U.S. Sees No Evidence Pakistan Government Tied to India Attacks
^we dont know whether proofs were given or not. But lets see what Pakistans govt. response to it.
Latest article I read to day (can't find the link right now) mentioned Farhatullah Babar saying Pakistan has not been provided with any kind of proof yet, lets see when it is passed to Pakistan. waiting
Latest article I read to day (can't find the link right now) mentioned Farhatullah Babar saying Pakistan has not been provided with any kind of proof yet, lets see when it is passed to Pakistan. waiting
Saw Pak ambassador to US Husain Haqqanis interview on CNN, No evidence provided so far neither to Pak, US or UN.
Don’t hold your breath! 
(Source: U.S. warned India about possible Mumbai attack - CNN.com)
The United States warned the Indian government about a potential maritime attack against Mumbai at least a month before last week’s massacre left 179 dead, a U.S. counterterrorism official told CNN
India made clear it believes the Mumbai attacks originated in Pakistan, but the Indian government is under pressure to explain the lapse of security that allowed the siege to occur.
Getting too funny as India is continously providing their conspiracy theories without any single proof. The article say that all gunmen except one were killed and they all were Pakistani. How did they know they all were Pakistanis if they were killed???
[quote=“fkhan2”]
[
coz the one servived TOLD them. :D](“Source: U.S. warned India about possible Mumbai attack - CNN.com”)
ISI and LeT involvement? Al-Qaeda ‘hijack’ led to Mumbai attack
**Usually, Syed Saleem Shahzad has inside knowledge of jihadi group workings. He makes some interesting revelations. I find this story beliveable, but obviously who knows what the real truth is.
Asia Times Online :: South Asia news, business and economy from India and Pakistan
Al-Qaeda ‘hijack’ led to Mumbai attack**
Al-Qaeda ‘hijack’ led to Mumbai attack
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
MILAN - A plan by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) that had been in the pipelines for several months - even though official policy was to ditch it - saw what was to be a low-profile attack in Kashmir turn into the massive attacks on Mumbai last week.
The original plan was highjacked by the Laskar-e-Taiba (LET), a Pakistani militant group that generally focussed on the Kashmir struggle, and al-Qaeda, resulting in the deaths of nearly 200 people in Mumbai as groups of militants sprayed bullets and hand
grenades at hotels, restaurants and train stations, as well as a Jewish community center.
The attack has sent shock waves across India and threatens to revive the intense periods of hostility the two countries have endured since their independence from British India in 1947.
There is now the possibility that Pakistan will undergo another about-turn and rethink its support of the "war in terror"; until the end of 2001, it supported the Taliban administration in Afghanistan. It could now back off from its restive tribal areas, leaving the Taliban a free hand to consolidate their Afghan insurgency.
A US State Department official categorically mentioned that Pakistan's "smoking gun" could turn the US's relations with Pakistan sour. The one militant captured - several were killed - is reported to have been a Pakistani trained by the LET.
**A plan goes wrong**
Asia Times Online investigations reveal that several things went wrong within the ISI, which resulted in the Mumbai attacks.
Before the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, the ISI had several operations areas as far as India was concerned. The major forward sections were in Muzzafarabad, the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, which were used to launch proxy operations through Kashmir separatist groups in Indian-administered Kashmir.
The next major areas were Nepal and Bangladesh, where both countries were used for smuggling arms and ammunition into India and for launching militants to carry out high-level guerrilla operations in Indian territory other than Kashmir.
After 9/11, when Islamabad sided with the United States in the "war on terror" and the invasion of Afghanistan was launched to catch al-Qaeda members and militants, Pakistan was forced to abandon its Muzzafarabad operations under American pressure. The major recent turn in the political situation in Nepal with the victory of Maoists and the abolishment of the monarchy has reduced the ISI's operations. An identical situation has happened in Bangladesh, where governments have changed.
The only active forward sections were left in the southern port city of Karachi, and the former Muzzafarabad sections were sent there. The PNS Iqbal (a naval commando unit) was the main outlet for militants to be given training and through deserted points they were launched into the Arabian sea and on into the Indian region of Gujarat.
