pakistan, took their first steps towards a conventional war. India, claiming evidence of Pakistan's involvement in the Islamist terrorist assault on Mumbai, placed its air and missile units on war preparedness, while Pakistan, disclaiming the charge, diverted its armed divisions from the Afghan border to its frontier with India.
Military experts fear a full-blown war could spill over into combat with tactical nuclear weapons.

For the Indian government, the last straw was the admission by Azam Amir Kasab, aged 21, the only terrorist known to have been captured by Indian forces, that Lashkar e-Taiba was behind the assault which claimed 174 lives, injured hundreds and devastated India's financial capital.

This Kashmiri group has links to both al Qaeda and the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

From its outset on Wednesday, Nov. 26, the scale, coordination and clockwork targeting of the assault clearly betrayed the hand of a major national intelligence agency. Evidence also mounted that the attackers had reached Mumbai by boat from Karachi.
Five months ago, Taliban suicide killers attacked the Indian embassy in Kabul, claiming 60 lives including that of the Indian military attaché. The New Delhi government then found leads to Pakistan's clandestine service as the prime mover behind the outrage. Washington came up with the same proofs.

The Manmohan Singh government sees the Mumbai assault as a second, escalated Pakistani act of war-by-terror and cannot afford to avoid a strong, immediate response - particularly with a general election around the corner next May. If Singh braves the media and public howls for Pakistani blood and shows the same restraint as he did after the Kabul attack, he will lose his seat.

Domestic opinion is goading the New Delhi to act tough after what is perceived as the poor, slow and unprofessional performance of the police and special forces in quelling the terrorists. Indian commandoes were brought in 10 hours after the terrorists took over and it took them 60 hours to finally gain control of the three hostage sites Saturday, Nov. 29. Sunday, home minister Shivraj Patil resigned in response to the clamor followed by national security advisor MK Narayanan.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars and barely avoided a fourth in 2001.
President George Bush and his successor Barack Obama cannot hope for much headway in defusing Indian-Pakistan tension. With only a few weeks left in the White House, Bush does not have much leverage and Obama even less for pulling the two adversaries apart. While campaigning, the president-elect pledged to work to mend the fences between India and Pakistan and broker their Kashmir conflict. In the present climate, neither is looking for a mediator.

 

[IceCold]

Solution for No war:

Scrap the Indus Water Treaty.

Just stop or block or reduce or divert the water at Indus, Jhelum and Chenab Immediate Raise on Baghilar Dam and go ahead for the other plans aleady in the table for the dams.

Still pakistan is asking for compensation for few days fill up at Baghilar Dam.

If pakistan stop the terrorists or freedom fighters like Let, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Hizbul Mujahideen, Dawood Groups .... etc and then india will release the water.

Simply just banning these groups its not enough serious action has to be taken.

Please by all means do it. You think that will prevent war, well i guess you need a reality check here, but then again you indians live far away from reality.

 

[U-571]

Solution for No war:

Scrap the Indus Water Treaty.

Just stop or block or reduce or divert the water at Indus, Jhelum and Chenab Immediate Raise on Baghilar Dam and go ahead for the other plans aleady in the table for the dams.

Still pakistan is asking for compensation for few days fill up at Baghilar Dam.

If pakistan stop the terrorists or freedom fighters like Let, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Hizbul Mujahideen, Dawood Groups .... etc and then india will release the water.

Simply just banning these groups its not enough serious action has to be taken.

i am surprised, why pakistan army with gop approval doesnt hit a missile there and finish this controversy for ever, as wht india is going is against the treaty!!

 

[IceCold]

Please, Pakistan very well knows who the suspects wanted by India are and what sort of activities they are involved in.

The reason why they weren't being arrested so far is because they were an integral part of Pakistani foreign policy of destabilizing India.

Are you the one shaping Pakistan's foreign policy, if yes let me know if no then how did you come to this conclusion. Infact the case is very much the opposite. Take 71 for an example, who destabilize whom?

 

[Kasrkin]

I think you failed to notice that he only "reacted" to this:

and this:

So spare yourself this indignation.

If you disagree with someone's evaluation or objectiveness doesn't mean you impulsively splatter your insecurities all over our face. I know it is hard but people must learn to control their emotions and stay on topic. Otherwise you are worse than the very people you accuse of being biased; you are insecure.

