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Very long document - read carefully!!
LESSONS FROM MUMBAI
Prepared Testimony by
Ashley J. Tellis
Senior Associate
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
to the
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
United States Senate
January 28, 2009
Congressional Testimony
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Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Senator Collins, and Members of the Committee. Thank you for
your invitation to testify on the recent terrorist attacks in Bombay (Mumbai) and their
consequences for the United States. As requested by the Chairman and Ranking Member in their
letter of invitation, I will focus my remarks on assessing the regional and global threat posed by
Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the implications of that threat for the U.S. homeland, and the status of
U.S.–India cooperation on counterterrorism and homeland security. I respectfully request that
my statement be entered into the record.
Of all the terrorist groups present in South Asia—and there are many—LeT represents a threat
to regional and global security second only to al-Qaeda. Although LeT is linked in popular
perceptions mainly to the terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir, the operations and ideology of this
group transcend the violence directed at the Indian state. Being an Ahl-e Hadith adherent of
Sunni Wahabism, LeT seeks to establish a universal Islamic Caliphate with a special emphasis on
realizing that dream through the gradual recovery of all lands that were once under Muslim rule.
The strategic objective of inaugurating a universal Caliphate has made LeT a strong ideological
ally of Al-Qaeda, while the emphasis on recovering “lost Muslim lands” in Asia and Europe has
taken LeT to diverse places such as Palestine, Spain, Chechnya, Kosovo and Eritrea.
That LeT is a constituent member of Osama bin Ladin’s International Islamic Front should not
be surprising given that one of its three founders, Abdullah Azzam of the International Islamic
University in Islamabad, was closely associated with Hamas and has been widely described as one
of bin Ladin’s religious mentors. Together with Hafiz Saeed, the LeT’s current amir, and Zafar
Iqbal of the Engineering University, Lahore, Azzam formed LeT in 1987 as the armed wing of
the Markaz Dawat-ul Irshad (MDI), the Center for Proselytization and Preaching, which sought
to actualize the universal Islamic state through tableegh (preaching) and jihad (armed struggle).
In the fervid atmosphere of the 1980s, when numerous extremist groups were springing up in
Pakistan under the patronage of the country’s principal intelligence agency, the Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI), LeT’s militant attitude to political change, and its commitment to exploiting
modern science and technology in support of its ideological ends, quickly made it an ISI favorite
because its uncompromising commitment to jihad could be manipulated to advance Pakistan’s
own strategic goals. As Saeed noted in a January 1998 interview in a Pakistani news magazine,
Herald, “Many Muslim organizations are preaching and working on the missionary level inside
and outside Pakistan…but they have given up the path of jihad altogether. The need for jihad has
always existed and the present conditions demand it more than ever.”
Given Pakistan’s desire to control Afghanistan—an objective that dominated Islamabad’s
strategic policies during the 1980s and 1990s—this categorical commitment to religious renewal
through participation in armed struggle resulted in LeT becoming one of the key beneficiaries of
ISI support. For over two decades now—and continuing to this day—the ISI has maintained
strong institutional, albeit subterranean, links with LeT and has supported its operations through
generous financing and combat training; at many points in the past, ISI support also included
providing LeT with sophisticated weapons and explosives, specialized communications gear, and
various kinds of operational assistance as it conducted its missions in Afghanistan and against
India. Since the inauguration of the global war on terror, ISI assistance to LeT has become more
recessed but it has by no means ended, even though the organization was formally banned by
Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf on January 12, 2002.
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LeT’s desire to engage in both preaching and jihad simultaneously found manifestation in
different ways from the moment of its founding. The group’s sprawling 200 acre headquarters at
Muridke outside of Lahore, believed to have been constructed with an initial gift from Osama bin
Laden’s Afghan operations and sustained since through contributions by ISI, Saudi charities,
Islamic NGOs, and Pakistani expatriates in Europe and the Middle East, quickly became the
nerve center from whence its vast charitable and militant activities were directed. LeT’s earliest
armed operations began immediately in the Afghan provinces of Konar and Pakhtia, where the
organization set up a series of terrorist training camps that over time were incorporated into the
Al-Qaeda network in Afghanistan. These militant activities, which were initially intended as part
of the ISI-managed war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, became quickly
subordinated to either ISI-supervised efforts at bringing Kabul under Pakistani influence or Al-
Qaeda’s murderous terrorism missions against the West.
The LeT’s initial focus on Afghanistan is significant because it refutes the common
misapprehension—assiduously fostered since the early 1990s—that the group has always been a
part of the indigenous Kashmiri insurgency. Nothing could be further from the truth. The LeT is
composed primarily of Pakistani Punjabis and has been so from its inception. In fact, its Punjabi
composition, along with its inflexible ideology, is precisely what made it so attractive to the ISI to
begin with, because it could be controlled and directed far more effectively by its Punjabidominated
sponsor, the Pakistan Army, than any local Kashmiri resistance group. Because of
LeT’s founding ties to Al-Qaeda, however, its Punjabi core has over the years been episodically
supplemented by Libyans, Central Asians, and Sudanese—although these non-Pakistani elements
have generally been marginal to the group’s numerical strength.
It was only when the indigenous Kashmiri resistance began to flag in 1993 that the ISI directed
LeT, among other Pakistani terrorist groups, to shift its principal focus of operations from the
Afghan theater to Jammu and Kashmir. ISI objectives in engineering this shift were threefold:
First, it enabled the Pakistani military to replace what it saw as feckless local fighters pursuing the
autonomous goal of independence with militants who were battle-hardened in Afghanistan,
beholden to the Pakistani state, and dedicated to the more appropriate objective of incorporating
Kashmir into Pakistan. Second, it permitted the moderate Kashmiris to be replaced by genuinely
committed Wahabi fighters who were capable of inflicting (and intended to unleash) an
unprecedented level of brutality in their military operations because they shared no affinities
whatsoever with the local population. Third, and finally, it permitted Pakistan to pursue an
agenda larger than Kashmir: by employing ideologically charged Islamist foot soldiers from
outside the disputed state—a cohort that hailing from the Pakistani Punjab carried with it all of
Islamabad’s pent up animosities towards India—the local struggle over Kashmir’s status could be
expanded into a larger war aimed at destroying India itself.
Hafiz Saeed wholeheartedly endorsed the objective of destroying India writ large. Asserting in a
1999 interview that “jihad is not about Kashmir only,” he went on to declare that “about fifteen
years ago, people might have found it ridiculous if someone told them about the disintegration of
the USSR. Today,” he continued, “I announce the break-up of India, Inshaallah. We will not rest
until the whole [of] India is dissolved into Pakistan.” In a later 2001 statement, he reaffirmed the
proposition that “our struggle will continue even if Kashmir is liberated. We still have to take
revenge for East Pakistan.” In accordance with his declaration that Kashmir was merely a
“gateway to capture India,” Saeed then directed his LeT cadres to focus their attention on
capturing the Muslim-dominated areas outside of Jammu and Kashmir, such as Hyderabad,
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Junagadh, Munabao and West Bengal, which he argued were forcibly occupied by India in 1947.
In the pursuit of these objectives, LeT received strong financial, material, and operational support
from the ISI—including from ISI field stations in Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh—because of
the growing conviction within the Pakistani military that the war against India could never be
won if the hostilities were to be confined only to Jammu and Kashmir.
Judging from LeT’s operational record, Saeed has been as good as his word. Of all the terrorist
groups operating in the Himalayan state, none has been as brutal and vicious in its armed
operations as LeT, particularly as witnessed in its encounters with the Indian military. Moreover,
since 2005, LeT’s operations have expanded far beyond Jammu and Kashmir into the rest of
India. The LeT has been implicated in terrorist attacks in New Delhi in October 2005; in
Bangalore in December 2005; in Varanasi in March 2006; in Nagpur in June 2006; and in the July
2007 train bombings in Bombay—all before its most recent multiple atrocities in Bombay in
November 2008.
While India has occupied the lion’s share of LeT attention in recent years, the organization has
not by any means restricted itself to keeping only India in its sights. Like many other radical
Islamist groups, the LeT leadership has on numerous occasions singled out the Jewish
community and the United States as being among the natural enemies of Islam. Speaking frankly
to a journalist, Saeed warned, for example, that although his outfit was consumed at the moment
by the conflict with India, “Let’s see when the time comes. Our struggle with the Jews is always
there.” This enmity with the Jewish people is supposedly eternal and ordained by God himself.