At the same time, Washington mediated a dialogue process between India and Pakistan, which resulted in some calm. Militants were advised by the ISI to sit tight at their homes to await orders.
However, that never happened. The most important asset of the ISI, the Laskhar-e-Taiba (LET), was split after 9/11. Several of its top-ranking commanders and office bearers joined hands with al-Qaeda militants. A millionaire Karachi-based businessman, Arif Qasmani, who was a major donor for ISI-sponsored LET operations in India, was arrested for playing a double game - he was accused of working with the ISI while also sending money to Pakistan's South Waziristan tribal area for the purchase of arms and ammunition for al-Qaeda militants.
The network of the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, which was a major supporter of the ISI in the whole region, especially in Bangladesh, was shattered and fell into the hands of al-Qaeda when Maulana Ilyas Kashmiri, chief of Harkat, a hero of the armed struggle in Kashmir who had spent two years in an Indian jail, was arrested by Pakistani security forces in January 2004. He was suspected of having links to suicide bombers who rammed their vehicles into then-president General Pervez Musharraf's convoy on December 25, 2003.
He was released after 30 days and cleared of all suspicion, but he was profoundly affected by the experience and abandoned his struggle for Kashmir's independence and moved to the North Waziristan tribal area with his family. His switch from the Kashmiri struggle to the Afghan resistance was an authentic religious instruction to those in the camps in Kashmir to move to support Afghanistan's armed struggle against foreign forces. Hundreds of Pakistani jihadis established a small training camp in the area.
Almost simultaneously, Harkat's Bangladesh network disconnected itself from the ISI and moved closer to al-Qaeda. That was the beginning of the problem which makes the Mumbai attack a very complex story.
India has never been a direct al-Qaeda target. This has been due in part to Delhi's traditionally impartial policy of strategic non-alignment and in part to al-Qaeda using India as a safe route from the Arabian Sea into Gujrat and then on to Mumbai and then either by air or overland to the United Arab Emirates. Al-Qaeda did not want to disrupt this arrangement by stirring up attacks in India.
Nevertheless, growing voices from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and from within India for the country to be a strategic partner of NATO and the US in Afghanistan compelled al-Qaeda, a year ago, to consider a plan to utilize Islamic militancy structures should this occur.
Several low-profile attacks were carried out in various parts of India as a rehearsal and Indian security agencies still have no idea who was behind them. Nevertheless, al-Qaeda was not yet prepared for any bigger moves, like the Mumbai attacks.
Under directives from Pakistan's army chief, General Ashfaq Kiani, who was then director general (DG) of the ISI, a low-profile plan was prepared to support Kashmiri militancy. That was normal, even in light of the peace process with India. Although Pakistan had closed down its major operations, it still provided some support to the militants so that the Kashmiri movement would not die down completely.
After Kiani was promoted to chief of army staff, Lieutenant General Nadeem Taj was placed as DG of the ISI. The external section under him routinely executed the plan of Kiani and trained a few dozen LET militants near Mangla Dam (near the capital Islamabad). They were sent by sea to Gujrat, from where they had to travel to Kashmir to carry out operations.
Meanwhile, a major reshuffle in the ISI two months ago officially shelved this low-key plan as the country's whole focus had shifted towards Pakistan's tribal areas. The director of the external wing was also changed, placing the "game" in the hands of a low-level ISI forward section head (a major) and the LET's commander-in-chief, Zakiur Rahman.
Zakiur was in Karachi for two months to personally oversee the plan. However, the militant networks in India and Bangladesh comprising the Harkat, which were now in al-Qaeda's hands, tailored some changes. Instead of Kashmir, they planned to attack Mumbai, using their existent local networks, with Westerners and the Jewish community center as targets.
Zakiur and the ISI's forward section in Karachi, completely disconnected from the top brass, approved the plan under which more than 10 men took Mumbai hostage for nearly three days and successfully established a reign of terror.
The attack, started from ISI headquarters and fined-tuned by al-Qaeda, has obviously caused outrage across India. The next issue is whether it has the potential to change the course of India's regional strategy and deter it from participating in NATO plans in Afghanistan.