 

[Kasrkin]

Think 93,000 POWs....more than any other surrender in the world history.

Pathetic, talk about knowing your world history...soldiers from both sides surrendered in their millions during the World Wars. And not like ordered to surrender but like whole formations decimated and routed type surrender.

This uneducated attitude is exactly the sort of thing that will destroy both our nations, and ruin all the progess we've made.

 

[dr.umer]

Mods, Please delete "efforts" to derail thread.

 

[smeaglegolum]

The Pakistan Connection

Evidence is still sketchy, but tensions are already rising between India and its nuclear-armed neighbor.

Ron Moreau and Sudip Mazumdar
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE
Nov 27, 2008 | Updated: 2:25 p.m. ET Nov 27, 2008
Around 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday, a band of 10 young armed militants zoomed up to a fishermen's colony in Colaba, on the Mumbai waterfront, in inflatable Zodiac speedboats. Locals confronted them: unlike the dark-skinned Mumbai fishermen, who speak only Marathi, the regional dialect, the intruders were young, tall and fair-skinned and spoke Urdu with a northern accent. According to local press, the gunmen reportedly told them to mind their business, then gave a raised-thumb gesture, and splitting into small groups, walked off into two different directions. The fishermen reported the suspicious men to a police post nearby, but the tip-off failed to rouse the cops to action.

An hour later, the carnage began. Those gunmen and others, armed with automatic rifles and hand grenades, spread out across southern Mumbai and started shooting into crowds at several city landmarks. By midnight more than 100 people lay dead, including three of Mumbai's top cops, one of them the head of the anti-terrorist squad. The series of well-coordinated and bloodthirsty attacks hit two of Mumbai's flagship hotels, its main Victorian-era railway station, and several other soft targets in the city. Gunmen in both hotels took scores of hostages. The dead senior policemen were inexplicably standing exposed outside the spots where terrorists were holding hostages.

Even as Indian commandos worked to free hostages holed up in the hotels and elsewhere, attention quickly turned to who might have planned and staged the brazen attacks. Beyond those killed and wounded, one victim certainly looks to be the gradually improving peace process between India and Pakistan, nuclear-armed rivals who have fought three major wars between them. While no conclusive links between the Mumbai terrorists and Pakistan have yet been proved, initial reports are pointing to some level of Pakistani involvement. Police have arrested nine suspects, including one from the Oberoi hotel. They claim that preliminary interrogation reports reveal that some of gunmen were of Pakistani origin, and were well-trained in handling guns and explosives. They also carried photo credit cards.

A previously unknown jihadi group called the Deccan Mujahedeen quickly claimed responsibility. (Deccan refers to the great plains of central and southern India.) But security experts think the militants simply floated this name in order to confuse investigators. One of the alleged gunmen spoke to an Indian TV reporter by cell phone; the man did not have a south Indian accent, and in fact spoke Urdu with a Punjabi inflection. The caller told the TV station that he didn't even know what the group's demands were. During the conversation, he asked the TV anchor to wait and then could be heard asking a companion in the background: "Tell me, what are our demands?" Finally the man answered that they demanded that all "mujahedeen" in Indian jails should be freed and that "persecution" of Muslims should stop. The caller disconnected the phone when pressed for further information about their numbers and goals.

Despite the rather flimsy evidence pointing to Pakistan's involvement, Islamabad is expected to come under extremely heavy Indian and international pressure once again to get tough with the extremist organizations that still operate rather openly inside the country. After past terrorist attacks Indian authorities have been quick to blame Pakistan and its shadowy Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI). This time, too, while the hotels still smoldered, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced in a nationally televised address that the assailants had "external linkages," clearly a reference to neighboring Pakistan. He added that he would tell India's "neighbors" that the use of their territory to attack India would not be tolerated. Many Indians were pointing a finger at the Pakistani jihadi group Lashkar-I-Taiba, which was formed in the early 1980s with the assistance of the ISI to promote an anti-Indian revolt in Muslim-majority, Indian-administered Kashmir.

