Pakistan Detains Extremist Leader
U.S., India Question Effort's Seriousness
By Joby Warrick and Rama Lakshmi
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, December 10, 2008; Page A01
For the second time in a decade, suspected Pakistani terrorist leader Masood Azhar was placed under house arrest yesterday after being linked to attacks in India. His detention, announced by Pakistan's Defense Ministry, was intended to show the country's resolve in hunting for the organizers of last month's deadly rampage in Mumbai.
Yet in the U.S. and Indian capitals, the news of Azhar's arrest drew mostly scoffs. As officials in both countries noted, Pakistan never bothered to charge the Kashmiri extremist when it detained him in connection with a deadly attack on India's Parliament in December 2001. A Pakistani judge freed him 11 months later.
The Azhar saga accounts for some of the skepticism that has surrounded Pakistan's efforts to crack down on extremists in the wake of the Nov. 26 terrorist rampage in Mumbai. Promises by Pakistani leaders to roll up militant groups have been undercut by a history of "catch-and-release" in its dealings with prominent extremists, and also by its past ambivalence -- if not outright support -- for groups that openly advocate terrorism.
The emerging response is serving as a test of whether the U.S.-backed government in Pakistan is serious about taking on the armed Islamist groups it helped create, and if the country's powerful military and spy service will allow civilian officials to do so. Whether India believes Pakistan is helping in the investigation of one of the worst attacks on its soil in years could determine whether the two nuclear-armed nations continue a halting peace process or move closer to confrontation. Pakistan's reaction to the Mumbai assault could also prove pivotal as it confronts an escalating threat from groups that it once nurtured as weapons against enemies in India and Afghanistan but that have now turned their fire inward on Pakistan.
Under intense pressure from India and the Bush administration, Pakistan in recent days has staged a series of raids on training camps linked to Lashkar-i-Taiba, the Kashmiri-based group said by India to be behind the Mumbai siege. Pakistani officials detained Lashkar commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi as well as Azhar, the founder of the militant group Jaish-i-Muhammad.
Yet Pakistan has balked at turning over suspects to India and has declined to release the names of most of the 22 people it has reportedly rounded up since the raids began Sunday. Despite encouraging rhetoric from senior Pakistani leaders, U.S. officials say it is not yet clear that Pakistan's government is willing, or able, to crack down on the country's anti-India extremist groups, some of which are linked to al-Qaeda.
While U.S. officials applauded the Pakistani efforts -- especially the arrest of Lakhvi -- they have not been able to independently confirm anything about the other detainees, including "whether they are, in fact, Lashkar members," said one senior U.S. counterterrorism official who is closely monitoring Pakistan's response.
"It remains to be seen," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities. "There have been instances in the past where the Pakistanis arrested extremists after terrorist attacks on India but released them several months later, after the international pressure eased up."
Also unclear, according to U.S. officials and private analysts, is whether the government of newly elected President Asif Ali Zardari can move effectively against the insurgents without the full support of the military and the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, which have undermined similar attempts in the past.
"The writ of the state is eroding," said Kamran Bokhari, director of Middle East analysis for Stratfor, a private intelligence company. "It's not just an issue of intent, but an issue of capability. Can these guys deliver?"
Zardari has described the Mumbai gunmen as "criminals, attackers and murderers," and there were signs that his administration was ready to match rhetoric with action. Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, who flew to Islamabad for high-level talks immediately after the Mumbai assault, found senior Pakistani officials sobered and awakening, perhaps for the first time, to the magnitude of the problem they face, according to sources close to the admiral. While recognizing that they have to take decisive action against extremists, sources said, the Pakistanis also realize that a domestic backlash, both politically and in terms of terrorism, is the inevitable result.
U.S. officials have been pressing Pakistan to take aggressive measures in a series of private meetings and public events.
Gen. David H. Petraeus, former U.S. commander in Iraq and now head of the U.S. Central Command, said in a speech yesterday that insurgent havens in Pakistan remain a "significant concern," adding that the Mumbai siege "highlights the extent of the challenges Pakistan faces." 
Pakistan and India have fought three wars since 1947, and resentments run deep, particularly in the disputed territory of Kashmir. For many Pakistanis, the prospect of turning over citizens to India to face terrorism charges is too much to stomach, some analysts said.
"Pakistan doesn't want to be seen as caving to political pressure from India," said Robert Grenier, a former CIA station chief in Islamabad and now managing director of Kroll, a risk consulting firm. Because of the torrent of rhetoric from both countries after the rampage, many old wounds have reopened, and opportunities for real cooperation have diminished, he said. "The atmosphere has been greatly complicated if not poisoned," Grenier said. 
As of late yesterday, most of the 20 Pakistani nationals whom India has demanded that Pakistan arrest and turn over remained at large. Only two days before the start of Pakistan's raids on Lashkar camps, Lashkar founder Hafiz Sayeed gave a public lecture at a mosque in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore. The mosque is controlled by Jamaat-ud-Dawa, an organization described by U.S. intelligence officials as a front group for Lashkar.
On Monday, police officials in Lahore said they planned to shut down the facilities of banned militant religious groups. But the Jamaat-ud-Dawa mosque and headquarters remained open hours later, and it was unclear whether Sayeed would face arrest.
The arrests that Pakistan has made came only after the U.S. applied heavy pressure on Zardari and Pakistan's military leadership. 
They came nearly two weeks after the deadly assault on India's financial capital, in which 10 gunmen opened fire at a restaurant and train station and laid siege to two luxury hotels and a Jewish prayer center, killing more than 170 people, including six Americans, and wounding at least 230. Indian officials yesterday released the names of the 10 gunmen and said they were all Pakistani nationals who belonged to Lashkar.
In Mumbai, chief police investigator Rakesh Maria released what he said were the addresses of the nine gunmen killed in the attack, along with photos of eight of them. All were 20 to 28 years old, and most were from Punjab province in Pakistan's heartland, far from the North-West Frontier Province that has been the front line in Pakistan's growing insurgency. One gunman was captured.
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senior Indian official dismissed Pakistan's raids as nothing new, and far short of the "concrete action" demanded by the scale of the carnage in Mumbai. "We have been there and we have traversed that road before," he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "Let us wait and see if there will be a realistic change on the ground."
Lakshmi reported from New Delhi. Correspondents Candace Rondeaux in Islamabad and Emily Wax in Mumbai and staff writer Karen DeYoung and news researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.
WARRNING!!!!
let them get ready to get shot down like always if they dont want peace its time for practice for us hahahah fools!!!!
