Accidental Blogger

My apologies for the long note (luckily the long part is below the fold), but Propublica and the Washington Post have just published two articles about the Mumbai attacks.. and Mumbai continues to interest me because I think the cold-blooded intent, the conscious choices, the pleasure taken in the killing, the personal touch, these make Sajid Mir and company more evil than President Bush (I am not sure about Rumsfeldt, he always struck me as a bit of the Sajid Mir type) and I find myself trying to figure out if my "gut reaction" is intellectually defensible? Is it really correct to feel that the murder of 170 people was a more evil act than the bombing of thousands? After two years, I still think so, but I welcome comments.

Anyway, I went back and looked at postings on our yahoogroup from the time of the attacks. At that time we did not know the identity of the attackers, but we all assumed they were from Pakistan (though there was some thought that they may be Indian Muslims trained and assisted by Pakistani groups, and that they may also have a Bangladesh connection). A few excerpts from those exchanges are below the fold. Some have stood the test of time, others do not seem to have panned out…

1. Security and intelligence failure. The Indian state has faced terrorism in various forms for decades, yet it's security apparatus was shown to be absolutely incompetent when this attack took place. This failure is an internal Indian failure and cannot be laid at the door of Pakistan or Indian Muslims or any other party. It is true that to some extent no one can plan against terrorists who take actions that were always physically possible, but just never imagined since they had never been attempted until that day (9-11 comes to mind….anyone could have hijacked planes and flown them into buildings anytime in the last 60 years, but until it was actually done, no one was ready for it), but the Keystone Kops level of response (with live TV 50 feet away from the terrorist hostage situation and crowds of onlookers in every direction!) is still a shock.

2. State sponsored terrorist outfits in Pakistan. Whatever the incompetence of the Indian state and whatever the grievances of Indian Muslims, this could not have happened without the existence of tens of thousands of trained, armed, organized terrorists who have been provided shelter, support and encouragement for decades. There are 10 maoist insurgencies in India. There are dozens of other aggrieved groups, but to muster this kind of operation, you need a terrorist infrastructure that would not have existed without Pakistani state help. Again, Pakistan can and will complain that their current regime is not complicit in the act itself and that India itself is to blame for self inflicted wounds like Gujrat and Babri Masjid, but it is increasingly difficult for them to explain why the actors still seem to have a safe haven in Pakistan. I have had several Pakistanis tell me in recent days that the kashmir mujahideen operation is so big and its support in the public is extensive enough that the Pakistani govt cannot shut it down even if it wants to. This argument is not going to fly forever because the pakistani state is dependent on the very powers its Non-State actors are determined to destroy (and destroy in the most brutal and ruthless manner possible). Not only is the state bankrolled by an international community that (no matter what its other disagreements) is united in its fear of jihadism, the country cannot really sustain a state of near-war with India either. One way or the other, the state will have to act against these groups. And the days when Musharraf and his generals could play a double game (or, morel likely, when the Americans really did not care about India specific terrorists) are over.  It may not happen in the next few weeks, but in the next few months Pakistan will either have to take action against these people or it will face economic ruin (war is not only way to settle these things)(this prediction has not proved true until now).

3. The grievances of Indian muslims. These are real and if India is to rise as a new power, they will have to isolate the Islamists without further alienating their muslim population. Given the decades of RSS propaganda and the fact that Indians are not that different from Pakistanis, one can expect that this will not be an easy task for India. Still, I think the general Pakistani assumption that India cannot possibly have the maturity to carry this off may be mistaken. Wishful thinking? We will have to wait and see… Omar Ali

Chat, 
My point is that preconceived notions about each other are present on all sides of this conflict and are not limited to Pakistanis. And Pakistanis are not the only people fed some poison in school. I wonder if you have ever attended an RSS course?

Anyway, I will try to restate my "optimism" in a different way:1. Whether a trend looks good or bad depends to some extent on our prior expectations. If we start with the notion that there is or was one United, Secular, Progressive India and then look at what is happening now, we are bound to be shocked and disappointed. The actual fact is that secular, progressive, democratic and developed India is a work in progress. The baseline is actually worse than we would like to acknowledge (and perhaps it is not even a good idea to acknowledge it too much….maybe one has to pretend things are better in order to make them better).2. Given where India was 100 years ago (the extent of caste discrimination, the extent of poverty, the extent of ignorance, the primitive nature of governance, the medieval supremacist notions of many educated Indian Muslims, the crude fascism of people like Savarkar, the inferiority complexes of many educated North Indian Hindus, the underdeveloped notion of a unitary indian "nation") it has made a lot of progress. All the movement is not forward. Many things have also been lost and many opportunities squandered. But a base has been built for something better. We keep bringing up Gujrat because that one act of organized mass murder and the callous coverup that has followed were exactly the wrong choice at a very critical time. Still, its not the end of the story. Thanks to Bollywood, cricket, mass indoctrination, and yes, thanks to Pakistan providing a manageable "enemy", India is more of a nation now than it has ever been. Some may disagree about the worth of that achievement, but the glass is at least half full.

