Why India didn't strike Pakistan after 26/11

[Mujahid Memon]

F.E.A.R

Since we are peace loving nation....

so it means you will turn ur eyes from injustice,

 

[Hurter]

To hell with 26/11... We have been facing 26/11 every second day for a past decade. These ugly scums couldn't bear the one incident. Imagine the same thing is happening in India for 10 years, their country would have been disintegrated long time ago.

 

[MilSpec]

K... Accordin to you what what hav been Indian response to 26/11?????

As I said, I dont know what exact response should have been. I am not a military planner, I don't know what options were available. I can give exact responses related to my field but not play arm chair general.
If there was no military options available, then that points to absolute incompetency of military leadership - which I highly doubt. There are targets identified, and I am sure there are multiple solution strategies to neutralize those targets. Bring cause and effect into the picture. If you strike at heart of India, you will have to pay 10 times of the damage inflicted. It is up-to the the government to back the Military leadership. This is the same military that brought an entire nation down to it's knees in 14 days, and if someone suggests that nuclear blackmail can make the second largest standing army on the planet completely impotent , I don't buy that one bit.

The general military leadership at it's weakest did not think twice before opening up the entire front to incursion in Akhnoor, but the same military was told not to cross LOC in kargil, Why? International pressure. If we worry about our image more than the lives and security of our own citizens, then it is quite a sorry state. When did we become that country? Who made that transition? How many people have died in terror attacks in the last 30 years, what are we going to answer to those families.... chalta hai? or theek hai?

 

[denel]

A simple advice for u, dont buy into enemy's propaganda. If u think its well written then u havnt read the book in which what exactly did our FM said to back McCain, which actually brought indians back to their place.

The simple reason why they couldnt do anything nor did America was because these two were simply ''dramas'' Done by themselves to prove a point/image. Now india's own officials have admitted that it was staged by their own intelligence network to persuade their government to release more fund for so called national security.

The most beneficiary out of this incident is afterall their own security forces and intelligence network, rather then Pakistan.

And our country is no South Africa its a regional and nuclear power son, with vastly superior armed forces and intelligence network then just of south africa. Thats why they can only dream but cant achieve anything against Pakistan, even that America couldnt do anything.(even if for sake of argument Usama was here)

My 2c, Indian forces should strike and bring down the ISI culprits even if it means doing Mossad style operation against the Munich attackers. It is about time to bring these terrorist sponsors to trial.

Pal, great to have big balls but no brains. You cannot even provide safe drinking water for your public. First get your basic population development then think of screwing around. You procreate like flies and have no brains; no wonder why you unleash these kids by brainwashing them.

Terrible. A monkey with matches. Last thing this world needs.

 

[MilSpec]

Then we will use our most advanced weapons against them .If they attack us in our border no matter what we will punish them severly.But you cant say about that in case of a terrorists attack.
But now I think we can target them through covert means if they unleashed another 26/11.

are you sure? What held us back in kargil? it's not new, we had exactly similar operation in op gibraltor? Is the collective amnesia that strong that we wiped of 65 completely from our memory.

I am as nationalist as you and others, but I will call out spinelessness of the government when i see it. Don't take it personally.

The next part is terror attacks, yes it deserves a full response... Lets get some courage, second largest standing army on the planet, leverage it's might. response to 9/11 right or wrong blew the smithereens out of two countries and we send dossiers.

 

[OTTOMAN]

Since we are peace loving nation....

Kashmir is than out of your country!

Indian Army Special Forces Undergoing Training in Shimla
A former Pakistani foriegn minister claims India had planned a retaliatory strike after 26/11. A behind-the-scenes look at why India chose the diplomatic route, not war.

by Sandeep Unnithan

On December 2, 2008, India's military, political and intelligence leadership went into a huddle in the Prime Minister's Office in South Block. The agenda at hand was weighty. The dozen or so men in a room deliberated options that had the potential of triggering a possible fifth India-Pakistan war. It was just a week since 10 Pakistani terrorists had targeted Mumbai and killed 165 people. The incident had provoked national outrage and there was tremendous public pressure on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to retaliate.

Almost all the options discussed by the heads of the military, spy chiefs revolved around punishing the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) which had masterminded the attack. The range of options included special forces missions, covert attacks, strikes by the air force on terrorist training camps and even an option of a limited war.

The options for retaliation that India debated, it now emerges, were known to the United States as well. Former Pakistani foreign minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri's memoirs, released in New Delhi on October 9, says the Bush administration sent senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham and US special representative for Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke to Islamabad sometime after the attacks which began on November 26, 2008, to judge the public mood there.

