The Terrorists Want to Destroy Pakistan, Too

[BanglaBhoot]

Asif Ali Zardari

THE recent death and destruction in Mumbai, India, brought to my mind the death and destruction in Karachi on Oct. 18, 2007, when terrorists attacked a festive homecoming rally for my wife, Benazir Bhutto. Nearly 150 Pakistanis were killed and more than 450 were injured. The terrorist attacks in Mumbai may be a news story for most of the world. For me it is a painful reality of shared experience. Having seen my wife escape death by a hairbreadth on that day in Karachi, I lost her in a second, unfortunately successful, attempt two months later.

The Mumbai attacks were directed not only at India but also at Pakistan’s new democratic government and the peace process with India that we have initiated. Supporters of authoritarianism in Pakistan and non-state actors with a vested interest in perpetuating conflict do not want change in Pakistan to take root.

To foil the designs of the terrorists, the two great nations of Pakistan and India, born together from the same revolution and mandate in 1947, must continue to move forward with the peace process. Pakistan is shocked at the terrorist attacks in Mumbai. We can identify with India’s pain. I am especially empathetic. I feel this pain every time I look into the eyes of my children.

Pakistan is committed to the pursuit, arrest, trial and punishment of anyone involved in these heinous attacks. But we caution against hasty judgments and inflammatory statements. As was demonstrated in Sunday’s raids, which resulted in the arrest of militants, Pakistan will take action against the non-state actors found within our territory, treating them as criminals, terrorists and murderers. Not only are the terrorists not linked to the government of Pakistan in any way, we are their targets and we continue to be their victims.

India is a mature nation and a stable democracy. Pakistanis appreciate India’s democratic contributions. But as rage fueled by the Mumbai attacks catches on, Indians must pause and take a breath. India and Pakistan — and the rest of the world — must work together to track down the terrorists who caused mayhem in Mumbai, attacked New York, London and Madrid in the past, and destroyed the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad in September. The terrorists who killed my wife are connected by ideology to these enemies of civilization.

These militants did not arise from whole cloth. Pakistan was an ally of the West throughout the cold war. The world worked to exploit religion against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan by empowering the most fanatic extremists as an instrument of destruction of a superpower. The strategy worked, but its legacy was the creation of an extremist militia with its own dynamic.

Pakistan continues to pay the price: the legacy of dictatorship, the fatigue of fanaticism, the dismemberment of civil society and the destruction of our democratic infrastructure. The resulting poverty continues to fuel the extremists and has created a culture of grievance and victimhood.

The challenge of confronting terrorists who have a vast support network is huge; Pakistan’s fledgling democracy needs help from the rest of the world. We are on the frontlines of the war on terrorism. We have 150,000 soldiers fighting Al Qaeda, the Taliban and their extremist allies along the border with Afghanistan — far more troops than NATO has in Afghanistan.

Nearly 2,000 Pakistanis have lost their lives to terrorism in this year alone, including 1,400 civilians and 600 security personnel ranging in rank from ordinary soldier to three-star general. There have been more than 600 terrorism-related incidents in Pakistan this year. The terrorists have been set back by our aggressive war against them in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the Pashtun-majority areas bordering Afghanistan. Six hundred militants have been killed in recent attacks, hundreds by Pakistani F-16 jet strikes in the last two months.

Terrorism is a regional as well as a global threat, and it needs to be battled collectively. We understand the domestic political considerations in India in the aftermath of Mumbai. Nevertheless, accusations of complicity on Pakistan’s part only complicate the already complex situation.

For India, Pakistan and the United States, the best response to the Mumbai carnage is to coordinate in counteracting the scourge of terrorism. The world must act to strengthen Pakistan’s economy and democracy, help us build civil society and provide us with the law enforcement and counterterrorism capacities that will enable us to fight the terrorists effectively.

Benazir Bhutto once said that democracy is the best revenge against the abuses of dictatorship. In the current environment, reconciliation and rapprochement is the best revenge against the dark forces that are trying to provoke a confrontation between Pakistan and India, and ultimately a clash of civilizations.

Asif Ali Zardari is the president of Pakistan.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/opinion/09zardari.html?_r=1

 

[BanglaBhoot]

EXCLUSIVE: Pakistan arrests do little to stop Lashkar

Militant group thousands strong

Ayesha Akram THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Tuesday, December 9, 2008

LAHORE, Pakistan

Lashkar-e-Taiba will not be crippled by Monday's arrest of the purported mastermind of the Mumbai attacks and at least 19 other members of the militant group, a Lashkar coordinator said.

