How Involved Was Pakistan In The Mumbai Assault For Real?

It seems to me that you pretty much get as close as can be to the root of all evil anywhere between Herat and Dacca when you zero in on Pakistan's very own CIA-- which has been very much in cahoots with the CIA much of the time-- the ISI. They have nurtured virtually all of the worst players in the subcontinent from their clients and Frankenstein monster the Taliban to al-Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Hizbul Mujahideen, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and al-Badr. This morning's NY Times asserts what all Indians suspected, that Pakistan's venal Inter-Services Intelligence was indeed involved with the savage assault on Mumbai. ISI is a rogue terrorist organization that isn't under the control of the Pakistani government anymore than nuclear black marketeer A.Q. Khan was. And you can take that as you'd like.

Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based militant group suspected of conducting the Mumbai attacks, has quietly gained strength in recent years with the help of Pakistan’s main spy service, assistance that has allowed the group to train and raise money while other militants have been under siege, American intelligence and counterterrorism officials say.

American officials say there is no hard evidence to link the spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, to the Mumbai attacks. But the ISI has shared intelligence with Lashkar and provided protection for it, the officials said, and investigators are focusing on one Lashkar leader they believe is a main liaison with the spy service and a mastermind of the attacks.

...“People are having to go back and relook at all the connections,” said one American counterterrorism official, who was among several officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was still progressing.

Meanwhile Britain's Guardian has tracked down the home and family of the lobe surviving gunman, Ajmal Amir Kasab... in Pakistan. The villagers in the town tried misleading outsiders, claiming to have never heard of the terrorist. But they were all lying.

Finally one villager confirmed what was going on: "You're being given misinformation. We've all known from the first day [of the news of the terrorist attack] that it was him, Ajmal Amir Kasab. His mother started crying when she saw his picture on the television."

Attempts to meet Amir, the father, however, were not to be successful. Villagers eventually told us that he and his wife, Noor, had been mysteriously spirited away earlier in the week.
"Ajmal used to go to Lahore for work, as a labourer," continued the villager who feared being named. "He's been away for maybe four years. When he came back once a year, he would say things like, 'We are going to free Kashmir.'"

Wresting the whole of Kashmir from Indian rule is Lashkar-e-Taiba's aim. Ajmal had little education, according to locals. But it is still unclear whether he was radicalised in the village or once he had left to work elsewhere.

...But the villager who turned whistleblower said that local religious clerics were brainwashing youths in the area and that Lashkar-e-Taiba's founder, Hafiz Sayeed, had visited nearby Depalpur, where there were "hundreds" of supporters. There was a Lashkar-e-Taiba office in Depalpur, but that had been hurriedly closed in the past few days. The Lashkar-e-Taiba newspaper is distributed in Depalpur and Faridkot. Depalpur lies in the south of Punjab province, an economically backward area long known for producing jihadists.

Shown a picture of Ajmal, the villager confirmed that he was the former Faridkot resident, who had last visited the village a couple of months ago at the last festival of Eid.

Some locals have claimed that this Faridkot, and another poor village nearby called Tara Singh, are a recruitment hotbed for Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant group accused of carrying out the Mumbai attack. On the side of a building, just outside Faridkot, is graffiti that says: "Go for jihad. Go for jihad. Markaz Dawat ul-Irshad." MDI is the parent organisation of Lashkar-e-Taiba. In Depalpur, a banner on the side of the main street asks people to devote goatskins to Jamaat ud Dawa, another MDI offshoot.

Caught red-handed, Pakistan is making a big show of cracking down. It's just a show. It always is. They're virtually a CIA client state but until the ISI is disbanded and it's leaders turned over to face justice, it's all meaningless. A friend of mine pointed out today that if the Indians and Pakistanis really go at it big time, they can knock the earth off its axis. And that, my friends, really is evil.


UPDATE: TRAINING CAMP RAIDED

The Pakistani military raided a Lashkar-e-Taiba training camp in Kashmir and arrested a dozen activists, including Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, the operations chief who India claims was the mastermind behind the Mumbai attack. It's unlikely that they'll certain they won't allow Indian officials to question him-- and it remains to be seen what they actually do with him themselves.

"We've seen before how Pakistan will arrest some militants, keep them for a couple of months and then release them when the world's not paying attention," said B. Raman, a former head of the Pakistan desk at the Research and Analysis Wing (India's MI6).

"It must not be allowed to do that this time. They have to prosecute these people and dismantle the whole terrorist infrastructure," he told the Times.

Yes, good luck with that. Coddled Pakistani terrorist groups, who have a great deal of sympathy among a population which has been brainwashed to revere and idolize them, are already denouncing the arrests. One prominent Pakistani terrorist leader, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, brazenly condemned the raid, knowing full well that there is no will in his country to really put a stop to the activities if these psychotic religious extremists.

"The operation against jihadi organisations in Pakistani Kashmir is unwarranted and we strongly condemn it," he said. "The Government has shown signs of weakness by targeting Kashmiri organisations... India wants to crush the independence movement of Kashmir using the Mumbai attacks as a pretext."

Arrests and the appearance of a crackdown have continued.