New Delhi has long accused Lashkar, and by extension Pakistan, of being behind the long-simmering unrest in Indian Kashmir, as well as being instigators of terror attacks inside India. Indian officials, however, conveniently ignore the serious economic, religious, political and social causes of Muslim discontent in Kashmir as well as in much of India, which is home to more than 150 million Muslims, roughly equivalent to the population of Pakistan. There have been five similar attacks, albeit on a smaller scale with fewer casualties, across India in the last eight months. Security agency sources say that the government's response to the attacks has been routine, if not incompetent, and that inter-agency rivalries and non-coordination often result in terrorists having a free hand. In addition, the police are notorious for using crude methods such as rounding up largely innocent Muslim youth and torturing them to extract information, tactics that alienate even moderate Muslim voices.

As a result, Islamic radicalism now seems to be becoming an increasingly serious threat to India just as it is in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Indeed, there may be enough dissatisfaction among Muslims in India to spawn a cadre of native, would-be jihadists who do not necessarily need external support to carry out terrorist attacks. Even so, the precise planning, stealth and coordination involved in the attacks may point to some external assistance, if not inspiration. Pakistan can certainly be faulted for not having dealt a deathblow to Lashkar and several other similar, ISI-assisted, Kashmir-oriented, jihadist outfits such as Jaish-I-Mohammad, a splinter group that was responsible for American journalist Daniel Pearl's kidnapping and beheading in 2002. Despite several much-ballyhooed crackdowns by former President Pervez Musharraf on Lashkar, Jaish and other such extremist groups, these radical organizations were never dismembered or decapitated. They went underground or kept on functioning under different monikers. Unlike Jaish and other Pakistani jihadi groups, Lashkar wisely did not become involved in military strikes against Pakistani security forces. As a result, the army and police crackdown was less harsh on Lashkar than it was on other extremist groups that were in open revolt against Pakistan after it moved to close the infiltration pipeline into Indian-occupied Kashmir in 2003.

To escape any of the government's anti-extremist dragnets, Lashkar cleverly morphed into Jamaat ud Dawah, a so-called Islamic charitable group, after Musharraf banned it following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Today Jamaat ud Dawah openly solicits funds and recruits adherents in Pakistan, particularly in mosques, and has undertaken high-profile relief work in the aftermath of the deadly 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the more recent destructive tremor in Baluchistan, earning it an increased following. The group's radical founder, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, is free and still openly preaches his sermons of hate despite occasional, and brief, stints in jail. Earlier this month, Saeed openly preached to a gathering of tens of thousands of faithful in Pakistan's Punjab province. He called on Pakistan to halt the truck convoys supplying U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan through Pakistan, accused the Pakistani army of fighting the Pakistani people, called on U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to embrace Islam, declared that only by invading India would Pakistan get river waters that he claimed were being criminally diverted by India, and promised the jihad would continue until Kashmir was free from Indian rule.

Meanwhile, Jaish-e-Muhammad, like Lashkar, has established insurgent training camps in the tribal areas. And its leader, Maulana Masood Azhar, is said to be working closely with Pakistani Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives in the tribal areas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Indeed, a spate of reports over the past year or so indicated that Kashmir-oriented Pakistani jihadi groups like Lashkar and Jaish had moved most of their camps and operational centers from Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, where they were born, to the safer environs of the tribal area where the Taliban and Al Qaeda hold sway. For the past few years the Pakistan Army and ISI had put these jihadi groups on a very short leash, not allowing them to infiltrate across the heavily mined and guarded Line of Control that separates the Pakistani- and Indian-controlled sectors of Kashmir. As a result, the bulk of the groups are thought to have shifted their main operational bases to the tribal area.

Lashkar, Jaish and other Kashmiri jihadi groups are believed to be involved in cross-border operations into Afghanistan to attack U.S. and coalition troops operating there. But from their new tribal-areas bases, they also get an opportunity to work closely with Al Qaeda planners operating in the region. Indeed these tribal havens are perfect places for Lashkar and other like-minded, anti-Indian groups to safely plan attacks and then communicate operational ideas to loosely affiliated jihadist groups in India, most probably via the Internet. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Taliban sources tell Newsweek, has never hidden his goal of sabotaging the Indo-Pakistani peace process, even though negotiations between the two countries aimed at establishing normal cross border traffic and trade and finding a solution to the Kashmir conflict are moving at a snail's pace. Zawahiri, Al Qaeda's No. 2 man, is on the record saying he would like to promote an all-out conflict between the two nuclear-armed neighbors. Ironically, the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan had just completed a round of successful talks in Islamabad on countering terrorism and drug trafficking, among other things, the day before the Mumbai attacks occurred.