"We´re still well-organized and active," said the militant, who serves as a coordinator for the group, which has a large following despite being outlawed in 2002.

The 20 members of Lashkar-e-Taiba were arrested Monday amid growing criticism that Pakistan has allowed the militant group to continue operating openly, despite claims to the contrary.

The Lashkar coordinator spoke with The Washington Times in a safe house near Lahore, Pakistan's second-largest city, on the condition of anonymity - presumably to avoid arrest.

He said Lashkar's strength in Pakistan was in the thousands.

Pakistan on Monday announced the arrest of Zaki-u-Rehman Lakhvi, who was among 20 arrested during a raid in Muzaffarabad in the Pakistan-controlled portion of Kashmir.

Indian media reports have identified Mr. Lakhvi as the organizer of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai that killed 172 people and raised tensions between India and Pakistan - two nuclear-armed nations that have fought three wars.

The Lashkar fighter in Lahore said the group has "huge strength" and is concentrated in Pakistan's tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan.

Washington Times - EXCLUSIVE: Pakistan arrests do little to stop Lashkar

 

[BanglaBhoot]

U.S. Seeks Financial Blacklist for Some Pakistanis

The Bush administration wants the United Nations to put several prominent Pakistanis on a financial blacklist for their alleged support of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant group blamed by India for last month's Mumbai terror attacks, according to diplomats familiar with the matter.

The diplomats wouldn't identify the names of the Pakistani individuals being targeted by the U.S., but they are expected to include some former leaders of Pakistan's powerful spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI.

A U.S.-led action by the U.N. against ISI officers, either retired or current, would mark a break from past U.S. policy towards the Pakistani spy agency, said South Asia experts.

"This could mark a paradigm shift," said Christine Fair, a South Asia expert at Rand Corp. "It would really send a chill down the spine of Pakistan's security services."

The U.S. worked closely with the ISI during the 1980s in arming and funding Afghan militants fighting to expel the Soviet Union from Afghanistan. The Central Intelligence Agency has worked closely with ISI officers since Sept. 11, 2001, in tracking down al Qaeda and Taliban operatives in Pakistan's tribal areas, despite accusations that elements of the ISI are helping the militants.

One former ISI chief, retired Gen. Hamid Gul, said in an interview Monday that Pakistani officials told him he is a target of the proposed sanctions.

"I think I hurt them [the U.S.] because I talk about their atrocities and because I morally support the Afghan jihad," Mr. Gul said. "The Americans are the aggressors so I support our brothers in the Taliban."

He called allegations that he supports terrorism "seditious, fictitious. There's not truth in it."

According to the diplomats, the Bush administration is attempting to sanction the Pakistanis through a committee of the U.N. Security Council that targets individuals and organizations believed to be assisting al Qaeda and the Taliban. The committee blacklisted Lashkar in 2005.

All 15 Security Council members must sign off on the sanctions, including permanent member China. Beijing's support is seen as particularly meaningful because it has close strategic ties with Islamabad.

"We think an action could be imminent -- within the next couple of days," said a diplomat involved in the matter.

Under the sanctions, U.N. member states would be obligated to freeze the assets of the Pakistanis and deny them travel visas.

Indian investigators say the assailants who killed 171 people in Mumbai in November had links to retired members of the ISI and Pakistan's armed forces. A captured suspect, Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, said he was trained in assault tactics by retired Pakistani army officers and ISI members at a Lashkar-e-Taiba training camp inside Pakistan, according to Indian officials.

U.S. intelligence officials have long believed that the ISI played a central role in creating Lashkar-e-Taiba to fight India over the disputed region of Kashmir. However, American officials say they haven't found any formal connection between the Mumbai attackers and active members of the Pakistani government or its security forces. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has repeatedly denied his government had any role in the Mumbai attacks.

Mr. Gul was once a critical player in the CIA's campaign during the 1980s to roll back Moscow's presence in Afghanistan, according to the retired general and former U.S. intelligence officials. Mr. Gul ran the ISI from 1987 to 1989, when billions of dollars of U.S. aid and munitions flowed through Pakistan supporting mujahedeen fighters.

