India scoffs at Pakistani denials
By Praful Bidwai
NEW DELHI - Five weeks after India handed over a dossier to Islamabad
containing detailed evidence on the November 26-29 Mumbai terror attacks,
Pakistan has finally promised an official response, based on investigations by
its Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).
However, the Indian government is disappointed at a statement issued on
February 9 by the Pakistan cabinet's Defense Coordination Committee - including
the armed services chiefs and the head of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)
agency - which says Pakistan needs more information.
The statement says Pakistan will register a case to bring the
attack's perpetrators to justice under Pakistani law, but it contends that
"without substantial evidence from India, it will be exceedingly difficult to
complete the investigation and proceed with the case''.
Indian Home Minister P Chidambaram has dismissed Pakistan's contention as
"rubbish". The Indian External Affairs Ministry has told Pakistan: "We await a
formal response. The picture is not clear."
As New Delhi mulls its options, a complex scenario is unfolding in the region
amid the visit to Pakistan of United States President Barack Obama's special
representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke.
A suicide bomb attack in the heart of Kabul recently killed10 people, while in
Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province, legislator Alam Zeb Khan of the
secular Awami National Party was killed and seven others injured when a
remote-controlled bomb exploded close to his vehicle in Peshawar.
Meanwhile, a senior al-Qaeda leader, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, believed to be the
network's commander in Afghanistan, has warned India that it will pay a "heavy
price if it attacks Pakistan. The mujahideen will sunder your armies into the
ground, like they did to the Russians in Afghanistan.”
This is the first time al-Qaeda has specifically threatened India in such an
overt fashion.
The Indian government is coming under pressure from within to explore various
options to deal with what it considers to be Pakistan's strategy of evasion and
denial in respect of the Mumbai attacks and the role of jihadi militants in
planning and executing them.
The FIA's report has not been made public. But senior Pakistani officials have
been quoted in the media as saying that the authorities have arrested at least
five people from Karachi in connection with the attacks, and they will be put
on trial with Amir Ajmal Kasab, the sole terrorist caught alive by police in
Mumbai.
According to Pakistani media reports, the FIA inquiry report only blames
individual suspects for the attacks and does not mention the militant groups
Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) or Jamaat-ud-Dawa as the masterminds. There are
suggestions too that the conspiracy to carry out the attacks was hatched in a
European country and involved two South Asian states, but not Pakistan.
"This stretches credulity," argued Karamat Ali, a Karachi-based political
analyst and social activist. "Even if the plot was hatched outside Pakistan,
some if not all of its executors were Pakistani. Naming Austria or Britain as
the conspiracy site only suggests the existence of a supra-national jihadi
network, it does not exonerate Pakistan."
Many past terrorist attacks too had a Pakistan link. British Prime Minister
Gordon Brown during his December visit to South Asia said that 75% of the most
serious terror plots being investigated by British authorities had links to
Pakistan.
Analysts in the region believe that it is simply inconceivable that a handful
of individuals could have conducted the Mumbai attacks without being guided by
a highly inspired network with a broad political agenda, including promoting
pro-Taliban interests and provoking rivalry between India and Pakistan.
The agenda may also be aimed at widening disaffection in India and promoting
the communal divide between India's Hindu majority and its sizeable Muslim
minority.
Evidence collected by Indian police agencies suggests that the attackers were
rigorously trained in armed combat, maritime navigation and the use of
sophisticated communications techniques including satellite phones and Global
Positioning Systems (GPS).
The evidence provided in the Indian dossier on Mumbai [1] is certainly
substantial and of exceptionally high quality. This assessment is reportedly
corroborated by the US's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which
interrogated Kasab, the surviving attacker.
FBI interest in the case stems partly from the fact that among the 180 people
who died in the bloody rampage carried out by a group of 10 heavily armed men,
seven were US citizens.
Apart from Kasab's confessions, the evidence includes the names and addresses
of some of the attackers, and above all, a rich body of circumstantial evidence
which the Indian government says will stand scrutiny in a court of law in any
civilized country.
The latter includes GPS records recovered from an Indian fishing trawler
hijacked by the attackers; photographs of armaments used and personal effects
such as garments, powdered milk cartons and toiletries, with Pakistani
markings; and money trails linking Pakistan-based operators to the purchase of
a Voice-over Internet Protocol platform.
It also includes fingerprints on the rubber dinghies on which the attackers
landed in Mumbai; and eight partial transcripts of intercepted conversations
between the attackers and their LeT handlers, some of whom have been named - eg
Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, Abu Hamza and Yousuf alias Muzammil.
Said Delhi University-based political scientist Achin Vanaik: "It does not
stand to reason that the FIA could not verify this information or investigate
yet more leads within five weeks. The most charitable interpretation is that
the Pakistan government is consciously practicing outright denial. Making
endless demands for more information, while ignoring the clinching evidence
that has been presented, is fully compatible with this."
According to Vanaik, a likelier hypothesis is that Pakistan's civilian
government has caved in to pressure from the army and the ISI to shield some
key serving or former operatives involved in instigating and training the
attackers, if not in planning the conspiracy in order to divert Pakistani
troops from the Afghanistan border, where they are battling al-Qaeda/Taliban
forces, to the eastern border with India.
In the process, said Karamat Ali, "Pakistan's civilian government, already
weakened by growing rivalry between President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime
Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, and by steadily rising tensions between the
Pakistan People's Party and the Pakistan Muslim League (N), has further eroded
its authority and legitimacy. This too will play into the hands of extremist
forces."
How the Obama administration will deal with the unfolding situation remains
unclear, although Holbrooke may provide some clues at the end of his visit to
Pakistan and Afghanistan, and later, India.
But it is clear that Pakistan's stonewalling tactics have strengthened the
hands of Indian hardliners, who now advocate covert action in Pakistan, or
coercive diplomacy targeting the shared waters of the Indus River system with a
view to reducing their flows into Pakistan.
Matters are complicated domestically as India moves toward a general election.
"This will narrow the options available to the ruling United Progressive
Alliance government," said Vanaik. "One can only hope that sobriety will
somehow prevail."
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