Unfortunately, Pakistan does not seem to realize the full danger that these jihadist groups it once sponsored still pose to regional stability. The Pakistan military still seems to view the huge Indian army as an existential threat along its eastern border, perhaps a greater menace than the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban and the Kashmiri extremist groups. "(India) is a living threat," says a senior Pakistan official. "You decide what is a threat by looking at the other person's capability: what he can do in terms of troop formations and where those formations are deployed. The intention to go and attack somebody can change in an instant, so Pakistan is focused on India. While it is fighting the war on terror, (Pakistan) has not shut its eyes to the conventional threat."

In view of India's and Pakistan's rather ineffective responses to terrorism at home, strikes by Islamic militants in India are unlikely to disappear. The fact that the Mumbai terrorists were trying to single out British and American citizens, and attacked a building housing some Jewish families, clearly points to an international dimension to this attack. It may not only be a twisted way to get revenge against the alleged maltreatment of Indian Muslims at home, but also to send a message to western powers like U.S. and the U.K., which are New Delhi's close allies, to keep their hands off of India. The attacks further rattled India's already shaky economy by scaring foreigners away from Mumbai, the country's financial capital, and creating uncertainty in this formerly relaxed commercial hub.

The Mumbai attack, however, should make it clear to Pakistan and Indian--indeed to Washington and the region--that is essential for the two countries to work together ever more closely to combat this extremist threat before it derails the fledgling peace process and throws both countries back into the dangerous game in which they view each other as mortal enemies. That would be suicidal. Officials in both countries most probably realize the serious threat that a new round of mutual recriminations would pose to regional security. "It's terrible, it's tragic," says the senior Pakistani official. "I hope we can work together to end this menace which affects us both. Nothing will be served by accusations or finger pointing," he says. "That would only serve the terrorists who want to sabotage Pakistani-Indian relations." That could very well have been the terrorists' ultimate goal.

With Zahid Hussain in Islamabad

 

[Neo]

Now, Indian Economy is huge, one war is'nt going to make a big difference to the economy. Second, India will not risk the war against Pakistan because it stands the risk of another military coup in Pakistan. Musharaf will justify the war come back to make his back comfortable to the President seat. India has strong evidence of the Pakistani involvment in this attack. The only thing is that weather the proof of Pakistani ISI involvment. If this link is exposed in front of the whole world, then the situation will be interesting. If the Pakistanis decide to move all the troops from NWFP to the Indian side of the border, then the Americans can justify themselves with moving into Nwfp and take it completely and adding the territory under Afghanistan. The civilian Govt. in Pakistan has no control over its army and it's intelligence agencies. There is huge Public pressure on the Indian govt. to declare war on Pakistan. The war should be waged together with the govt. of Pakistan and bring it to a position where it has total control over the army and the ISI.

Impact of another war with Pakistan should not be under estimated, even you're military think tank is aware of it. According to a recent RAW report ISI has accoplished a network of thousands of socalled "sleeping cells" in India ready to strike anywhere across the country. This network includes politicians and military officers!!!

Future war will not be fought in conventional manner, it will also include fear mongering and terror across the country inorder to further demoralise and destabalise India.

Aftermath: Severly damaged industrial infrastructure, high imports hence high inflation, negative trade balance resuting in devatluation of rupee, fuel shortage, flight of forex to safer heavens etc etc...

It might take a decade to rebuild what you'll lose in few days or weeks.

 

[BanglaBhoot]

India claims Mumbai gunman tied to Pakistani group

By RAVI NESSMAN –

MUMBAI, India (AP) — The only gunman captured after the 60-hour terrorist siege of Mumbai said he belonged to a Pakistani militant group with links to the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, a senior police officer said.

The gunman was one of 10 who paralyzed the city in an attack that killed at least 174 people and revealed the weakness of India's security apparatus. India's top law enforcement official resigned Sunday, bowing to growing criticism that the attackers appeared better trained, better coordinated and better armed than police.

The announcement blaming militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, threatened to escalate tensions between India and Pakistan. However, Indian officials have been cautious about accusing Pakistan's government of complicity.