Daniel Pipes, considered a leading member of Washington's neo-conservatives, told Asia Times Online, "It could be the other way around, like always happens with al-Qaeda. Nine-eleven was aimed to create a reign of terror in Washington, but only caused a very furious reaction from the United States of America. The 07/07 bombing [in London] was another move to force the UK to pull out of Iraq, but it further reinforced the UK's policies in the 'war on terror'. The Madrid bombing was just an isolated incident which caused Spain's pullout from Iraq."
Pipes continued, "They [militants] are the believers of conspiracy theories and therefore they would have seen the Jewish center [attacked in Mumbai] as some sort of influence in the region and that's why they chose to target it, but on the other hand they got immense international attention which they could not have acquired if they would have just attacked local targets."
Israeli politician and a former interim president, Abraham Burg, told Asia Times Online, "It was not only Jewish but American and other foreigners [who were targeted]. The main purpose may have been to keep foreigners away from India. Nevertheless, there is something deeper. This attack on a Jewish target becomes symbolic.
"I remember when al-Qaeda carried out the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen [in 2000] and then they carried out attacks on American embassies in Africa, they mentioned several reasons. The Palestinian issue was number four or five, but later when they found that it had become the most popular one, it suddenly climbed up to number one position on their priority list. Since the attack on the Jewish institution drew so much attention, God forbid, it could be their strategy all over the world," Burg said.
Al-Qaeda stoked this particular fire that could spark new hostilities in South Asia. What steps India takes on the military front against Pakistan will become clearer in the coming days, but already in Karachi there has been trouble.
Two well-known Indophile political parties, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, a coalition partner in the government comprising people who migrated to Pakistan after the partition of British India in 1947, and the Awami National Party, another coalition partner in the government and a Pashtun sub-nationalist political party, clashed within 24 hours of the Mumbai attacks. Fifteen people have been killed to date and the city is closed, like Mumbai was after the November 26 attacks.
***Syed Saleem Shahzad** is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at* [EMAIL="[email protected]"][email protected]
It is good that people in Pakistan are speaking against these attacks … they were an attack on India as much as they were meant to derail the peace progress between Pakistan and India. The problem for Pakistan right now is that even though they know that the jehadi elements are behind these attacks they cannot act as they have been previously linked to ISI. So for now the Pakistan government is trying to unhook itself from these jehadi elements. This is a very interesting piece from the Pakistani UN ambassador written in Pakistani press
Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan
Haroon calls for efforts aimed at helping the government of Pakistan not only to defend itself, “but to stamp out the threat to Pakistan and to the entire world once and for all”, which requires financial aid, political understanding and ‘unstinting military support’.
He adds, “Whosoever have planned the Mumbai episode are part of a deliberate international move emanating out of Al Qaeda” to ratchet up tension, extend the field of conflict and to undermine normalisation between Pakistan and India
photo of the captured militant released
hindu(DOT)com/2008/12/02/stories/2008120257410100.htm
Re: photo of the captured militant released
His name changes in every report.
But these details seem very believable to me as many jihadis who went to Kashmir would have similar tales to tell. Jihadi groups have long preyed on the underprivileged in Pakstan, especially Punjab.
http://www.hindu.com/2008/12/02/stories/2008120259961000.htm
The man in the photo was born on July 13, 1987 at Faridkot village in Dipalpur tehsil of Okara district in Pakistan’s Punjab province. His family belongs to the underprivileged Qasai caste. His father, Mohammad Amir Iman, runs a dahi-puri snack cart. His mother, Noori Tai, is a homemaker.
Iman is the third of the family’s five children. His 25-year-old brother, Afzal, lives near the Yadgar Minar in Lahore. His sister, Rukaiyya Husain, 22, is married locally. Iman’s younger siblings, 14-year-old Suraiyya and 11-year-old Munir, live at home.
Iman’s desperately poor family could not afford to keep their second son, an indifferent student, at the Government Primary School in Faridkot past the fourth grade. He was pulled out of school in 2000, at the age of 13, and went to live with his older brother in Lahore. Afzal, who lives in a tenement near the Yadgar Minar in Lahore, eked out a living on a labourer’s wages, and could barely afford to look after his brother. For the next several years, Iman shuttled between the homes of his brother and parents.