3. India and Pakistan are joined at the hip. One cannot go to hell without dragging the other down too. And one cannot become prosperous without the other deriving some benefit as well. You are looking at the military-mullah complex as the only real force in Pakistan. They are powerful, but not all powerful. There is a reason why America was able to force Zardari on them. And Zardari (who is hardly a knight in shining armor) is not some unique outlier in the matter of wanting to make peace with India and get rid of the self destructive jihadi paradigm from Pakistani policy. Tomorrow, he may be dumped and Nawaz Sharif brought in his place and if anything, the Sharifs will do even more to normalize relations with India. Pakistan itself is split down the middle in this matter. The jihadi menace is not a minor matter and the Jihadi wing of the pakistani establishment is very real, but not all powerful and currently NOT in control, though not completely out of the establishment. 

4. The big clash is going to be within Pakistan. Provided India can avoid a new round of self destructive pogroms and its security services can improve their day to day functioning, India will pull through. What makes me an optimist is my feeling that Pakistan East of the Indus will pull through as well. 
Omar Ali 
— On Sun, 11/30/08, Chat Mohan <> wrote:

From: Chat Mohan <To: "omar ali" < Date: Sunday, November 30, 2008, 2:12 AM Omar, I do want to believe and share in your "optimism.  However, I think the Jihadi/Islamist/military/ISI establishment that has been nurtured into the tree with deep roots over the past three generations is too well-established to change without major internal or external influenced revolution.  The poison that has been fed to the masses by the Establishment over three generations will necessarily take many generations to detoxify.   I have no doubt that there are many Pakistanis, such as this forum members, who are desirous of peace with India and build a secular progressive democratic state.  The problem is that these people don't form a significant number or have the necessary power to be effect the great change that is required.   You quote Zardari trying to rein in ISI.  The reason he is in the Presidency is entirely due to American doings.  As I said before, I do believe that Zardari is very sincere, but he doesn't have the power and clout to challenge the Establishment and institute radical changes.     As for India,  I entirely blame the Indian leaders to have given an opportunity for communalism to flourish and for their total failure of political will responsibility in preventing terrorists from acting with such impunity.  You remind me of Gujarat.  Yes, I internally died as a Hindu on that horrible day.  But let us not also forget that The Gujarat pogrom would not have happened without the provocative burning alive of the Hindus in Godhra.  By the way, I am not a subscriber to any ideology -leftist, rightist, religious or whatever.  I hate hypocritical political correctness and like to call a spade a spade.   Yes, you are right that the Hindu-Muslim communalism falls right into the hands of the ISI which promptly has been using it to destabilize India just as it used the Khalistani separatists.   I do believe that the ISI has set up many domestic terror cells comprising Indian Muslims and has been instrumental in many provocative terror attacks including Godhra train burning.   The Indian public-both Hindus and Muslims- and the politicians have totally failed to recognize this and tailor their domestic approach.  Don't forget that the scores of terror attacks, since the Gujarat pogrom, against temples, bazaars and other places have not resulted in any significant Hindu backlash.     Before the ISI machinations began in  the 80's, there was general communal harmony between Hindus and Muslims.  I still remember my Muslim class-mate Iqbal who often came to our home in India to study together.  No one in those days used to think in terms of Hindu/Muslim communal lines.   As for the recent happenings, it is evident that the ISI/Establishment has stepped up its actions against India lately.  The Kabul embassy attack was a declaration "war" by the ISI.  The scores of provocative stepped-up attacks in India this year by the ISI-sponsored cells, SIMI/Indian Mujahideen, were designed to incite more communal pogroms on the scale of Gujarat.  As these failed to materialize in large-scale Hindu reaction, the ISI apparently decided to take matters in its own hands and attack Bombay with its own crack Jihadis; an operation of this magnitude couldn't have happened without ISI's support.  The targeting of foreigners was designed to cripple India economically by driving away foreign investment and damaging India geopolitically in international circles, in addition to stirring up Hindu reaction against Muslims.     To conclude, in my opinion, the Establishment will fight off any feeble calls for a paradigm change and continue to export terror and proxy war to India and Afghanistan.    