When Saeed was asked in the aftermath of the tragic 2005 earthquake in Pakistan whether then-
President Musharraf’s solicitation of aid from Israel was appropriate, he had no hesitation in
declaring forthrightly that “We should not solicit help from Israel. It is the question of Muslim
honor and self-respect. The Jews can never be our friends. This is stated by Allah.” This twisted
worldview found grotesque expression during the November 2006 LeT atrocities in Bombay
when the group deliberately targeted the Jewish Chabad center at Nariman House. Justifying this
attack as reprisal for Israeli security cooperation with India, the Jewish hostages at Nariman
House were not simply murdered but humiliated and brutally tortured before finally being killed
during the three day siege.
Since Israel and India are viewed as part of the detestable “Zionist-Hindu-Crusader” axis that
includes the United States, it is not surprising that LeT has long engaged in a variety of
subversive activities aimed at attacking American interests. Although the ideological denunciation
of the United States as an immoral, decadent, and implacable enemy of Islam was part of the
group’s worldview from its founding, its war against the United States took a decidedly deadly
turn after the Clinton administration launched missile attacks against several al-Qaeda camps in
Afghanistan in August 1998. Although these attacks did not kill Osama bin Laden, their intended
target, they did kill many LeT operatives and trainers who were bivouacked in these facilities.
Shortly thereafter, the LeT formally declared a jihad against the United States and began a variety
of operations globally aimed at targeting U.S. interests. Asserting unequivocally that LeT intends
to “plant the flag of Islam in Washington, Tel Aviv and New Delhi,” the group intensified its
collaboration with al-Qaeda, supporting bin Laden’s efforts as a junior partner wherever
necessary, while operating independently wherever possible. Within Southern Asia today, and
especially in Pakistan’s tribal belt, along its northwestern frontier, and in Afghanistan, LeT
cooperates with al-Qaeda and other militant groups, such as the Taliban, in the areas of
recruiting, training, tactical planning, financing, and operations. The senior al-Qaeda operative,
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Abu Zubaydah, for example, was captured in a LeT safe house in Faisalabad, Pakistan, indicating
the close ties existing between both terrorist organizations.
LeT’s universal ambitions, however, do not permit confining itself only to South Asia. After
declaring that it would provide free training to any Muslim desirous of joining the global jihad—a
promise that LeT has since made good on—the group’s operatives have been identified as
engaging in:
_ liaison and networking with numerous terrorist groups all over the world but
especially in Central and Southeast Asia and the Middle East;
_ facilitation of terrorist acts, including in, but not restricted to, Chechnya and Iraq;
_ fundraising far and wide, including in the Middle East, Europe, Australia, and the
United States;
_ procurement of weapons, explosives, and communications equipment for terrorist
operations from both the international arms markets and Pakistani state
organizations such as the ISI;
_ recruitment of volunteers for suicidal missions in South Asia as well as the Middle
East;
_ creation of sleeper cells for executing or supporting future terrorist acts in Europe,
Australia, and likely the United States; and
_ actual armed combat at least in India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq.
All told, Indian intelligence today estimates that LeT maintains some kind of terrorist presence in
twenty-one countries worldwide with the intention of either supporting or participating in what
Saeed has called the perpetual “jihad against the infidels.” Viewed in this perspective, LeT’s
murder of the six American citizens during the November 2008 attacks in Bombay—a bloodbath
that claimed the lives of close to 200 people, including 26 foreigners of 15 nationalities—is
actually part of a larger war with the West and with liberal democracies more generally, and only
the latest in a long line of hostile activities—most of which have remained sub rosa—affecting
U.S. citizens, soldiers or interests.
Unlike many of the other indigenous terrorist groups in South Asia whose command and control
structures are casual and often disorganized, LeT’s organizational structure is hierarchic and
precise, reflecting its purposefulness. Modeled on a military system, LeT is led by a core
leadership centered on the amir, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, and his deputies, who oversee different
aspects of its functional and charitable operations. These activities are implemented through
various branch offices throughout Pakistan, which are responsible for recruitment and
fundraising as well as for the delivery of social services such as education, healthcare, emergency
services, and religious instruction. LeT’s military arm is led by a “supreme commander” and a
“deputy supreme commander” who report to Saeed directly. Under them are several “divisional
commanders” and their deputies. Within the South Asian region, the divisional commanders
oversee specific geographic “theaters” of operation, which are then subdivided in certain defined
districts. These are controlled by “district commanders,” each of whom is ultimately responsible
for various battalions and their subordinate formations.
The entire command edifice thus reflects a model of “detailed control,” with orders being
executed at the lowest level only after they are authorized by a chain of authority reaching to the
top. This hierarchic command and control structure, although susceptible to decapitation in
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principle, was nonetheless institutionalized because LeT owed its origins primarily to the
charismatic leadership of three individuals—of which Hafiz Saeed quickly become the primus inter
pares. A hierarchic structure was also particularly appropriate, given the covert activities carried
out by its military wing both autonomously and for the ISI—with the latter in particular insisting
on a combination of high effectiveness, unremitting brutality, durable control, and plausible
deniability, as the price for continued support. Because LeT was from the very beginning a
preferred ward of the ISI, enjoying all the protection offered by the Pakistani state, the
vulnerability that traditionally afflicts all hierarchic terrorist groups was believed to be minimal in
this case.
This judgment, it appears, turns out to be correct because even when Pakistan, under
considerable U.S. pressure, formally banned LeT as a terrorist organization in 2002, the LeT
leadership remained impregnable and impervious to all international political pressure. Not only
did it continue to receive succor from the ISI but its close links with the Pakistani state, which
continued in its every incarnation, have raised the understandable question of whether the 2008
terrorist strikes in Bombay were in fact authorized either tacitly or explicitly by someone in the
Pakistani secret services, as other attacks on India have been in the past. Although neither India
nor the United States has provided specific evidence thus far of ISI or Pakistani military
authorization for the Bombay attacks—which, if available, would be fortuitous in any event,
given the usual incompleteness of all intelligence information—the question of whether these
murderous acts were sanctioned by elements within the Pakistani state is prima facie not absurd in
light of the ISI’s traditionally close relationship with LeT.
The attacks in Bombay also reflect the LeT’s classic modus operandi: Since 1999, the group has
utilized small but heavily armed and highly motivated two- to four-man squads operating
independently or in combination with others on suicidal—but not suicide—missions that are
intended to inflict the largest numbers of casualties during attacks on politically significant or
strategically symbolic sites. These missions invariably are complex and entail detailed tactical
planning; historically, they have taken the form of surprise raids aimed at heavily guarded facilities
such as Indian military installations, command headquarters, political institutions, or iconic
buildings, all intended to inflict the highest level of pain, underscore the vulnerability of the
Indian state, and embarrass the Indian government. (In Afghanistan, in contrast, LeT operations
have focused principally on targeting coalition forces, disrupting reconstruction efforts, and
supporting other terrorist groups in their efforts to undermine the Karzai regime.) In any event,
the LeT personnel involved in the majority of these attacks seek to escape the scene whenever
possible—in fact, they come carefully prepared to endure yet exfiltrate—but appear quite willing
to sacrifice themselves if necessary, if in the process they can take down a larger number of
bystanders, hostages, and security forces.
The targets attacked in Bombay are consistent with this pattern: they included the symbols of
Indian success (luxury hotels), reflections of Indian history and state presence (a historic railway
station) and emblems of India’s international relationships (a restaurant frequented by tourists
and a Jewish community center). The targeted killing of the Jewish residents at Nariman House,
and possibly the murder of the Western tourists at the Leopold Café (if indeed they were
deliberately targeted), would also be consistent with LeT’s past record, which has included the
focused slaughter of non-Muslims such as Hindus and Sikhs. Although the use of small arms to
include pistols, automatic rifles, grenades, plastic explosives, and occasionally mortars have been
the norm in most past LeT attacks, the group has also undertaken true suicide missions, including
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car bombings, on occasion. In LeT’s operations in Afghanistan, where recruitment for suicide
bombings appears to be a specialty, the use of larger crew-served weapons, mines, mortars,
rocket-propelled grenades, and even primitive air defense systems have been observed.
These characteristics of LeT, which have been on display since the group first came into
existence in the late 1980s, have made it the object of focused attention within the U.S.
intelligence community. Its worldwide operations, whether they be merely facilitation or
fundraising or more lethal activities such as planning, coordinating and executing armed attacks
either independently or in collusion with others, have marked LeT out as a genuine threat to
regional and global security. If the outfit had previously escaped the popular attention it received
after the atrocities in Bombay in 2008, it was only because its earlier attacks did not extend to
Western civilians and because its preferred combat tactics made it a lesser challenge to American
interests in comparison to al-Qaeda. This, however, should not be reason for consolation: if left
unchecked and untargeted, LeT could well evolve into a truly formidable threat, given its
resourcefulness, its operational span, its evolving capabilities, and its relatively robust sanctuary
within Pakistan.