Adrift After a row with his parents in 2005, Iman left home, determined never to return. No longer welcome in Afzal’s home, he stayed at the shrine of the saint Syed Ali Hajveri until he could pick up some work. He began working as a labourer and by 2007 his work brought in Rs. 200 a day. Iman, however, found the work degrading. He soon began spending time with small-time criminals in Lahore. Along with a friend, a one-time Attock resident named Muzaffar Lal Khan, Iman decided to launch a new career in armed robbery.
On Bakr Eid day in 2007, Iman has told the Mumbai Police, the two men made their way to the Raja bazaar in Rawalpindi, hoping to purchase weapons. In the market, they saw activists for the Jamaat-ud-Dawa — the parent political organisation of the Lashkar-e-Taiba — handing out pamphlets and posters about the organisation and its activities. After a discussion lasting a few minutes, Iman claims, both men decided to join — not because of their Islamist convictions but in the hope that the jihad training they would receive would further their future life in crime.
A life in Lashkar But at the Lashkar’s base camp, Markaz Taiba, Iman’s world view began to change. Films on India’s purported atrocities in Kashmir, and fiery lectures by preachers, including Lashkar chief Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, led him to believe that the Lashkar’s cause — the greater glory of Islam, as the organisation presented it — was worth giving his life to. It is possible, an official involved in the interrogation suggested, that the atmosphere of the camp gave him the sense of family he had lacked for much of his life.
When he returned home for a two-month break after his indoctrination at the Lashkar base camp, he found a respectability within his community and family that had eluded him most of his life. Where Iman had earlier been seen as a burden, he was now self-sufficient — and bore the halo of religious piety.
Later that year, Iman was chosen for the Lashkar’s basic combat course, the Daura Aam. He performed well and was among a small group of 32 men selected to undergo advanced training at a camp near Manshera, a course the organisation calls the Daura Khaas. Finally, he was among an even smaller group selected for specialised marine commando and navigation training given to the fidayeen unit selected to target Mumbai.
According to Iman, Lashkar military commander Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi promised that his family would be rewarded with Rs. 1.5 lakh for his sacrifice.
There are dime a dozen “investigations” going on, everybody coming up with their own conclusions, directions, pointers etc. Let the government investigative agencies do their job, provide proofs to the world media and then if any media wants to challenge it then go ahead. Once media sets a tone/direction for people to think along then any investigative output (regardless of how ‘accurate’) becomes questionable.
i would recommend this one if you wish to look into it in depth.
Video Program Playing | Pakistan Herald
another great work by talat.
can an expert enlighten us here.
i seriously doubt these were trained , they were bunch of guys with some brains and with AK47.
Watch: CST encounter on CCTV-News-The Times of India
notice them in videos while engaging the police they were still together and without a cover for a while.
if they were trained they would have taken cover and moved on and not engaging police for 2 minutes without a cover doesnt go well with the trained.
for police: although they stood bravely but i think they would have been in better position if one with the rifle had moved to left block he could have been able to target them and one bullet ot 303 rifle would have been enough but still good job atleast they stood the ground.
Here is the latest from Hasan Gafoor, Police Commissioner.
Terrorists did not get local support. Atleast no evidence found yet.
There were 10 terrorists in five groups of two members each, who had come from Karachi in boats. They later hired five taxis to get to their destination.
All terrorists came from Pakistan and the probe suggests that they were first time visitors to Mumbai. They were trained for over a year by ex-Army personnel.
No female members in the group.
Each terrorist had one AK-47 rifle, one pistol, hand grenades, and magazines along with detailed maps of the targeted places.
Here is what India does for every single attack at home.. The following is an excerpt from one of the news paper, plenty more...
India had initially named banned Pakistani organisations, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Jaish-e-Muhammad in collusion with Bangladesh-based Harkat-e-Jihad-e-Islami (HUJI), for the Samjhota train blasts that killed 68 people.
Indian officials had even handed over a suspect’s photograph and also mentioned the names of other suspects to their Pakistani counterparts.
Abdullah Hussain Haroon, Pakistani U.N. Ambassador today in an interview to Frank Ucciardo CBS News said that it was more likely that foreigners and not Pakistani citizens were involved in the Mumbai attacks. These could be foreigners residing in Pakistan. So does he now believe that the attackers came from Pakistani soil? irrespective whether they were Pakistani citizens or not.