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From: omar ali > Sent: Saturday, November 29, 2008 5:15:17 PM Subject: Asiapeace (ACHA) comment Red Alert: Possible Geopolitical Consequences of the Mumbai Attacks

Chat,If nothing is ever going to change in Pakistan, why would there be any person like Zardari in the presidency trying to rein in the ISI? This is a civil war in Pakistan. Every Pakistani is not a jihadist and every pakistani is not against the jihadists. Having said that, I have no doubt that reining in the ISI-Jihadi complex is not going to be easy. Its been built up over decades and of course an element of muslim separatism and anti-indianism is built into the founding ideology, but things change. Even in Pakistan. Musharraf took the route of leaving the Anti-Indian jihadis alone but that strategy is no longer tenable and will not be tolerated by the US and its allies. At the same time, the US embassy has an idea of the magnitude of the job and will try to balance the need for action against the need for keeping pakistan functional.. ..its not going to be pretty.

Meanwhile, India has to do better at home as well. IF the Indian state were more functional and if Indian Muslims had not been given genuine grounds for feeling aggrieved (need I remind you about Gujrat?), the ISI's job would become impossibly difficult. If the Indian security services stay on their current Keystone Kops level and if Modi and friends continue to provide recruits to Jihadism, the ISI's job will become much easier. NOTHING justifies the kind of mass murder spree we just saw in Mumbai, but if India wants to play with the big boys, they will have to do better than this too (and you know I am an indophile and hope they DO get  their act together).
Omar ALi
— On Sat, 11/29/08, Chat Mohan > wrote:

From: Chat Mohan <> Date: Saturday, November 29, 2008, 5:26 PM Nothing is going to change in Pakistan unless the "Establishment" (ISI/military) decides to change.  As most Indians do, I also believe that Zardari is very sincere in his desire for peace, but will remain powerless to effect any radical change.  But, the real rulers of Pakistan have been and will always be the army/ISI at least through our lifetime.   The only power that can force a real change in Pakistan are the Saudis who themselves have an Islamist design for the world.   The Establishment and the Pakistani public at-large will continue to support the Islamic terror groups and cherish them as a significant asset against India and Afghanistan.      Chat Mohan   The following article by Fatah summrizes the facts very well:   Tarek Fatah: Look to Pakistan power struggle for roots of Mumbai murders Posted: November 27, 2008, 4:37 PM by Kelly McParland  Tarek Fatah,      The terrorist mayhem in Mumbai had barely subsided when I received the first e-mail suggesting the attacks had been carried out by agents of Mossad – Israel's foreign intelligence agency – masquerading as Islamic terrorists to give Muslims a bad name. 
Alex James of Toronto forwarded a news item claiming, "India's Internal Security Police are now holding and questioning an identified Israeli Mossad agent, who had been in communication with some of the alleged terrorists in India two weeks before the black-op attacks took place." 
As ridiculous as this may sound, chances are that countless Muslims are deluding themselves into believing that it is not their co-religionists who are responsible for the savagery let loose on India, but some hidden U.S.-Zionist conspiracy against Islam. 
If at all there was an intelligence agency whose fingerprints can be spotted at the crime scene, it appears to be Islamist rogue elements from Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), which is hell-bent on disrupting India's (recently improving) relations with neighbouring Pakistan. 
For two decades, the ISI has been the de-facto government in Pakistan, toppling regimes, aiding the Taliban, giving cover to al-Qaeda fugitives and running a business empire worth billions of dollars.  In July, the new democratically elected government in Islamabad, led by Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, attempted to bring the ISI under civilian control. Under threat of a military coup, it had to perform a humiliating about-face within 24 hours. 
Then last Sunday, Pakistan's Foreign Minister announced that the political wing of the ISI, which is responsible for rigging elections and blackmailing politicians, had been disbanded, saying, "The ISI is a precious national institution and wants to focus on counterterrorism activities." 
It seems the Foreign Minister had spoken too soon. Within hours of his announcement, the BBC reported that an unnamed senior security official had contradicted the statement. 
While this tussle for control of the country's intelligence network was going on behind the scenes, on Tuesday, the president of Pakistan, Asif Zardari, threw a bombshell that caught the Pakistan military establishment off-guard. Speaking to an Indian TV audience via a satellite link, President Zardari announced a strategic shift in Pakistan's military doctrine. He told a cheering Indian audience that Pakistan had adopted a "no first-strike" nuclear policy. 
This apparently did not go down well within Pakistan's military establishment, which has ruled the country for decades using the Indian bogeyman to justify the maintenance of a huge military machine on a permanent war footing.  Immediately, military commentators denounced Zardari, with one saying he believed the President was "not fully informed or completely aware of" Pakistan's policy on the issue. 
To further alarm Pakistan's own military-industrial complex, Zardari borrowed a quote from his late wife,  Benazir Bhutto, who once said that there's a "little bit of India in every Pakistani and a little bit of Pakistan" in every Indian.  "I do not know whether it is the Indian or the Pakistani in me that is talking to you today," Zardari said, amid applause from his high-profile audience, which included diplomats, politicians and industrialists. 
While most Pakistanis welcomed the new air of peace and friendship between Indian and Pakistan, the country's religious right was upset. 
Just a month ago, the founder of one of Pakistan's most feared armed Islamist groups had accused Zardari of being too dovish toward India, and criticized him for referring to militants in Indian-held Kashmir as "terrorists. 
Then, this week, the so-called Deccan Mujahideen struck against India with the clear aim of triggering a Hindu backlash against the country's minority Muslims – with the obvious attendant danger to Pakistan-India relations. 
Most security commentators agree that the Deccan Mujahideen is merely a tag of convenience, and that behind this well-planned terror attack lies Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a major militant group fighting in Indian Kashmir – the same group that has recently warned Zardari to desist from warming up to India. 
Time will tell whether these Islamists succeed or whether the people of India – Hindus and Muslims alike – can see through this provocation and embrace the hand of friendship extended by President Zardari. 
In the meantime, Muslims around the world will also have to decide whether to enter the 21st century and distance themselves from the doctrine of armed jihad, or embrace these murderous haters of joy and peace. National Post http://network. nationalpost. com/np/blogs/ fullcomment/ archive/2008/ 11/27/tarek- fatah-look- to-pakistan- power-struggle- for-roots- of-mumbai- murders.aspx <http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2008/11/27/tarek-fatah-look-to-pakistan-power-struggle-for-roots-of-mumbai-murders.aspx>&#160; tarekfatah@rogers. com <mailto:tarekfatah@rogers.com> 
Tarek Fatah is the author of Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State (Wiley).