A net assessment of LeT as a threat to regional and global security and to the American
homeland would, therefore, justify the following conclusions.
First, LeT remains a terrorist organization of genuinely global reach. Although the nature of its
presence and activities vary considerably by location, it has demonstrated the ability to grow roots
and sustain operations in countries far removed from Southern Asia, which remains its primary
theater of activity. Equally important, it exhibits all the ideological animus, financial and material
capabilities, and perverse motivation and ruthlessness required to attack those it believes are its
natural enemies simply because they may be Jewish, Christian, or Hindu, and living in secular,
liberal democratic, states. Furthermore, like al-Qaeda, LeT has demonstrated a remarkable ability
to forge coalitions with like-minded terrorist groups. These alliances are most clearly on display
within Southern Asia: in India, for example, LeT has developed ties with Islamic extremists
across the country including in states distant from Pakistan such as Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh,
and Tamil Nadu; in Pakistan, LeT cooperates actively with the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban and
coordinates operations with Al-Qaeda and the Haqqani network against Afghanistan; in Central
Asia, LeT has cooperated with both the Islamic Movement of Uzkekistan and local Islamist
rebels in the Caucasus; and, in Europe, LeT was actively involved in supporting the Muslim
resistance in Bosnia while raising funds and building sleeper cells in countries such as Spain and
Germany.
When viewed from the perspective of the United States, it is safe to say that LeT has long
undermined U.S. interests in the global war on terror. It threatens U.S. soldiers and civilians in
Afghanistan and has now killed U.S. citizens in Bombay. Thus far, however, it has not mounted
any direct attacks on the American homeland, but that is not for want of motivation: given the
juicier and far more vulnerable U.S. targets in Southern Asia, LeT has simply found it more
convenient to attack these (and U.S. allies) in situ rather than overextend itself in reaching out to
the continental United States. The effectiveness of U.S. law enforcement after September 11,
2001, and the deterrent power of U.S. military capabilities have had much to do with reinforcing
this calculus. Consequently, LeT operations in the United States thus far have focused mainly on
recruitment, fundraising and procurement rather than on lethal operations. Yet, with the
deliberate killing of American citizens in Bombay, a new line has been crossed. If Washington
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fails to respond to this provocation, the door could be opened to a repetition of more such
incidents in the future. The inability or unwillingness to punish LeT for these transgressions, as
the United States and Israel have done against other terrorist groups, could also embolden this
outfit to attack American citizens and American interests with greater impunity the next time
around.
Second, India has unfortunately become the “sponge” that protects us all. India’s very proximity
to Pakistan, which has developed into the epicenter of global terrorism during the last thirty
years, has resulted in New Delhi absorbing most of the blows unleashed by those terrorist groups
that treat it as a common enemy along with Israel, the United States, and the West more
generally. To the chagrin of its citizens, India has also turned out to be a terribly soft state neither
able to prevent many of the terrorist acts that have confronted it over the years nor capable of
retaliating effectively against either its terrorist adversaries or their state sponsors in Pakistan. The
existence of unresolved problems, such as the dispute over Jammu and Kashmir, has also
provided both Pakistani institutions and their terrorist clients with the excuses necessary to bleed
India to “death by a thousand cuts.” But these unsettled disputes remain only excuses: not that
they should not be addressed by New Delhi seriously and with alacrity, there is no assurance that
a satisfactory resolution of these problems will conclusively eliminate the threat of terrorism
facing India and the West more generally.
This is because the most vicious entities now engaged in attacks on India, like LeT, have
objectives that go way beyond Kashmir itself. Rather, they seek to destroy what is perhaps the
most successful example of a thriving democracy in the non-Western world, one that has
prospered despite the presence of crushing poverty, incredible diversity, and a relatively short
history of self-rule. India’s existence as a secular and liberal democratic state that protects political
rights and personal freedoms—despite all its failures and imperfections—thus remains a threat to
groups such as LeT, with their narrow, blighted, and destructive worldviews, as well as to
praetorian, anti-democratic, institutions such as the Pakistan Army and the ISI. India,
accordingly, becomes an attractive target, while its mistakes, inadequacies, and missteps only
exacerbate the opportunities for violence directed at its citizenry.
Yet it would be a gross error to treat the terrorism facing India—including the terrible recent
atrocities—as simply a problem for New Delhi alone. In a very real sense, the outrage in Bombay
was fundamentally a species of global terrorism not merely because the assailants happened to
believe in an obscurantist brand of Islam but, more importantly, because killing Indians turned
out to be simply interchangeable with killing citizens of some fifteen different nationalities for no
apparent reason whatsoever. If the United States fails to recognize that the struggle against
terrorism ought to be indivisible because Indian security is as important to New Delhi as
American security is to Washington, future Indian governments could choose to respond to the
problems posed by Pakistani groups such as LeT in ways that may undermine regional security
and make the U.S. effort to transform Pakistan more difficult than it already it. Avoiding these
sub-optimal outcomes requires the Obama administration to treat Indian concerns about
terrorism more seriously than the United States has done thus far.
Third, the most vicious terrorist groups in Southern Asia, such as al-Qaeda, LeT, the Pakistani
Tehrik-e-Taliban, Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), and the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), are driven
largely by a radical Islamist agenda rather than by any negotiable grievances, yet remain highly
adaptable with respect to the lethal tactics chosen to achieve their goals. This reality makes such
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terrorists formidable adversaries and a successful anti-terrorism policy must be able to cope with
both their obdurate aims and their changing techniques. The only reasonable objective for the
United States in this context must be the permanent evisceration of these groups—especially al-
Qaeda and LeT, which threaten American interests directly—with Pakistani cooperation if
possible, but without it if necessary. This is particularly so because the unacceptable nature of
their ambitions alone should rule out any consideration of policies centered on conciliation or
compromise. It should also make Washington suspicious of any theory of terrorism that justifies
its precipitation by so-called “root causes,” especially in South Asia—and saying so does not in
any way obviate the need for resolving existing intra- and inter-state disputes so long as these are
pursued through peaceful means. Where the forms of violence are concerned, the evidence
suggests that the uncompromising ideological motivations that often drive terrorism in the Indian
subcontinent coexist quite comfortably with the presence of effective instrumental rationality,
even if this is only oriented towards sinister purposes. As the attacks in Bombay demonstrated,
even ideologically charged terrorist groups such as LeT are capable of meticulous planning and
strategic adaptability. Terrorists learn and change their tactics to outwit their state opponents:
because Indian intelligence agencies successfully broke up several terrorist modules in recent
years—groups that intended to transport explosives and conduct bombings by land—the LeT
resorted to an unexpected course of action that involved arrival by sea and the use of trained and
motivated attackers with relatively unsophisticated weapons to inflict a great deal of damage.
There is little doubt that other terrorists will learn from Bombay and could attempt to emulate
LeT’s actions. If LeT itself seeks to attack the U.S. homeland, it could well choose to replicate its
experience in Bombay using sleepers, possibly already resident in the country. Whether it does so
or not, the important point is that the successes of U.S. intelligence and law enforcement
agencies in neutralizing more complex kinds of attacks could well push various ideologically
hostile terrorist groups to seek simpler solutions, using capabilities at hand or readily available, to
attack U.S. citizens in unanticipated ways abroad or at home. LeT is one such group that certainly
possesses the motivation to conduct such attacks on American soil if the opportunities arise and
if the cost-benefit calculus shifts in favor of such assaults.
As a recent RAND study I participated in points out,
The Mumbai attack demonstrates that jihadist organizations based in Pakistan are able to
plan and launch ambitious terrorist operations, at least in neighboring countries such as
India. Put in the context of previous terrorist attacks in India by Pakistani-based or local
jihadist groups, it suggests a continuing, perhaps escalating, terrorist campaign in South
Asia. Beyond India, the Mumbai attack reveals a strategic terrorist culture that
thoughtfully identified strategic goals and ways to achieve them and that analyzed
counterterrorist measures and developed ways to obviate them to produce a 9/11-quality
attack. For 60 hours, the terrorists brought a city of 20 million people to a standstill while
the world looked on. The attack put into actual practice LeT’s previous rhetoric about
making the Kashmir dispute part of the international jihad. In so doing, LeT has
emerged, not as a subsidiary of al-Qaeda, but as an independent constellation in the
global jihad galaxy. Indeed, with al-Qaeda central operational capabilities reduced, the
Mumbai attack makes LeT a global contender on its own.