Some progress then … at least they claim now that they could have originated from Pakistan … phew … so the pressure is working…
Stratfor has learned that Islamabad privately has conveyed an official message to Washington and New Delhi that the people involved in the attack have been identified, and that the Pakistani government will take action against them
We also have learned that Pakistan’s civil-military leadership has decided that Lashkar-e-Taiba must be neutralized because it is jeopardizing Pakistani security. The Pakistanis thus are willing to make tough concessions and liquidate those responsible for the attack as long as India holds back.
Free Preview of Members-Only Content | Stratfor
Pak accepts terrorists may be from its territory
Pak accepts terrorists may be from its territory: US - Times of India territory
Pakistan: Choosing Civil Strife Over War With India
December 2, 2008 | 2154 GMT
Summary
Pakistan is relaying messages to India and the United States that it is prepared to take action against elements involved in the Mumbai attacks to stave off a potential war with India. Regardless of whether it means what it says, it is highly unlikely that Pakistan can engage in such unprecedented action without creating major problems on its home front.
Analysis
New Delhi is not ruling out the possibility of military action against Islamist militant facilities in Pakistan, Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said Dec. 2 in an interview with NDTV. Mukherjee added that it will be difficult to proceed with the peace process with India’s western neighbor in the current atmosphere. The foreign minister’s remarks follow a statement from U.S. President-elect Barack Obama that India had the right to take action to protect itself from terrorist attacks.
Islamabad’s move comes in the full knowledge that acting against nonstate actors will lead to major problems at home.
From Pakistan’s perspective, a U.S.-Indian alignment against Islamabad embodies a doomsday scenario. There has already been an acknowledgment of sorts from Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari that Pakistani-based nonstate actors were behind the Mumbai attack, which left nearly 200 people dead and hundreds wounded. Islamabad, however, knows that such statements alone will not help avoid a potential conflict between the two nuclear-armed rivals.
Therefore, Pakistan has sent a series of public and private signals to both New Delhi and Washington. A Dec. 1 article published by Asia Times Online and authored by an individual known for his close ties to Pakistani intelligence and Islamist circles provides details of how the Kashmiri Islamist militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (fingered by India as the mastermind of the attacks in Mumbai), certain low-level rogue Pakistani intelligence officials and al Qaeda orchestrated the attacks. The Pakistanis are hoping that by admitting that they lack control over Pakistan’s intelligence-militant nexus, they can somehow manage to convince the Indians that any conflict will only lead to further attacks. It is a weak argument, but does represent the best that Pakistan can come up with (and could well be true).
Stratfor has learned that Islamabad privately has conveyed an official message to Washington and New Delhi that the people involved in the attack have been identified, and that the Pakistani government will take action against them. We also have learned that Pakistan’s civil-military leadership has decided that Lashkar-e-Taiba must be neutralized because it is jeopardizing Pakistani security. The Pakistanis thus are willing to make tough concessions and liquidate those responsible for the attack as long as India holds back.
While desperate times in Pakistan call for desperate measures, it is unclear that there is a consensus within the Pakistani state about taking such unprecedented action against its own assets and officials who have acted without official sanction. Assuming such a consensus (however loose) does exist, the problem becomes one of capability: It is not clear the Pakistani government, army or the intelligence apparatus actually can carry out such a drastic step.
It should be noted that even at the height of his power with the full support and fury of the United States immediately after 9/11, former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf could not effect changes of such a magnitude. The weakness of the current civil-military setup and the nature and size of the country’s intelligence community and its complex relationships with Islamist militant actors of various stripes renders any such task extremely difficult. A radical shift in decades-old policy will be met with resistance not just by the nonstate actors responsible, but also from within the military-intelligence establishment.
Faced with two bad options — conflict with India and conflict within — Pakistan is leaning toward the latter in the hopes it can deal with the domestic fallout more effectively than it can withstand a conflict with India. In the meantime, U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen is on his way to Islamabad now, most likely in a bid to get the Pakistanis to deliver something for the Indians. The Pakistanis’ best hope for a resolution right now is for the United States to rein in the Indians, but this is not guaranteed by any means.