"I was quite a darling of theirs at one time. I don't know what this is about. It looks like they have a habit of betraying their friends," Mr. Gul said in the interview.

Among the other individuals providing funding and arms to the Afghan mujahedeen was Osama bin Laden. Mr. Gul said he didn't meet Mr. bin Laden until after the end of the war. "It was the CIA officials who used to romanticize him, talking, glowing about his contributions to the Afghan resistance," he said.

Mr. Gul said the U.S. actually went to the U.N. to seek financial sanctions and a travel ban against him two months ago. "It has nothing to do about the Bombay incident," he said. "I was informed about it by my friends, and then I went to the [Pakistan] foreign office and they confirmed it for me."

U.S. officials declined to comment on Mr. Gul's case.

As for possible financial sanctions, he said: "I have no financial assets other than the house I live in. I don't see how they can take that away."

U.S. Seeks Financial Blacklist for Some Pakistanis - WSJ.com

 

[BanglaBhoot]

Pakistan on tightrope with militant raid

It targeted a camp of the group linked to the Mumbai attacks Sunday.

NEW DELHI; and MURIDKE, PAKISTAN - By raiding a militant camp in Pakistani Kashmir Sunday, Pakistan has made its first response to United States calls for action against militants tied to the Nov. 26 attacks in Mumbai (formerly Bombay).

The raid targeted Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a charitable organization that the US State Department says is a front for the militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba. The alleged mastermind of the Mumbai attacks, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, was arrested in the raid, Reuters reported.

The operation signals a delicate moment for Pakistan. Lashkar-e-Taiba has been the country's most loyal proxy army against India, but the US sees it as a growing player in global terrorism and in Afghanistan. As with the Taliban, Pakistan is being asked to confront militants it once nurtured, and no group has been more closely entwined with Pakistan's intelligence service than Lashkar-e-Taiba.

The links have been so strong that "I almost see them as a state actor," says Christine Fair, a South Asia analyst at RAND Corp., a security consultancy in Arlington, Va.

As of Monday, the Pakistani government had made no official comment about the Sunday raid. Reports came from local residents and reporters, who say the Jamaat-ud-Dawa compound near Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir, was cordoned off by the Army. Reuters quoted a Jamaat-ud-Dawa official as saying that Mr. Lakhvi had been arrested.

Pakistan will hope that the operation lessens international pressure, which has built as evidence connecting Lashkar-e-Taiba to the Mumbai attacks has increased. "We are taking action based on the intelligence given to us," a Pakistani official told The Wall Street Journal, suggesting that there would be other operations in the coming days, and adding: "It's Pakistan's decision based on our own national interest."

It is, however, clearly in America's interest, too. Lashkar-e-Taiba is a group with designs beyond the subcontinent. Cultivated by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate as a proxy army to pressure India on Kashmir in the 1990s, Lashkar-e-Taiba has established training camps that act as schools for would-be terrorists.

Lashkar-e-Taiba camps hosted the so-called "Virginia jihadis" – 11 Americans convicted of plotting against the United States between 2004 and 2006. A Frenchman was convicted of planning a terrorist attack in Australia after leaving a Lashkar-e-Taiba training camp in 2003. And Rashid Rauf, the England-born Al Qaeda operative allegedly behind the plan to blow up jetliners over the Atlantic with liquid bombs in 2006, also had early connections with Lashkar-e-Taiba.

"It has transcended its parochial roots," says Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University in Washington. "It has ambitions to step up to the plate should Al Qaeda falter."

It is in Afghanistan, however, where Lashkar-e-Taiba's ambition is felt most by the US. It turned to Afghanistan after former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf bowed to international pressure and began to crack down on militancy in Kashmir in 2002. The result is that Lashkar-e-Taiba began to form links with Al Qaeda and the Taliban, says Ahmed Rashid, author of "Taliban."

Just as Lashkar-e-Taiba honed the skills of would-be terrorists from the West, it has also worked with the Afghan Taliban to make them more professional, says Mr. Hoffman.