—Angel Rabasa et al, The Lessons of Mumbai (Santa Monica: The RAND Corporation,
2009, pp. 7-8.)
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Dealing with this emerging LeT threat will require a mixture of unilateral actions and
international cooperation. While U.S. law enforcement agencies are certainly seized of the
challenges posed by LeT, and will develop responses aimed at preventing attacks whenever
possible, responding to dangers whenever necessary, and managing their consequences whenever
required, the most pressing political requirement right now is to collaborate with India and
Pakistan in bringing the perpetrators of the Bombay bloodbath to justice. After an embarrassingly
inept initial response by Islamabad, the Zardari government, acceding to intense U.S. pressure
during the last days of the Bush administration, arrested key LeT ringleaders and offered to bring
them to trial in Pakistan in lieu of extraditing them to India or the United States. The Obama
administration should keep Pakistan’s feet to the fire and ensure that Islamabad makes good on
its promises. Given the long and bloody record of the individuals apprehended, any trial, whether
in Pakistan or elsewhere, should seek capital punishment for the detainees. Neither permanent
incarceration nor limited jail terms would prevent them from orchestrating further attacks from
inside their prison cells. The experience of previous Pakistani detentions demonstrates that
terrorists, even when in custody, can mount very effective cross-border operations with the aid of
collaborators still at large.
But Washington should also demand more of Islamabad: Precisely because LeT threatens to
become a significant global terrorist threat, the United States should insist that Islamabad roll up
and eliminate the entire LeT infrastructure of terrorism that currently exists inside of Pakistan.
Such an action not only holds the best promise of arresting the current crisis in Indo-Pakistani
relations—one whose final dénouement has yet to occur and whose worst consequences could
undermine both regional stability and the counterterrorism operations currently occurring in
Pakistan’s tribal belt and in Afghanistan—but it also remains the only guarantee of decisively
eliminating LeT as a potentially serious threat to the U.S. homeland. Given the ISI’s long history
of support for LeT, the Pakistani state will require all the assistance it can get if it is to genuinely
eradicate the diverse infrastructure of terrorism maintained by LeT’s current front organization,
the Jamat-ud Dawa (JuD). The United States should not stint in providing Pakistan with this aid,
if Islamabad is judged to be serious about confronting LeT and other terrorist groups. That
Pakistan should eliminate these threats in its own interest goes without saying. But, in any event,
Washington should no longer compromise on this objective. Working with both the civilian
government of President Zardari, which despite all its limitations still recognizes the threats
posed by Pakistan’s terrorist groups and desires to eliminate them, and with the Pakistan Army,
which despite its growing recognition of the perils posed by Islamist terrorist groups still seeks to
hold on to them as “strategic assets,” the Obama administration should, using both carrots and
sticks, induce Pakistan to comprehensively eliminate the LeT. If despite American insistence and
aid, Islamabad remains unable or unwilling, the U.S. government should utilize the entire range of
unilateral instruments available to neutralize this threat. After all, it would be a great pity and
possibly even a dereliction of duty if amidst all the consolation and support offered to India in
the aftermath of the Bombay attacks, Washington finally failed to perceive—and neutralize—the
larger dangers posed by LeT’s ambitions towards the United States.
In this context, the expansion of U.S.–Indian counterterrorism cooperation is also urgently
needed. Unfortunately, the record thus far suggests that the bilateral partnership has not lived up
to its promise in this issue-area. During the last years of the Clinton administration, the dialogue
on counterterrorism followed a meaningful course of great utility to both countries.
Unfortunately, this progress was not sustained during the Bush years. This is particularly ironic
both because the U.S.–Indian relationship was fundamentally transformed during this period and
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because countering terrorism dominated the Bush presidency in an unprecedented way. Yet,
counterterrorism cooperation between the United States and India for most of the last eight years
has been largely formulaic, superficial, and at best exploratory. Although many practical initiatives
were initiated under the aegis of the U.S.–India Counterterrorism Joint Working Group, it would
be hard to conclude that this cooperation has actually yielded meaningful dividends for both
sides.
The exception to this general rule, however, has been the partnership between U.S. and Indian
law enforcement agencies in the aftermath of the Bombay attacks. After the tragic events of
November 26 – 29, 2008, the assistance rendered by the FBI and other U.S. agencies to India has
simply been phenomenal. Despite the initial hiccups that impeded smooth cooperation, the
resources, technology, and professionalism of the U.S. team deployed to Bombay has evoked the
gratitude, admiration, and even the envy of their Indian counterparts. Plainly stated, it would
simply not have been possible for the government of India to assemble the enormous amount of
technical evidence pertaining to the attacks, which has since been shared with the international
community, without American assistance. But against the backdrop of the last eight years, the
intense cooperation witnessed between the United States and India after Bombay must be
counted as the exception, not the rule.
The surprising disjuncture on counterterrorism, despite the overall transformation of the bilateral
relationship, can be explained in one word: Pakistan. The disagreement between Washington and
New Delhi in regards to Pakistan essentially hampered the prospects for expanded
counterterrorism cooperation. This divergence on Pakistan was not rooted primarily in a
difference of diagnosis: both sides agreed that Pakistan was the global epicenter of terrorism and
had to be reformed. They could not agree, however, on the best strategies for achieving this
objective. The United States, thanks to its crushing dependence on Islamabad for sustaining the
military operations against al-Qaeda and in Afghanistan, defended a strategy of unconditional
engagement with Pakistan. In contrast, India, though strongly supportive of U.S. military
operations in Afghanistan, argued for a tougher policy of carrots and sticks as a means of
mitigating the continuing threat emanating from Pakistani terrorism.
This divergence of perspectives, far from being academic, had practical consequences. The U.S.
reluctance to confront Pakistan forthrightly about its terrorism against India—despite all its
sympathies for New Delhi—resulted in most American counterterrorism cooperation being
focused on coping with, or defending against, Pakistani threats, whereas successive Indian
governments were more interested in exploring what Washington would do to eliminate the
terrorism exported out of Pakistan. This fundamental incompatibility of objectives made Indian
intelligence, law enforcement, and counterterrorism agencies—not to mention the government of
India writ large—rather skeptical about the prospects for successful counterterrorism cooperation
with the United States. Because U.S. programs in this regard were invariably viewed more as
palliatives intended to manage the pain rather than as frontal attacks on the heart of the problem
itself, Indian enthusiasm for deep counterterrorism cooperation with Washington was rather
tepid. The Bush administration’s failure to confront Pakistan about its continued abetting of
terrorism against India (and against Afghanistan), despite eight years of significant assistance to
Islamabad, then produced an unfortunate double failure: it neither eradicated Pakistan’s addiction
to terrorism nor institutionalized deepened counterterrorism cooperation with India.
The growing disenchantment in the United States with Pakistan’s performance in the war on
terror and President Obama’s determination to correct the trajectory of the U.S.–Pakistan
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bilateral relationship offers Washington a new opportunity to rectify the shortcomings that
traditionally afflicted U.S.–Indian counterterrorism cooperation. The stellar collaboration
exhibited by both sides in the aftermath of the Bombay attacks yields only a glimpse of what is
actually possible if the two countries can arrive at a common strategic understanding of their
problems regarding terrorism. If such a convergence can be promoted through a serious, highlevel,
dialogue on Pakistan—again, something that never really occurred during the entire
duration of the second Bush term—it might be possible to embark on three specific initiatives
that could produce high payoffs in terms of helping India (as well as the United States) better
cope with the scourge of terrorism.
These initiatives include: comprehensive intelligence sharing about specific terrorist groups (an
area where India has much to offer, given its collection capabilities and its proximity to the
threats, and where the United States, given its extraordinary technical capacity, can make
enormous contributions as well to mutual advantage); training of the law enforcement and
intelligence communities, particularly in the realms of forensics, border security, and special
weapons and tactics (areas where India would particularly profit, with collateral benefits to the
United States); and, improving intelligence fusion and organizational coordination (again, areas
where India could learn much from the U.S. experience after September 11, first to its own
advantage and thereafter to the United States). Since these activities traverse areas of great
sensitivity to any sovereign state, it is unlikely that any meaningful bilateral cooperation will take
place unless there is close and steady direction from the very top of the governments in both
counties. The task ahead of us in this regard is enormous—and our work has only just begun.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the Committee for your attention and your kind
consideration.
