M.D. Nalapat
Manipal, India — Since the terror attacks
on Mumbai five days ago, key Western intelligence agencies have been shown
documented proof that the operation was carried out by squads trained by
regular elements of the Pakistan army.
While the field training took place at a
farm run by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, near Muzaffarabad in
Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, fluency in the handling of ordnance was taught at
another ISI safe house on the outskirts of Karachi.
Pakistan has done little to create
deniability about these connections or earlier links discovered by U.S.
intelligence agencies between the ISI and the July 7 bombing of the Indian
Embassy in Kabul.
The Pakistan army has made little secret of
the fact that the top priority of its intelligence operations is to reverse
India’s path toward social stability and economic growth. Still, why were so
many tell-tale clues left behind in these attacks that enraged the Indian
public and made the world aware that India is the softest terrorist target
among the major democracies?
Analysts piecing together the documentation
are divided over whether army chief Ashfaq Kiyani was himself in the loop on
the Mumbai attacks. It is certain that at least two corps commanders were,
however, both of whom provided materiel and arranged training for the 70-odd
terrorists tasked with the Mumbai operations.
Their hope was that India would respond to
the attacks the way it did to a failed bid to kill members of Parliament in
2001 – by mobilizing troops on the Pakistan border and creating an expectation
that a full-scale, conventional India-Pakistan war was imminent. At that time
Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee's unwise decision to "bluff" the
Pakistanis into cooperating with India by the threat of war boomeranged on New
Delhi. Foreign missions evacuated their nationals in a panic and business
confidence plunged.