"Senator McCain wanted to know from me," Kasuri writes in Neither A Hawk Nor A Dove, "in view of my experience, both as former foreign minister and as a politician, what the reaction of the Pakistani army and the public at large would be, if there was a limited air raid on Muridke", the headquarters of the Jamat-ud-Dawah (JUD), the charity front of the LeT and its leader Hafiz Saeed. Kasuri does not mention the exact date of the meeting, but it was clearly during McCain's two-day visit to Islamabad that began on Friday, December 5, 2008.

No Cold Start

Indian investigators had traced the Pakistani hand in both the March 1993 Mumbai serial blasts and the July 2006 suburban train bombings. These attacks had killed more people-257 and 187 respectively. But 26/11 was different. It was the first attack carried out by Pakistani nationals who hit civilian targets and foreign nationals with calculated brutality. Unlike the December 2001 attack on India's parliament where all five terrorists were gunned down, one of the Mumbai attackers, captured alive less than six hours after the attack began, had revealed the full extent of the conspiracy.

The first meeting of India's security establishment was held in the PMO on November 28, just 48 hours after the attack began and when Indian commandos were closing in on the last four terrorists holed up in the heritage wing of the Taj hotel. The meeting chaired by Prime Minister Singh included National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan, Defence Minister A.K. Antony, the chiefs of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and the chiefs of the navy and the air force. The army chief, General Deepak Kapoor, was away on a tour of South Africa and was represented by the Vice Chief of Army Staff Lt General Milan Naidu. Singh asked the intelligence brass for their options to tackle Pakistan. The military option was still on the table at that point, officials in the meeting say.

One alternative included a 'Cold Start', the Indian Army's plan for swift and shallow thrusts across the international border without waiting for a full-scale mobilisation. It was developed after it had taken the army more than a month to fully mobilise along the Pakistani border after the attack on India's parliament in December 2001. But the option of using Cold Start was discarded. The government was clear that a strike across the international border (at the JuD headquarters in Muridke, Lahore, which Kasuri suggested) would be provocative and escalate matters. It would also be unacceptable internationally.

Lt General Naidu also said he would rather wait for the army chief to return from South Africa on November 28. The navy did not have a swift retaliatory option either. Navy chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta said his forces were not ready yet and did not have a 'Cold Start' doctrine.

The intelligence agencies were miffed at the navy for not acting on an alert which revealed the precise location of the LeT vessel while it was anchored off Pakistan's coast waiting to infiltrate into India. Disclosures made by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden in 2013 revealed that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had intercepted communications between the Lashkar boat and the LeT headquarters in Pakistan- occupied Kashmir (***) and passed the alert on to RAW on November 18, eight days before the terrorists actually struck Mumbai.

Air Chief Marshal Fali Homi Major held out the only option for swift retribution. The IAF could carry out air strikes on terrorist camps inside *** within 16 hours, he said. But for the attacks to be successful and avoid collateral damage to civilians, he would need the exact coordinates of the terrorist training camps. The intelligence agencies did not have such precise information. The military option was postponed.

The Strike Options

A second meeting of India's security establishment which took place on December 2 was more focused on the military option against Pakistan. By now, the Manmohan Singh government had clearly ruled out either an Operation Parakram-style mobilisation of the Indian military or the Cold Start option that replaced it. Options now almost exclusively focused on punitive strikes against the LeT, which had carried out the attack. Exactly a week after the attack, Indian intelligence agencies had built up a comprehensive picture of the LeT's complicity in the attack-confessions from the sole terrorist arrested, Ajmal Kasab, and several hours of conversations intercepted between the LeT handler in a Karachi control room and the Mumbai attackers.

The armed forces, particularly the army and the navy, were still short of options for striking back at the LeT. General Kapoor wondered aloud if the nation was prepared for war, meaning a possible retaliation by Pakistan which then would have had to be met by a tit-for-tat response by India.

The military options came from an unexpected quarter-M.K. Narayanan, who presented five detailed options. It was possibly the first time in recent times that the Indian government had been presented with a diverse range of military options that fell short of full-scale war. The alternatives ranged from surgical air strikes to covert action and special forces raids.

The first option called for covert action against the LeT leadership in Pakistan. Three other options called for the use of air power against LeT training camps and headquarters in ***. IAF combat jets would carry out surgical strikes against LeT targets or helicopter-borne special forces commandos could strike the camps to ensure there was no collateral damage. A final option was for a limited war confined to airstrikes in ***, which a mobilisation by the Indian armed forces would ensure did not spread across the border.