LESSONS FROM MUMBAI
Prepared Testimony by
Ashley J. Tellis
Senior Associate
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
to the
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
United States Senate
January 28, 2009
Congressional Testimony
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Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Senator Collins, and Members of the Committee. Thank you for
your invitation to testify on the recent terrorist attacks in Bombay (Mumbai) and their
consequences for the United States. As requested by the Chairman and Ranking Member in their
letter of invitation, I will focus my remarks on assessing the regional and global threat posed by
Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the implications of that threat for the U.S. homeland, and the status of
U.S.–India cooperation on counterterrorism and homeland security. I respectfully request that
my statement be entered into the record.
Of all the terrorist groups present in South Asia—and there are many—LeT represents a threat
to regional and global security second only to al-Qaeda. Although LeT is linked in popular
perceptions mainly to the terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir, the operations and ideology of this
group transcend the violence directed at the Indian state. Being an Ahl-e Hadith adherent of
Sunni Wahabism, LeT seeks to establish a universal Islamic Caliphate with a special emphasis on
realizing that dream through the gradual recovery of all lands that were once under Muslim rule.
The strategic objective of inaugurating a universal Caliphate has made LeT a strong ideological
ally of Al-Qaeda, while the emphasis on recovering “lost Muslim lands” in Asia and Europe has
taken LeT to diverse places such as Palestine, Spain, Chechnya, Kosovo and Eritrea.
That LeT is a constituent member of Osama bin Ladin’s International Islamic Front should not
be surprising given that one of its three founders, Abdullah Azzam of the International Islamic
University in Islamabad, was closely associated with Hamas and has been widely described as one
of bin Ladin’s religious mentors. Together with Hafiz Saeed, the LeT’s current amir, and Zafar
Iqbal of the Engineering University, Lahore, Azzam formed LeT in 1987 as the armed wing of
the Markaz Dawat-ul Irshad (MDI), the Center for Proselytization and Preaching, which sought
to actualize the universal Islamic state through tableegh (preaching) and jihad (armed struggle).
In the fervid atmosphere of the 1980s, when numerous extremist groups were springing up in
Pakistan under the patronage of the country’s principal intelligence agency, the Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI), LeT’s militant attitude to political change, and its commitment to exploiting
modern science and technology in support of its ideological ends, quickly made it an ISI favorite
because its uncompromising commitment to jihad could be manipulated to advance Pakistan’s
own strategic goals. As Saeed noted in a January 1998 interview in a Pakistani news magazine,
Herald, “Many Muslim organizations are preaching and working on the missionary level inside
and outside Pakistan…but they have given up the path of jihad altogether. The need for jihad has
always existed and the present conditions demand it more than ever.”
Given Pakistan’s desire to control Afghanistan—an objective that dominated Islamabad’s
strategic policies during the 1980s and 1990s—this categorical commitment to religious renewal
through participation in armed struggle resulted in LeT becoming one of the key beneficiaries of
ISI support. For over two decades now—and continuing to this day—the ISI has maintained
strong institutional, albeit subterranean, links with LeT and has supported its operations through
generous financing and combat training; at many points in the past, ISI support also included
providing LeT with sophisticated weapons and explosives, specialized communications gear, and
various kinds of operational assistance as it conducted its missions in Afghanistan and against
India. Since the inauguration of the global war on terror, ISI assistance to LeT has become more
recessed but it has by no means ended, even though the organization was formally banned by
Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf on January 12, 2002.
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LeT’s desire to engage in both preaching and jihad simultaneously found manifestation in
different ways from the moment of its founding. The group’s sprawling 200 acre headquarters at
Muridke outside of Lahore, believed to have been constructed with an initial gift from Osama bin
Laden’s Afghan operations and sustained since through contributions by ISI, Saudi charities,
Islamic NGOs, and Pakistani expatriates in Europe and the Middle East, quickly became the
nerve center from whence its vast charitable and militant activities were directed. LeT’s earliest
armed operations began immediately in the Afghan provinces of Konar and Pakhtia, where the
organization set up a series of terrorist training camps that over time were incorporated into the
Al-Qaeda network in Afghanistan. These militant activities, which were initially intended as part
of the ISI-managed war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, became quickly
subordinated to either ISI-supervised efforts at bringing Kabul under Pakistani influence or Al-
Qaeda’s murderous terrorism missions against the West.
The LeT’s initial focus on Afghanistan is significant because it refutes the common
misapprehension—assiduously fostered since the early 1990s—that the group has always been a
part of the indigenous Kashmiri insurgency. Nothing could be further from the truth. The LeT is
composed primarily of Pakistani Punjabis and has been so from its inception. In fact, its Punjabi
composition, along with its inflexible ideology, is precisely what made it so attractive to the ISI to
begin with, because it could be controlled and directed far more effectively by its Punjabidominated
sponsor, the Pakistan Army, than any local Kashmiri resistance group. Because of
LeT’s founding ties to Al-Qaeda, however, its Punjabi core has over the years been episodically
supplemented by Libyans, Central Asians, and Sudanese—although these non-Pakistani elements
have generally been marginal to the group’s numerical strength.
It was only when the indigenous Kashmiri resistance began to flag in 1993 that the ISI directed
LeT, among other Pakistani terrorist groups, to shift its principal focus of operations from the
Afghan theater to Jammu and Kashmir. ISI objectives in engineering this shift were threefold:
First, it enabled the Pakistani military to replace what it saw as feckless local fighters pursuing the
autonomous goal of independence with militants who were battle-hardened in Afghanistan,
beholden to the Pakistani state, and dedicated to the more appropriate objective of incorporating
Kashmir into Pakistan. Second, it permitted the moderate Kashmiris to be replaced by genuinely
committed Wahabi fighters who were capable of inflicting (and intended to unleash) an
unprecedented level of brutality in their military operations because they shared no affinities
whatsoever with the local population. Third, and finally, it permitted Pakistan to pursue an
agenda larger than Kashmir: by employing ideologically charged Islamist foot soldiers from
outside the disputed state—a cohort that hailing from the Pakistani Punjab carried with it all of
Islamabad’s pent up animosities towards India—the local struggle over Kashmir’s status could be
expanded into a larger war aimed at destroying India itself.
Hafiz Saeed wholeheartedly endorsed the objective of destroying India writ large. Asserting in a
1999 interview that “jihad is not about Kashmir only,” he went on to declare that “about fifteen
years ago, people might have found it ridiculous if someone told them about the disintegration of
the USSR. Today,” he continued, “I announce the break-up of India, Inshaallah. We will not rest
until the whole [of] India is dissolved into Pakistan.” In a later 2001 statement, he reaffirmed the
proposition that “our struggle will continue even if Kashmir is liberated. We still have to take
revenge for East Pakistan.” In accordance with his declaration that Kashmir was merely a
“gateway to capture India,” Saeed then directed his LeT cadres to focus their attention on
capturing the Muslim-dominated areas outside of Jammu and Kashmir, such as Hyderabad,
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Junagadh, Munabao and West Bengal, which he argued were forcibly occupied by India in 1947.
In the pursuit of these objectives, LeT received strong financial, material, and operational support
from the ISI—including from ISI field stations in Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh—because of
the growing conviction within the Pakistani military that the war against India could never be
won if the hostilities were to be confined only to Jammu and Kashmir.
Judging from LeT’s operational record, Saeed has been as good as his word. Of all the terrorist
groups operating in the Himalayan state, none has been as brutal and vicious in its armed
operations as LeT, particularly as witnessed in its encounters with the Indian military. Moreover,
since 2005, LeT’s operations have expanded far beyond Jammu and Kashmir into the rest of
India. The LeT has been implicated in terrorist attacks in New Delhi in October 2005; in
Bangalore in December 2005; in Varanasi in March 2006; in Nagpur in June 2006; and in the July
2007 train bombings in Bombay—all before its most recent multiple atrocities in Bombay in
November 2008.
While India has occupied the lion’s share of LeT attention in recent years, the organization has
not by any means restricted itself to keeping only India in its sights. Like many other radical
Islamist groups, the LeT leadership has on numerous occasions singled out the Jewish
community and the United States as being among the natural enemies of Islam. Speaking frankly
to a journalist, Saeed warned, for example, that although his outfit was consumed at the moment
by the conflict with India, “Let’s see when the time comes. Our struggle with the Jews is always
there.” This enmity with the Jewish people is supposedly eternal and ordained by God himself.