This change has occurred without interference from the Pakistani Army, despite the fact that Lashkar-e-Taiba is banned in Pakistan. After Pakistani militants attacked the Indian Parliament in 2001, the group was outlawed and its leaders arrested. They were soon released, however, and Lashkar-e-Taiba was allowed to reform under the guise of Jamaat-ud-Dawa. Though the US listed Jamaat-ud-Dawa as a terrorist group in 2006, it remains legal in Pakistan – and denies any tie to Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Pakistan's unwillingness to clamp down on militants is not unusual, says Ms. Fair, of RAND. It has long used militants to achieve its strategic goals in India and Afghanistan. Yet among these many groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba is perhaps the most closely allied with the ISI, partly because it never turned against the Pakistani government, as some militants did.

Moreover, it is a group with roots in the Pakistani heartland of Punjab – as opposed to Al Qaeda or the Taliban, whose centers of gravity are the Arab world and the Afghan borderlands. For these reasons, there are questions about whether the Pakistani government has the resolve to build upon this weekend's raid – or whether this will simply be a repeat of 2002.

"If the Pakistani Army really does go after Lashkar-e-Taiba, it's not going to be pretty," says Fair.

The headquarters of Jamaat-ud-Dawa sits in Muridke, just an hour's drive from the Punjabi capital of Lahore. There, the charitable arm of Jamaat-ud-Dawa has established a 140-bed hospital and a school for 2,000 boys and girls. Nationwide, the organization has 2,000 schools.

"They have done a lot of social networking, like Hamas," says Fair, referring to the Palestinian Islamic group with militant and social-service wings.

Along the Grand Trunk Road, where trucks rumble past tea stalls and bakeries, there is only sympathy for Jamaat-ud-Dawa. "The Jamaat-ud-Dawa have their [school] here, they don't do anything wrong, they're a big part of this town," says Mazhar Ali, a carpenter whose shop overlooks the main road.

"Everyone would take to the streets in protest if anything happened to them," he adds.

Yet across Punjab, the news of this weekend's raid is already having an effect. In the main Jamaat-ud-Dawa office in Lahore, an official acknowledges that the government has asked it to lower its profile. In Muridke, six men gathered beneath a Jamaat-ud-Dawa flag, collecting blankets for victims of an earthquake in Balochistan, are packing up. They have already received the orders: Remove the flag.

But they hope it won't be for long. "Our work, our jihad, our preaching won't end," says Abdul Hameed, a Jamaat-ud-Dawa officer. "We will continue our work for as long as we can."

Pakistan on tightrope with militant raid | csmonitor.com

 

[BanglaBhoot]

Imran Khan: Playing for the biggest stakes of his life

Imran Khan is a body linguist’s dream. Talking about the painfulness of divorce causes him to vanish into the depths of his chair, pulling both sides of his jacket across his chest and pinning them there as if he’s on a chilly outfield. His voice is low and weary. But get him on the subject of the £12 million cancer hospital he has built in Lahore, or trekking and shooting partridge in the foothills of the Himalayas – a sport he has loved from boyhood and which he has introduced to his two young sons – and he leans forward, a vibrant storyteller, mapping the wilderness with long, bony hands.

But the thing that propels the cricketer-turned-politician to the edge of his seat, arms flailing and eyes blazing, is the American and Pakistan army bombing of the tribal areas of the North West Frontier of his homeland, Pakistan, with the misguided aim, as he sees it, of flushing out al-Qaeda terrorists.

“This is a civil war in the making,” he says. “One million refugees have been created. Innocent people are being killed; children left without arms and legs. All under the magic mantra of fighting Islamic extremism. If people understood what is really happening they would not countenance it. It is time to change tactics on the so-called war on terror. There is hope in President-elect Barack Obama.”

Lean and deeply creased, but still recognisable as the handsome cricketer of old, Khan is a believable figure of authority. Then, captaining his team to victory over England in the 1992 World Cup, he was known as the Lion of Lahore.

No less leonine now, he is convinced he will one day deliver his country from the stranglehold of a decadent ruling elite. No small mission.

“As with cricket, as with the hospital, I never had any doubt that I would succeed,” he says. “Cricket showed me that if one fights right up to the last ball, one can win in impossible situations. That helped me in the hospital project, and the hospital helped me in politics. One loses only when one gives up. If I don’t succeed, at least I will have tried my best.”