It is unclear whether these alternatives were prepared after consultations with India's military, but the three service chiefs weighed into the discussion, examining the options threadbare. Each military option had been minutely detailed down to the escalation dynamics, meaning the possible Pakistani reaction to each action by India. Significantly, all five options presented by Narayanan were confined to action within ***, a territory claimed by India.

The first option, a revenge strike on the LeT leadership, was examined but ruled out. India, it was revealed, lacked any covert capability or personnel within Pakistan. Prime Minister I.K. Gujral had shut down RAW's covert operations inside Pakistan in 1997 and subsequent prime ministers had turned down requests by their spy chiefs to revive them. Infiltrating commandos for a special operation meant running the risk of them being captured just like Kasab. India, officials at the meeting feared, risked being put in the same category as Pakistan.

Airstrikes like those carried by the IAF on the Kargil heights in 1999 needed exact coordinates of camps. They also needed people on the ground to 'illuminate' targets with laser designators so the IAF bombers could drop their precision weaponry on them without causing civilian collateral damage. "Most of the camps were nothing more than temporary tents. There was the very real risk of the operation killing civilians," said an official present at the meeting.

Indian intelligence officials could not give the military precise whereabouts of the LeT leadership and of the terrorist training camps. They did not have covert operatives inside Pakistan who could illuminate targets. Nor could they procure the intelligence in the short time it was needed for the strike to be effective. The option for airstrikes was discarded.

The last option of a limited war confined to *** was also debated. The Indian military would mobilise itself along the international border to ensure Pakistan did not attempt to take the battle beyond ***. Frenzied calls from the Indian public to strike Pakistan had alarmed the Pakistani military which had already put its air force on high alert and prepared anti-aircraft defences.

Another factor complicating an Indian military response was the presence of the US military on three airbases in Pakistan and in their airspace.

Pakistan had allocated a number of air corridors exclusively for use by the US and these were codenamed Boulevard, Bagpipe, Beltline, Buzzard and Eagle. The IAF would have to avoid hitting US fighter aircraft, bombers, drones and transport aircraft transiting from the Arabian Sea to Pakistan and Afghanistan in these corridors.

If a conflict broke out, the military leaders discussed, Pakistan's limited strategic depth and its apprehension of India gaining the upper hand would encourage them to move up on the nuclear escalatory spiral. In other words, Pakistan had a national compulsion to project a very low nuclear threshold. If conflict broke out, keeping an Indian attack 'limited' would not be a Pakistani priority. On the contrary, Pakistan would have preferred to escalate the conflict to a level where it could posture nuclear weapons and thereby force the international community to quickly intervene. "If India was forced to terminate the war under international pressure, then it was not worth it," one official says. This last option too was discarded. It was found that the Indian military machine, hollowed by years of neglect, lacked the decisive conventional edge to localise a conflict.

Unlike Operation Brasstacks in December 1986 and Operation Parakram in December 2001, there was no mobilisation of India's armed forces in December 2008. But it revealed, yet again, the enormous potential of non-state actors such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba to bring the nuclear-armed neighbours to the brink.

Why India didn't strike Pakistan after 26/11
@nair @MilSpec @third eye @GURU DUTT @Water Car Engineer

Here comes the boogy man with Indian BS.
It is well known, that Indian Mirrage and Sukhois were forced to retrun after they were locked by Pakistani interceptors.
It is also well know that Indian build all the courage due to zardari and his tribe's control over Pakistan and its media.

 

[EnggineerShahjehan]

Bhai tu engineer hai, zyada james bond banne ki koshis na kar, tune khud investigate kia tha kya?

Bhai apke 9 Consulates in Afghanistan un ko English Language ka course to nahin karwa rahe na , yakenan woh proxy proxy khelne aae hain , And as per ISPR attackers Afghanistan se hi aaye thae , u don't need to be a engineer to understand all this ...

 

[pakdefender]

Why ? well because Pakistan would have nuked the daylight out of india or for that matter anyone else who has any ideas about attacking Pakistan

My 2c, Indian forces should strike and bring down the ISI culprits even if it means doing Mossad style operation against the Munich attackers. It is about time to bring these terrorist sponsors to trial.

Pal, great to have big balls but no brains. You cannot even provide safe drinking water for your public. First get your basic population development then think of screwing around. You procreate like flies and have no brains; no wonder why you unleash these kids by brainwashing them.

Terrible. A monkey with matches. Last thing this world needs.