When Saeed was asked in the aftermath of the tragic 2005 earthquake in Pakistan whether then-
President Musharraf’s solicitation of aid from Israel was appropriate, he had no hesitation in
declaring forthrightly that “We should not solicit help from Israel. It is the question of Muslim
honor and self-respect. The Jews can never be our friends. This is stated by Allah.” This twisted
worldview found grotesque expression during the November 2006 LeT atrocities in Bombay
when the group deliberately targeted the Jewish Chabad center at Nariman House. Justifying this
attack as reprisal for Israeli security cooperation with India, the Jewish hostages at Nariman
House were not simply murdered but humiliated and brutally tortured before finally being killed
during the three day siege.
Since Israel and India are viewed as part of the detestable “Zionist-Hindu-Crusader” axis that
includes the United States, it is not surprising that LeT has long engaged in a variety of
subversive activities aimed at attacking American interests. Although the ideological denunciation
of the United States as an immoral, decadent, and implacable enemy of Islam was part of the
group’s worldview from its founding, its war against the United States took a decidedly deadly
turn after the Clinton administration launched missile attacks against several al-Qaeda camps in
Afghanistan in August 1998. Although these attacks did not kill Osama bin Laden, their intended
target, they did kill many LeT operatives and trainers who were bivouacked in these facilities.
Shortly thereafter, the LeT formally declared a jihad against the United States and began a variety
of operations globally aimed at targeting U.S. interests. Asserting unequivocally that LeT intends
to “plant the flag of Islam in Washington, Tel Aviv and New Delhi,” the group intensified its
collaboration with al-Qaeda, supporting bin Laden’s efforts as a junior partner wherever
necessary, while operating independently wherever possible. Within Southern Asia today, and
especially in Pakistan’s tribal belt, along its northwestern frontier, and in Afghanistan, LeT
cooperates with al-Qaeda and other militant groups, such as the Taliban, in the areas of
recruiting, training, tactical planning, financing, and operations. The senior al-Qaeda operative,
5
Abu Zubaydah, for example, was captured in a LeT safe house in Faisalabad, Pakistan, indicating
the close ties existing between both terrorist organizations.
LeT’s universal ambitions, however, do not permit confining itself only to South Asia. After
declaring that it would provide free training to any Muslim desirous of joining the global jihad—a
promise that LeT has since made good on—the group’s operatives have been identified as
engaging in:
_ liaison and networking with numerous terrorist groups all over the world but
especially in Central and Southeast Asia and the Middle East;
_ facilitation of terrorist acts, including in, but not restricted to, Chechnya and Iraq;
_ fundraising far and wide, including in the Middle East, Europe, Australia, and the
United States;
_ procurement of weapons, explosives, and communications equipment for terrorist
operations from both the international arms markets and Pakistani state
organizations such as the ISI;
_ recruitment of volunteers for suicidal missions in South Asia as well as the Middle
East;
_ creation of sleeper cells for executing or supporting future terrorist acts in Europe,
Australia, and likely the United States; and
_ actual armed combat at least in India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq.
All told, Indian intelligence today estimates that LeT maintains some kind of terrorist presence in
twenty-one countries worldwide with the intention of either supporting or participating in what
Saeed has called the perpetual “jihad against the infidels.” Viewed in this perspective, LeT’s
murder of the six American citizens during the November 2008 attacks in Bombay—a bloodbath
that claimed the lives of close to 200 people, including 26 foreigners of 15 nationalities—is
actually part of a larger war with the West and with liberal democracies more generally, and only
the latest in a long line of hostile activities—most of which have remained sub rosa—affecting
U.S. citizens, soldiers or interests.
Unlike many of the other indigenous terrorist groups in South Asia whose command and control
structures are casual and often disorganized, LeT’s organizational structure is hierarchic and
precise, reflecting its purposefulness. Modeled on a military system, LeT is led by a core
leadership centered on the amir, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, and his deputies, who oversee different
aspects of its functional and charitable operations. These activities are implemented through
various branch offices throughout Pakistan, which are responsible for recruitment and
fundraising as well as for the delivery of social services such as education, healthcare, emergency
services, and religious instruction. LeT’s military arm is led by a “supreme commander” and a
“deputy supreme commander” who report to Saeed directly. Under them are several “divisional
commanders” and their deputies. Within the South Asian region, the divisional commanders
oversee specific geographic “theaters” of operation, which are then subdivided in certain defined
districts. These are controlled by “district commanders,” each of whom is ultimately responsible
for various battalions and their subordinate formations.
The entire command edifice thus reflects a model of “detailed control,” with orders being
executed at the lowest level only after they are authorized by a chain of authority reaching to the
top. This hierarchic command and control structure, although susceptible to decapitation in
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principle, was nonetheless institutionalized because LeT owed its origins primarily to the
charismatic leadership of three individuals—of which Hafiz Saeed quickly become the primus inter
pares. A hierarchic structure was also particularly appropriate, given the covert activities carried
out by its military wing both autonomously and for the ISI—with the latter in particular insisting
on a combination of high effectiveness, unremitting brutality, durable control, and plausible
deniability, as the price for continued support. Because LeT was from the very beginning a
preferred ward of the ISI, enjoying all the protection offered by the Pakistani state, the
vulnerability that traditionally afflicts all hierarchic terrorist groups was believed to be minimal in
this case.
This judgment, it appears, turns out to be correct because even when Pakistan, under
considerable U.S. pressure, formally banned LeT as a terrorist organization in 2002, the LeT
leadership remained impregnable and impervious to all international political pressure. Not only
did it continue to receive succor from the ISI but its close links with the Pakistani state, which
continued in its every incarnation, have raised the understandable question of whether the 2008
terrorist strikes in Bombay were in fact authorized either tacitly or explicitly by someone in the
Pakistani secret services, as other attacks on India have been in the past. Although neither India
nor the United States has provided specific evidence thus far of ISI or Pakistani military
authorization for the Bombay attacks—which, if available, would be fortuitous in any event,
given the usual incompleteness of all intelligence information—the question of whether these
murderous acts were sanctioned by elements within the Pakistani state is prima facie not absurd in
light of the ISI’s traditionally close relationship with LeT.
The attacks in Bombay also reflect the LeT’s classic modus operandi: Since 1999, the group has
utilized small but heavily armed and highly motivated two- to four-man squads operating
independently or in combination with others on suicidal—but not suicide—missions that are
intended to inflict the largest numbers of casualties during attacks on politically significant or
strategically symbolic sites. These missions invariably are complex and entail detailed tactical
planning; historically, they have taken the form of surprise raids aimed at heavily guarded facilities
such as Indian military installations, command headquarters, political institutions, or iconic
buildings, all intended to inflict the highest level of pain, underscore the vulnerability of the
Indian state, and embarrass the Indian government. (In Afghanistan, in contrast, LeT operations
have focused principally on targeting coalition forces, disrupting reconstruction efforts, and
supporting other terrorist groups in their efforts to undermine the Karzai regime.) In any event,
the LeT personnel involved in the majority of these attacks seek to escape the scene whenever
possible—in fact, they come carefully prepared to endure yet exfiltrate—but appear quite willing
to sacrifice themselves if necessary, if in the process they can take down a larger number of
bystanders, hostages, and security forces.
The targets attacked in Bombay are consistent with this pattern: they included the symbols of
Indian success (luxury hotels), reflections of Indian history and state presence (a historic railway
station) and emblems of India’s international relationships (a restaurant frequented by tourists
and a Jewish community center). The targeted killing of the Jewish residents at Nariman House,
and possibly the murder of the Western tourists at the Leopold Café (if indeed they were
deliberately targeted), would also be consistent with LeT’s past record, which has included the
focused slaughter of non-Muslims such as Hindus and Sikhs. Although the use of small arms to
include pistols, automatic rifles, grenades, plastic explosives, and occasionally mortars have been
the norm in most past LeT attacks, the group has also undertaken true suicide missions, including
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car bombings, on occasion. In LeT’s operations in Afghanistan, where recruitment for suicide
bombings appears to be a specialty, the use of larger crew-served weapons, mines, mortars,
rocket-propelled grenades, and even primitive air defense systems have been observed.
These characteristics of LeT, which have been on display since the group first came into
existence in the late 1980s, have made it the object of focused attention within the U.S.
intelligence community. Its worldwide operations, whether they be merely facilitation or
fundraising or more lethal activities such as planning, coordinating and executing armed attacks
either independently or in collusion with others, have marked LeT out as a genuine threat to
regional and global security. If the outfit had previously escaped the popular attention it received
after the atrocities in Bombay in 2008, it was only because its earlier attacks did not extend to
Western civilians and because its preferred combat tactics made it a lesser challenge to American
interests in comparison to al-Qaeda. This, however, should not be reason for consolation: if left
unchecked and untargeted, LeT could well evolve into a truly formidable threat, given its
resourcefulness, its operational span, its evolving capabilities, and its relatively robust sanctuary
within Pakistan.