Khan is in London this week is to take his sons, Sulaiman, 12, and Kasim, nine, back to Pakistan for a pre-Christmas holiday and to fulfil his commitments as chancellor of Bradford University. As always, he is staying in Richmond Park, at the home of his ex-mother-in-law, Lady Annabel Goldsmith. The boys live with their mother, Jemima Khan, in London where they go to school, but spend most holidays with their father, including half of each Christmas and summer. It’s a familiar enough arrangement – in their case, one that ensures they embrace both cultures – but Imran Khan has no illusions about the penalties of such a compromise. He misses them.

The annexe of Lady Annabel’s Georgian mansion has many photos of the boys, along with sporting paraphernalia like dumb-bells, outdoor gear and an exercise mat.

“When we parted ways, we settled all the issues,” he says quietly. “Full marks to Jemima. She has been really very co-operative in this whole thing. But divorce is a disaster for children. The easier you can make it for them, the less the long-term traumatic effect will be… but it still affects them. It was especially difficult early on. It is important for them to be bi-cultural… but that is not easy if they live in one country.”

Imran, 56, and Jemima Khan divorced in 2004 after nine years of marriage. He says he understands how, despite making every effort to integrate (she learned Urdu and became a Muslim) she could not, finally, bear to live in Pakistan permanently, isolated from her own close family – any more than he could contemplate not living there.

“I love Pakistan, the wilderness, the mountains. Half my youth was spent in England, but Pakistan was always home for me.” His passion for politics, he admits, took him over. It was not compatible with married life. It can’t have helped that, by marrying the daughter of a Jewish multi-millionaire, the late Sir James Goldsmith, his credentials were questioned: he was accused of being part of a Jewish lobby.

The boys are being brought up as Muslims. When it is his turn to have them, he reads to them the moral tales from his own childhood. Seeing their sudden interest in the game since the Ashes, he has laid them a cricket pitch at his 35-acre hilltop farm outside Islamabad. There they are free, but he admits he has some way to go before they share his enthusiasm for trekking and partridge shooting in the mountains. He is lyrical about the countryside, the crystal-clear days, the cold nights, the sound of jackals. His favourite place is the Salt Range in the Punjab where, as a nine year old, his uncle took him on his first shoot and he was given an abandoned leopard cub by villagers.

Would he like his sons ultimately to live in Pakistan? Khan says he has no ambition for them, except that they should follow their passions, as he did, despite his father’s hopes that he would follow him into engineering. “It was the last thing I wanted to do.”

Just before Khan retired from international cricket, his adored mother died of cancer. A few weeks before her death, he met a poor villager who worked all day to buy medicine for his brother, who was also dying of cancer.

“Suddenly, I was confronted with the injustice of Pakistani society: the rich could travel abroad for treatment but ordinary people had no access to quality care.” It impelled him to build the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Hospital – and now he is planning another.

In a final fund-raising blitz, he toured 29 cities in six weeks in an open Jeep and the experience opened his privileged eyes to the poverty and inequality. “People were deprived of the necessities that a proper government should have given them: health, clean drinking water, justice.”

Despite his playboy reputation, Khan claims he was shy and introspective as a cricketer, with a small circle of friends and little appetite for socialising in pubs after the game.

“I liked solitude and privacy. This is not the life of my choice,” he says. “But I feel that Pakistanis are alarmed that, unless we change, we are doomed. If someone like me doesn’t try to force change, who will? The privileged classes are too soft, too timid, too cowardly to do anything.”

He founded the Movement for Justice (the Tehreek-e-Insaf party) to build a genuine democracy and independent judiciary. Twice he refused to become part of a ruling coalition. The second time, the former president Pervez Musharraf offered him the prime ministership.

“How could I join a decadent elite?” he asks. He did not even stand at the general election in February, claiming there could be no free and fair democracy if judges were appointed and controlled by the ruling party.

Even in such a volatile political arena, Khan refuses to have security guards. “My enemies could have me bumped off, with or without security guards. Fear is always an impediment. Fear stops you from chasing your dreams.”

In the wake of the September 11 attacks and those on July 7, and now the bombings in Mumbai, he is appalled at the way terrorism has been given a religious identity. “No religion allows terrorism,” he says. “The phrase 'Islamic terrorist’ is a smokescreen that diverts attention from the political reasons why people are blowing themselves up. Terrorism is an illness. All terrorism is political.”

Once the Pakistan army, at the behest of the US, started bombing a few hundred al-Qaeda supporters in the tribal areas into submission, and killed countless tribesmen, he says it created a million armed men opposed to America.