How about you go sort out the terrible mess that South Africa has become

 

[FULL_METAL]

Bhai apke 9 Consulates in Afghanistan un ko English Language ka course to nahin karwa rahe na , yakenan woh proxy proxy khelne aae hain , And as per ISPR attackers Afghanistan se hi aaye thae , u don't need to be a engineer to understand all this ...

mere Bhai no matter how much enmity we have with each other tu yakin jan le neither side will stoop this low to stain their hands with the blood of children. Eisa kam TTP jaisa shaitan hi kar sakta hai, Pakistan ya Bharat nehi

 

[ConcealCarry]

Pakistan 9a official government or any government agency) NEVER carried out any terrorist operation in India or any other country. Period.

As far as retaliation is concerned, Pakistan considers any cross border attack as an act of war and would respond in kind and some more. Anyone who thinks their toys would frighten us from carrying out a full brut response, need a lesson in history.

@MilSpec

So why has Pakistan NOT carried out more 26 /11

Is it because of the goodness of their heart ; NO

Even they expect retaliation in future

Let us say they got away because we were NOT prepared enough
It was a nasty surprise

But obviously some thought and preparation has gone into a repeat of such a scenario

We will get another opportunity

That is why you see such anxiety and panic attacks regarding the New Government
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is another factor here

Our retaliation has not been direct but indirectly we have done a LOT of damage
in terms of lives and economic cost to their economy

They know it

AND the funny thing is that 26 /11 has ENDED Kashmir issue for ever

We have stopped even acknowledging Kashmir as a dispute and NOBODY even USA
can do ZILCH about it

The anxiety to have a dialouge with India shows their desperation
to avoid a confrontation which they know can happen

They know our restraint wont last for ever
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Umair Nawaz]

My 2c, Indian forces should strike and bring down the ISI culprits even if it means doing Mossad style operation against the Munich attackers. It is about time to bring these terrorist sponsors to trial.

Pal, great to have big balls but no brains. You cannot even provide safe drinking water for your public. First get your basic population development then think of screwing around. You procreate like flies and have no brains; no wonder why you unleash these kids by brainwashing them.

Terrible. A monkey with matches. Last thing this world needs.

LOL and what makes u think ISI is the culprit or sponsors terrorists? Dont use my enemy's language with me, or else i would consider u same.

Big balls no brains? Son a country responsible for slaying two superpowers would like to disagree. Specially slaying the latest one by using its own money.

Thats called work of a genius son! and u surely need brains to even notice that, which i guess i person living in the world's most poorest continent cant have. BTW do u guys still use leaves to cover yr private parts or atleast bnow u guys have cloths?

 

[EnggineerShahjehan]

mere Bhai no matter how much enmity we have with each other tu yakin jan le neither side will stoop this low to stain their hands with the blood of children. Eisa kam TTP jaisa shaitan hi kar sakta hai, Pakistan ya Bharat nehi

TTP can not do that on its own without some powers backing it , yes we have lots of hostile agencies but top most to RAW hi hai na,

 

[Styx]

huge mistake, should've killed a few dozen jungli punjabi jihadis who form the core of the Kashmir jihad and leveled their training camps without engaging the Pak army.

manmohan singh was such a sissy, his inaction sent out a weak message and emboldened the Pakistani terrorists.

 

[FULL_METAL]

huge mistake, should've killed a few dozen jungli punjabi jihadis who form the core of the Kashmir jihad and leveled their training camps without engaging the Pak army.

manmohan singh was such a sissy, his inaction sent out a weak message and emboldened the Pakistani terrorists.

he was blinded by love for his Punjabi brethren from other side of the border j/k

 

[HttpError]

@MilSpec

So why has Pakistan NOT carried out more 26 /11

Is it because of the goodness of their heart ; NO

Even they expect retaliation in future

Let us say they got away because we were NOT prepared enough
It was a nasty surprise

But obviously some thought and preparation has gone into a repeat of such a scenario

We will get another opportunity

That is why you see such anxiety and panic attacks regarding the New Government
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is another factor here

Our retaliation has not been direct but indirectly we have done a LOT of damage
in terms of lives and economic cost to their economy

They know it

AND the funny thing is that 26 /11 has ENDED Kashmir issue for ever

We have stopped even acknowledging Kashmir as a dispute and NOBODY even USA
can do ZILCH about it

The anxiety to have a dialouge with India shows their desperation
to avoid a confrontation which they know can happen

They know our restraint wont last for ever
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Come baby if you think your country is so powerful at-least dare to do something. So we can show you and your country your real place. Imagine a country 5x Times bigger than us in almost every imaginable way. Yet you can't do anything about us.