A net assessment of LeT as a threat to regional and global security and to the American
homeland would, therefore, justify the following conclusions.
First, LeT remains a terrorist organization of genuinely global reach. Although the nature of its
presence and activities vary considerably by location, it has demonstrated the ability to grow roots
and sustain operations in countries far removed from Southern Asia, which remains its primary
theater of activity. Equally important, it exhibits all the ideological animus, financial and material
capabilities, and perverse motivation and ruthlessness required to attack those it believes are its
natural enemies simply because they may be Jewish, Christian, or Hindu, and living in secular,
liberal democratic, states. Furthermore, like al-Qaeda, LeT has demonstrated a remarkable ability
to forge coalitions with like-minded terrorist groups. These alliances are most clearly on display
within Southern Asia: in India, for example, LeT has developed ties with Islamic extremists
across the country including in states distant from Pakistan such as Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh,
and Tamil Nadu; in Pakistan, LeT cooperates actively with the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban and
coordinates operations with Al-Qaeda and the Haqqani network against Afghanistan; in Central
Asia, LeT has cooperated with both the Islamic Movement of Uzkekistan and local Islamist
rebels in the Caucasus; and, in Europe, LeT was actively involved in supporting the Muslim
resistance in Bosnia while raising funds and building sleeper cells in countries such as Spain and
Germany.
When viewed from the perspective of the United States, it is safe to say that LeT has long
undermined U.S. interests in the global war on terror. It threatens U.S. soldiers and civilians in
Afghanistan and has now killed U.S. citizens in Bombay. Thus far, however, it has not mounted
any direct attacks on the American homeland, but that is not for want of motivation: given the
juicier and far more vulnerable U.S. targets in Southern Asia, LeT has simply found it more
convenient to attack these (and U.S. allies) in situ rather than overextend itself in reaching out to
the continental United States. The effectiveness of U.S. law enforcement after September 11,
2001, and the deterrent power of U.S. military capabilities have had much to do with reinforcing
this calculus. Consequently, LeT operations in the United States thus far have focused mainly on
recruitment, fundraising and procurement rather than on lethal operations. Yet, with the
deliberate killing of American citizens in Bombay, a new line has been crossed. If Washington
8
fails to respond to this provocation, the door could be opened to a repetition of more such
incidents in the future. The inability or unwillingness to punish LeT for these transgressions, as
the United States and Israel have done against other terrorist groups, could also embolden this
outfit to attack American citizens and American interests with greater impunity the next time
around.
Second, India has unfortunately become the “sponge” that protects us all. India’s very proximity
to Pakistan, which has developed into the epicenter of global terrorism during the last thirty
years, has resulted in New Delhi absorbing most of the blows unleashed by those terrorist groups
that treat it as a common enemy along with Israel, the United States, and the West more
generally. To the chagrin of its citizens, India has also turned out to be a terribly soft state neither
able to prevent many of the terrorist acts that have confronted it over the years nor capable of
retaliating effectively against either its terrorist adversaries or their state sponsors in Pakistan. The
existence of unresolved problems, such as the dispute over Jammu and Kashmir, has also
provided both Pakistani institutions and their terrorist clients with the excuses necessary to bleed
India to “death by a thousand cuts.” But these unsettled disputes remain only excuses: not that
they should not be addressed by New Delhi seriously and with alacrity, there is no assurance that
a satisfactory resolution of these problems will conclusively eliminate the threat of terrorism
facing India and the West more generally.
This is because the most vicious entities now engaged in attacks on India, like LeT, have
objectives that go way beyond Kashmir itself. Rather, they seek to destroy what is perhaps the
most successful example of a thriving democracy in the non-Western world, one that has
prospered despite the presence of crushing poverty, incredible diversity, and a relatively short
history of self-rule. India’s existence as a secular and liberal democratic state that protects political
rights and personal freedoms—despite all its failures and imperfections—thus remains a threat to
groups such as LeT, with their narrow, blighted, and destructive worldviews, as well as to
praetorian, anti-democratic, institutions such as the Pakistan Army and the ISI. India,
accordingly, becomes an attractive target, while its mistakes, inadequacies, and missteps only
exacerbate the opportunities for violence directed at its citizenry.
Yet it would be a gross error to treat the terrorism facing India—including the terrible recent
atrocities—as simply a problem for New Delhi alone. In a very real sense, the outrage in Bombay
was fundamentally a species of global terrorism not merely because the assailants happened to
believe in an obscurantist brand of Islam but, more importantly, because killing Indians turned
out to be simply interchangeable with killing citizens of some fifteen different nationalities for no
apparent reason whatsoever. If the United States fails to recognize that the struggle against
terrorism ought to be indivisible because Indian security is as important to New Delhi as
American security is to Washington, future Indian governments could choose to respond to the
problems posed by Pakistani groups such as LeT in ways that may undermine regional security
and make the U.S. effort to transform Pakistan more difficult than it already it. Avoiding these
sub-optimal outcomes requires the Obama administration to treat Indian concerns about
terrorism more seriously than the United States has done thus far.
Third, the most vicious terrorist groups in Southern Asia, such as al-Qaeda, LeT, the Pakistani
Tehrik-e-Taliban, Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), and the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), are driven
largely by a radical Islamist agenda rather than by any negotiable grievances, yet remain highly
adaptable with respect to the lethal tactics chosen to achieve their goals. This reality makes such
9
terrorists formidable adversaries and a successful anti-terrorism policy must be able to cope with
both their obdurate aims and their changing techniques. The only reasonable objective for the
United States in this context must be the permanent evisceration of these groups—especially al-
Qaeda and LeT, which threaten American interests directly—with Pakistani cooperation if
possible, but without it if necessary. This is particularly so because the unacceptable nature of
their ambitions alone should rule out any consideration of policies centered on conciliation or
compromise. It should also make Washington suspicious of any theory of terrorism that justifies
its precipitation by so-called “root causes,” especially in South Asia—and saying so does not in
any way obviate the need for resolving existing intra- and inter-state disputes so long as these are
pursued through peaceful means. Where the forms of violence are concerned, the evidence
suggests that the uncompromising ideological motivations that often drive terrorism in the Indian
subcontinent coexist quite comfortably with the presence of effective instrumental rationality,
even if this is only oriented towards sinister purposes. As the attacks in Bombay demonstrated,
even ideologically charged terrorist groups such as LeT are capable of meticulous planning and
strategic adaptability. Terrorists learn and change their tactics to outwit their state opponents:
because Indian intelligence agencies successfully broke up several terrorist modules in recent
years—groups that intended to transport explosives and conduct bombings by land—the LeT
resorted to an unexpected course of action that involved arrival by sea and the use of trained and
motivated attackers with relatively unsophisticated weapons to inflict a great deal of damage.
There is little doubt that other terrorists will learn from Bombay and could attempt to emulate
LeT’s actions. If LeT itself seeks to attack the U.S. homeland, it could well choose to replicate its
experience in Bombay using sleepers, possibly already resident in the country. Whether it does so
or not, the important point is that the successes of U.S. intelligence and law enforcement
agencies in neutralizing more complex kinds of attacks could well push various ideologically
hostile terrorist groups to seek simpler solutions, using capabilities at hand or readily available, to
attack U.S. citizens in unanticipated ways abroad or at home. LeT is one such group that certainly
possesses the motivation to conduct such attacks on American soil if the opportunities arise and
if the cost-benefit calculus shifts in favor of such assaults.
As a recent RAND study I participated in points out,
The Mumbai attack demonstrates that jihadist organizations based in Pakistan are able to
plan and launch ambitious terrorist operations, at least in neighboring countries such as
India. Put in the context of previous terrorist attacks in India by Pakistani-based or local
jihadist groups, it suggests a continuing, perhaps escalating, terrorist campaign in South
Asia. Beyond India, the Mumbai attack reveals a strategic terrorist culture that
thoughtfully identified strategic goals and ways to achieve them and that analyzed
counterterrorist measures and developed ways to obviate them to produce a 9/11-quality
attack. For 60 hours, the terrorists brought a city of 20 million people to a standstill while
the world looked on. The attack put into actual practice LeT’s previous rhetoric about
making the Kashmir dispute part of the international jihad. In so doing, LeT has
emerged, not as a subsidiary of al-Qaeda, but as an independent constellation in the
global jihad galaxy. Indeed, with al-Qaeda central operational capabilities reduced, the
Mumbai attack makes LeT a global contender on its own.