The war on terror, which many Pakistanis see as a war on Islam, he argues, is why there is no shortage of people willing to lay down their lives for religion. “It is a war of attrition and it will just go on and on unless there is a political solution.”

Imran Khan: Playing for the biggest stakes of his life - Telegraph

 

[BanglaBhoot]

Arrest how many terrorists?

Dec 8th 2008 | DELHI
From Economist.com
Pakistan offers a small sop to Indians demanding justice for the Mumbai attacks

INDIA has shown laudable restraint since accusing Pakistan of harbouring the terrorists who killed over 170 people in Mumbai during three days of violence in late November. It has not, as previously, threatened Pakistan with military action. Yet there are signs that the pressure India has been applying, principally through America, has told on its neighbour. On Sunday November December 7th Pakistan was reported to have arrested one of the men accused by India of masterminding the Mumbai attack, a leader of a well-known Islamist terrorist group, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET).

Pakistani soldiers were said to have nabbed Zaki ur-Rehman Lakhvi, LET’s alleged operations commander, in a raid on a compound belonging to a charity, Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JUD), which is considered to be a front for the terrorist group. The compound, which the troops were reported to have stormed by helicopter, in a burst of gunfire, is near Muzzafarabad, in Pakistan-held Kashmir. Close by the front-line with India, the area has long been a base for jihadist insurgents fighting in Kashmir. A JUD spokesman said that a total of four or five men, including Mr Lakhvi, had been arrested.

This is slightly encouraging for India. But it is much less than it has demanded of Pakistan, which still denies there is any evidence of a Pakistani link to the attack. India has insisted, for a start, that Pakistan hand over 20 people, including Mr Lakhvi, who it suspects of carrying out a range of atrocities on its territory, including several in Mumbai. Set against this demand, the meagre arrest of Mr Lakhvi seems sadly true to Pakistani form.

LET, which was formed to fight Indian troops in Kashmir, with support from Pakistan’s army-run Inter-Services Intelligence agency, was banned by Pakistan’s former ruler, Pervez Musharraf, in 2002, after America demanded that it should be. But this seems not to have hindered it much. The group’s founder, a bearded engineer called Hafeez Saeed, who runs a jihadist citadel outside the Punjabi city of Lahore, proceeded to found JUD; which Pakistan has repeatedly refused to ban. The charity rose to prominence in 2005 when it led the relief operation for survivors of an earthquake that devastated Pakistani-held Kashmir. At least LET has meanwhile been receiving much less support from Pakistan’s army, which has turned its attention to fighting Islamist militants in the country’s north-west. But the group's training camps have not been dismantled, despite repeated demands from India and America that they should be.

Indian officials claim that LET and Mr Lakhvi have been named as sponsors of the Mumbai attacks by one of the terrorists involved in them, Muhammad Ajmal Amir Iman. He is believed to be the sole survivor of a team of ten militants which landed in Mumbai by inflatable dinghy and attacked a variety of targets, including two hotels, with guns and grenades. Indian officials have described Mr Iman as an LET-trained Pakistani, from Punjab. His terrorist colleagues were killed, with some considerable effort, by Indian troops.

The violence in the heart of India’s commercial capital has caused understandable outrage in India, which it will take more than Mr Lakhvi’s arrest to dispel. “Is war the only option?” asks Outlook, a liberal Indian weekly, on the cover of its latest issue. Judging by many television phone-ins devoted to the question, many Indians believe so. To begin to appease them, Indian pundits say that Pakistan should at least clamp down on JUD. But it is unlikely to do so.

Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan’s president, has promised to bring to justice any Pakistani involved in the Mumbai attacks. But he could not do so without the say-so of the country’s army which, divested of power since an election in April, is feeling a resurgence of antipathy towards India. It seems increasingly to believe, without any known evidence, that India is assisting its militant enemies in the north-west. These feelings have already stirred the army to challenge India directly in recent months, by initiating artillery exchanges across the front-line in Kashmir. Pakistan’s generals will be extremely loth to satisfy any Indian demands. If they, or their spies, were not somehow involved in the terrorism in Mumbai, they will furiously resent the allegation, levelled by many Indians (but not by their government), that they were involved. In fact, whether they were involved or not, Pakistan’s hapless Napoleons are sure to be both furious and resentful.