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From: omar ali 

The geopolitical consequences are not just a matter of what seems in the political interest of the Indian government. They do depend on what has happened and what response comes from Pakistan. lets look at some knowns and them guess at the unknowns.1. Obviously, Pakistan is going to be blamed in some way for having organized and trained these terrorists (or their initial mother organizations) in the first place. Some people in Pakistan will complain that the US itself started this monster in Afghanistan, but that will not buy them any sympathy. Whatever role the US played, Pakistan's "intelligence" services (what an ironic term) picked up that ball and ran with it. Now, this is their baby and everyone else expects them to do something about it. 2. IF the current pakistani government goes out of its way to coo
perate and IF there is no direct link between current ISI officers and this particular operation, they can avoid serious sanctions, but they will face an even more aggressive Islamist revolt within Pakistan as this kind of cooperation with the infidel forces will go beyond just Afghanistan (which is bad enough in the eyes of the Islamists) but will strike at the very heart of the whole jihadi operation in Pakistan. People like Hafiz Saeed and Maulana Azhar may have to be shut down. Azhar is already outside the official loop, but until now the military has protected Hafiz Saeed and his LET operation (presumably by convincing the Americans that these are Kashmir specific terrorists and that protecting them is a red line that the Pak army cannot cross, etc etc) but this may no longer be tenable. 3. Pakistan will probably have to give up Daud Ibrahim. given his longtime links with the ISI, my guess is that if he is still in Pakistan he will be handed over dead rather than alive.4. IF the operation was arranged via BD, then BD will also have to take action against the Islamists there. Again, the Americans and Indians are actually easier to satisfy than the jihdadis. The military regime may face an islamist revolt similar to the one the Pak army is already facing.
 I will stick my neck out with predictions: 1. Pakistan and BD will promise to cooperate and actually WILL take action against Jihadis and underworld networks they have hitherto sheltered or even assisted. 2. In exchange for this cooperation, they will get more money and no serious sanctions will be applied on them by either India or the US led coalition. Some cosmetic sabre rattling will no doubt take place. But good sense will prevail.3. The jihadis will be in a state of open war not only with all the infidel nations, but also with the current regimes in Pakistan and BD.4. India will survive this crisis and if they can control the impulse to kill a few thousand innocent Muslims, they will actually emerge stronger because this will lead to some serious reorganization of their extremely primitive and inept security services. 5. BD will probably survive an uptick of violence there as well.6. Pakistan will be the biggest loser. If they cooperate with the international community, the jihadi insurgency will accelerate and the jihadist section of the establishment will fight a messy rearguard action against the pragmatists who will cooperate with the anti-jihadist powers. If they dont cooperate, they will be alternately pressured and cajoled by the US and its friends and while immediate consequences may not be bloody, the long term damage to Pakistan as a member of the international community will be very severe.7. If Pakistan does not cooperate, this WILL make things harder for India. Their establishment is as corrupt and inept as ours and the pressure to do something will overwhelm their good sense….in that case, we may take them down with us….I do think this is the LESS likely scenario. I am an optimist.
Omar Ali