—Angel Rabasa et al, The Lessons of Mumbai (Santa Monica: The RAND Corporation,
2009, pp. 7-8.)
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Dealing with this emerging LeT threat will require a mixture of unilateral actions and
international cooperation. While U.S. law enforcement agencies are certainly seized of the
challenges posed by LeT, and will develop responses aimed at preventing attacks whenever
possible, responding to dangers whenever necessary, and managing their consequences whenever
required, the most pressing political requirement right now is to collaborate with India and
Pakistan in bringing the perpetrators of the Bombay bloodbath to justice. After an embarrassingly
inept initial response by Islamabad, the Zardari government, acceding to intense U.S. pressure
during the last days of the Bush administration, arrested key LeT ringleaders and offered to bring
them to trial in Pakistan in lieu of extraditing them to India or the United States. The Obama
administration should keep Pakistan’s feet to the fire and ensure that Islamabad makes good on
its promises. Given the long and bloody record of the individuals apprehended, any trial, whether
in Pakistan or elsewhere, should seek capital punishment for the detainees. Neither permanent
incarceration nor limited jail terms would prevent them from orchestrating further attacks from
inside their prison cells. The experience of previous Pakistani detentions demonstrates that
terrorists, even when in custody, can mount very effective cross-border operations with the aid of
collaborators still at large.
But Washington should also demand more of Islamabad: Precisely because LeT threatens to
become a significant global terrorist threat, the United States should insist that Islamabad roll up
and eliminate the entire LeT infrastructure of terrorism that currently exists inside of Pakistan.
Such an action not only holds the best promise of arresting the current crisis in Indo-Pakistani
relations—one whose final dénouement has yet to occur and whose worst consequences could
undermine both regional stability and the counterterrorism operations currently occurring in
Pakistan’s tribal belt and in Afghanistan—but it also remains the only guarantee of decisively
eliminating LeT as a potentially serious threat to the U.S. homeland. Given the ISI’s long history
of support for LeT, the Pakistani state will require all the assistance it can get if it is to genuinely
eradicate the diverse infrastructure of terrorism maintained by LeT’s current front organization,
the Jamat-ud Dawa (JuD). The United States should not stint in providing Pakistan with this aid,
if Islamabad is judged to be serious about confronting LeT and other terrorist groups. That
Pakistan should eliminate these threats in its own interest goes without saying. But, in any event,
Washington should no longer compromise on this objective. Working with both the civilian
government of President Zardari, which despite all its limitations still recognizes the threats
posed by Pakistan’s terrorist groups and desires to eliminate them, and with the Pakistan Army,
which despite its growing recognition of the perils posed by Islamist terrorist groups still seeks to
hold on to them as “strategic assets,” the Obama administration should, using both carrots and
sticks, induce Pakistan to comprehensively eliminate the LeT. If despite American insistence and
aid, Islamabad remains unable or unwilling, the U.S. government should utilize the entire range of
unilateral instruments available to neutralize this threat. After all, it would be a great pity and
possibly even a dereliction of duty if amidst all the consolation and support offered to India in
the aftermath of the Bombay attacks, Washington finally failed to perceive—and neutralize—the
larger dangers posed by LeT’s ambitions towards the United States.
In this context, the expansion of U.S.–Indian counterterrorism cooperation is also urgently
needed. Unfortunately, the record thus far suggests that the bilateral partnership has not lived up
to its promise in this issue-area. During the last years of the Clinton administration, the dialogue
on counterterrorism followed a meaningful course of great utility to both countries.
Unfortunately, this progress was not sustained during the Bush years. This is particularly ironic
both because the U.S.–Indian relationship was fundamentally transformed during this period and
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because countering terrorism dominated the Bush presidency in an unprecedented way. Yet,
counterterrorism cooperation between the United States and India for most of the last eight years
has been largely formulaic, superficial, and at best exploratory. Although many practical initiatives
were initiated under the aegis of the U.S.–India Counterterrorism Joint Working Group, it would
be hard to conclude that this cooperation has actually yielded meaningful dividends for both
sides.
The exception to this general rule, however, has been the partnership between U.S. and Indian
law enforcement agencies in the aftermath of the Bombay attacks. After the tragic events of
November 26 – 29, 2008, the assistance rendered by the FBI and other U.S. agencies to India has
simply been phenomenal. Despite the initial hiccups that impeded smooth cooperation, the
resources, technology, and professionalism of the U.S. team deployed to Bombay has evoked the
gratitude, admiration, and even the envy of their Indian counterparts. Plainly stated, it would
simply not have been possible for the government of India to assemble the enormous amount of
technical evidence pertaining to the attacks, which has since been shared with the international
community, without American assistance. But against the backdrop of the last eight years, the
intense cooperation witnessed between the United States and India after Bombay must be
counted as the exception, not the rule.
The surprising disjuncture on counterterrorism, despite the overall transformation of the bilateral
relationship, can be explained in one word: Pakistan. The disagreement between Washington and
New Delhi in regards to Pakistan essentially hampered the prospects for expanded
counterterrorism cooperation. This divergence on Pakistan was not rooted primarily in a
difference of diagnosis: both sides agreed that Pakistan was the global epicenter of terrorism and
had to be reformed. They could not agree, however, on the best strategies for achieving this
objective. The United States, thanks to its crushing dependence on Islamabad for sustaining the
military operations against al-Qaeda and in Afghanistan, defended a strategy of unconditional
engagement with Pakistan. In contrast, India, though strongly supportive of U.S. military
operations in Afghanistan, argued for a tougher policy of carrots and sticks as a means of
mitigating the continuing threat emanating from Pakistani terrorism.
This divergence of perspectives, far from being academic, had practical consequences. The U.S.
reluctance to confront Pakistan forthrightly about its terrorism against India—despite all its
sympathies for New Delhi—resulted in most American counterterrorism cooperation being
focused on coping with, or defending against, Pakistani threats, whereas successive Indian
governments were more interested in exploring what Washington would do to eliminate the
terrorism exported out of Pakistan. This fundamental incompatibility of objectives made Indian
intelligence, law enforcement, and counterterrorism agencies—not to mention the government of
India writ large—rather skeptical about the prospects for successful counterterrorism cooperation
with the United States. Because U.S. programs in this regard were invariably viewed more as
palliatives intended to manage the pain rather than as frontal attacks on the heart of the problem
itself, Indian enthusiasm for deep counterterrorism cooperation with Washington was rather
tepid. The Bush administration’s failure to confront Pakistan about its continued abetting of
terrorism against India (and against Afghanistan), despite eight years of significant assistance to
Islamabad, then produced an unfortunate double failure: it neither eradicated Pakistan’s addiction
to terrorism nor institutionalized deepened counterterrorism cooperation with India.
The growing disenchantment in the United States with Pakistan’s performance in the war on
terror and President Obama’s determination to correct the trajectory of the U.S.–Pakistan
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bilateral relationship offers Washington a new opportunity to rectify the shortcomings that
traditionally afflicted U.S.–Indian counterterrorism cooperation. The stellar collaboration
exhibited by both sides in the aftermath of the Bombay attacks yields only a glimpse of what is
actually possible if the two countries can arrive at a common strategic understanding of their
problems regarding terrorism. If such a convergence can be promoted through a serious, highlevel,
dialogue on Pakistan—again, something that never really occurred during the entire
duration of the second Bush term—it might be possible to embark on three specific initiatives
that could produce high payoffs in terms of helping India (as well as the United States) better
cope with the scourge of terrorism.
These initiatives include: comprehensive intelligence sharing about specific terrorist groups (an
area where India has much to offer, given its collection capabilities and its proximity to the
threats, and where the United States, given its extraordinary technical capacity, can make
enormous contributions as well to mutual advantage); training of the law enforcement and
intelligence communities, particularly in the realms of forensics, border security, and special
weapons and tactics (areas where India would particularly profit, with collateral benefits to the
United States); and, improving intelligence fusion and organizational coordination (again, areas
where India could learn much from the U.S. experience after September 11, first to its own
advantage and thereafter to the United States). Since these activities traverse areas of great
sensitivity to any sovereign state, it is unlikely that any meaningful bilateral cooperation will take
place unless there is close and steady direction from the very top of the governments in both
counties. The task ahead of us in this regard is enormous—and our work has only just begun.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the Committee for your attention and your kind
consideration.
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