The arrest of a suspected mastermind of the Mumbai attacks | Arrest how many terrorists? | The Economist

 

[BanglaBhoot]

Pakistan refuses to extradite Mumbai terrorists

Pakistan will not hand India any of the Lashkar-e-Taiba militants arrested on Sunday for their suspected role in the Mumbai terrorist attacks, but will try them under its own laws, the country's foreign minister said today.

Shah Mehmood Qureshi also said that Pakistan did not want war with India, but was ready to defend itself in case of another conflict between the nuclear-armed neighbours, which have fought three wars since independence in 1947.

He was speaking a day after Pakistani officials revealed that security forces had arrested the alleged mastermind of the Mumbai attacks and at least seven other suspects in a raid on an LeT training camp in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir on Sunday.

India has demanded that Pakistan extradite 20 terror suspects, believed to include the alleged mastermind, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, who is LeT's operations chief, and Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, LeT's founder.

Mr Qureshi, however, made it clear today that Pakistan had no intention of complying with that demand.

"The arrests are being made for our own investigations. Even if allegations are proved against any suspect, he will not be handed over to India," he said. "We will proceed against those arrested under Pakistani laws."

There was no immediate official response from India, but Indian officials and analysts have said they did not expect Pakistan's weak civilian government to extradite the suspects for fear of provoking a domestic political backlash.

Sunday's raid was the first action taken by Pakistan's government in response to pressure from India and the United States to crack down on LeT, which has close links to Pakistan's intelligence service, following the Mumbai attacks.

"This is an intelligence-led operation against banned militant outfits and organisations," the military said in a statement last night. "There have been arrests and investigations are on."

Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan's President, said the raid showed that Pakistan was committed to taking "action against the non-state actors found within our territory, treating them as criminals, terrorists and murderers".

"To foil the designs of the terrorists, the two great nations of Pakistan and India ... must continue to move forward with the peace process," he wrote in an opinion piece in the New York Times.

The United States welcomed the arrests as a positive step. "What's critically important now is that we continue to work together - the Indians, the Pakistanis, the United States, and our allies - to prevent follow-on attacks after the attacks in Mumbai," said Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman.

The United States sees Pakistan as a key Muslim ally in the War on Terror and fears a repeat of the crisis that unfolded after LeT militants attacked India's parliament in 2001, prompting India and Pakistan to mass troops on their common border.

Pakistan has warned the United States that if India reacts the same way this time, it would pull back Pakistani forces fighting Taleban and al Qaeda militants near the Afghan border, potentially jeopardising U.S. and Nato operations in Afghanistan.

"We do not want to impose war, but we are fully prepared in case war is imposed on us," Mr Qureshi said today. "We are not oblivious to our responsibilities to defend our homeland. But it is our desire that there should be no war."

Pakistan refuses to extradite Mumbai terrorists - Times Online

 

[Flintlock]

This is exactly my point. These guys have simply given a pin-prick to the terror outfits.

EXCLUSIVE: Pakistan arrests do little to stop Lashkar

Militant group thousands strong

Ayesha Akram THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Tuesday, December 9, 2008

LAHORE, Pakistan

Lashkar-e-Taiba will not be crippled by Monday's arrest of the purported mastermind of the Mumbai attacks and at least 19 other members of the militant group, a Lashkar coordinator said.

"We´re still well-organized and active," said the militant, who serves as a coordinator for the group, which has a large following despite being outlawed in 2002.

The 20 members of Lashkar-e-Taiba were arrested Monday amid growing criticism that Pakistan has allowed the militant group to continue operating openly, despite claims to the contrary.

The Lashkar coordinator spoke with The Washington Times in a safe house near Lahore, Pakistan's second-largest city, on the condition of anonymity - presumably to avoid arrest.

He said Lashkar's strength in Pakistan was in the thousands.

Pakistan on Monday announced the arrest of Zaki-u-Rehman Lakhvi, who was among 20 arrested during a raid in Muzaffarabad in the Pakistan-controlled portion of Kashmir.

Indian media reports have identified Mr. Lakhvi as the organizer of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai that killed 172 people and raised tensions between India and Pakistan - two nuclear-armed nations that have fought three wars.

The Lashkar fighter in Lahore said the group has "huge strength" and is concentrated in Pakistan's tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan.

Washington Times - EXCLUSIVE: Pakistan arrests do little to stop Lashkar