Lashkar, long seen as a creation of the Pakistani intelligence service to help fight India in disputed Kashmir, was banned in Pakistan in 2002 under pressure from the U.S., a year after Washington and Britain listed it a terrorist group. It is since believed to have emerged under another name, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, though that group has denied links to the Mumbai attack.

Authorities were still removing bodies from the bullet-and-grenade-scarred Taj Mahal hotel, after commandos finally ended the three-day stretch of violence Saturday.

As more details of the response to the attack emerged, a picture formed of woefully unprepared security forces.

"These guys could do it next week again in Mumbai and our responses would be exactly the same," said Ajai Sahni, head of the New Delhi-based Institute for Conflict Management who has close ties to India's police and intelligence.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh promised to strengthen maritime and air security and look into creating a new federal investigative agency.

Joint Police Commissioner Rakesh Maria said the only known surviving gunman, Ajmal Qasab, told police he was trained at a Lashkar-e-Taiba camp in Pakistan.

"Lashkar-e-Taiba is behind the terrorist acts in the city," he said.

A spokesman for Pakistani President Asif Zardari's spokesman dismissed the claim.

"We have demanded evidence of the complicity of any Pakistani group. No evidence has yet been provided," said spokesman Farhatullah Babar.

In the first wave of the attacks, two young gunmen armed with assault rifles blithely ignored more than 60 police officers patrolling the city's main train station and sprayed bullets into the crowd.

Bapu Thombre, assistant commissioner with the Mumbai railway police, said the police were armed mainly with batons or World War I-era rifles and spread out across the station.

"They are not trained to respond to major attacks," he said.

The gunmen continued their rampage outside the station. They eventually ambushed a police van, killed five officers inside — including the city's counterterrorism chief — and hijacked the vehicle as two wounded officers lay bleeding in the back seat.

"The way Mumbai police handled the situation, they were not combat ready," said Jimmy Katrak, a security consultant. "You don't need the Indian army to neutralize eight to nine people."

Constable Arun Jadhav, one of the wounded policemen, said the men laughed when they noticed the dead officers wore bulletproof vests.

With no SWAT team in this city of 18 million, authorities called in the only unit in the country trained to deal with such crises. But the National Security Guards, which largely devotes its resources to protecting top officials, is based outside of New Delhi and it took the commandos nearly 10 hours to reach the scene.

That gave the gunmen time to consolidate control over two luxury hotels and a Jewish center, said Sahni.

As the siege dragged on, local police improperly strapped on ill-fitting bulletproof vests. Few had two-way radios to communicate.

Even the commandos lacked night vision goggles and thermal sensors that would have allowed them to locate the hostages and gunmen inside the buildings, Sahni said.

Security forces announced they had killed four gunmen and ended the siege at the mammoth Taj Mahal hotel on Thursday night, only to have fighting erupt there again the next day. Only on Saturday morning did they actually kill the last remaining gunmen.

At the Jewish center, commandos rappelled from a helicopter onto the roof and slowly descended the narrow, five-story building in a 10-hour shooting and grenade battle with the two gunmen inside.

From his home in Israel, Assaf Hefetz, a former Israeli police commissioner who created the country's police anti-terror unit three decades ago, watched the slow-motion operation in disbelief.

The commandos should have swarmed the building in a massive, coordinated attack that would have overwhelmed the gunmen and ended the standoff in seconds, he said.

"You have to come from the roof and all the windows and all the doors and create other entrances by demolition charges," he said.

The slow pace of the operations made it appear that the commandos' main goal was to stay safe, Hefetz said.

"You have to take the chance and the danger that your people can be hurt and some of them will be killed, but do it much faster and ensure the operation will be finished (quickly)," Hefetz said.

J. K. Dutt, director-general of the commando unit, defended their tactics.

"We have conducted the operation in the way we are trained and in the way we like to do it," he said.

Singh promised to expand the commando force and set up new bases for it around the country. He called a rare meeting of leaders from the country's main political parties, hours after the resignation of Home Minister Shivraj Patil.

Among the foreigners killed in the coordinated shooting rampage in India's financial capital were six Americans. The dead also included Germans, Canadians, Israelis and nationals from Britain, Italy, Japan, China, Thailand, Australia and Singapore.

The Associated Press: India claims Mumbai gunman tied to Pakistani group