India has failed to convince large sections of the international community that the ISI had orchestrated the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist strike. The experts of the various countries whose nationals died at the hands of the terrorists are convinced on the basis of their own substantial independent technical intelligence that the terrorist attack was carried out by Pakistani nationals belonging to the LeT, who came to Mumbai by boat from Karachi for carrying out the strike. They are also convinced on the basis of the voluminous evidence in their archives about the privileged relationship between the ISI and the LeT. But they claim not to have seen any conclusive evidence so far to show that the ISI had orchestrated the attack. A question, which they often posed during interactions in non-governmental discussions, was whether the terrorists would have killed nationals of the US, the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Canada and Australia if they had been deputed by the ISI to indulge in the carnage.
Some of these experts were earlier convinced of the ISI hand behind the attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul in the first week of July, 2008, when Lt.Gen. Nadeem Taj was the ISI Director-General. They were prepared to allow for the possibility that Lt Gen Taj, before he was removed from the ISI on September 30, 2008, allegedly under US pressure by Gen Pervez Ashfaq Kayani, Pakistan’s Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), might have also planned the Mumbai attack by the LeT and got its cadres chosen for the attack trained. In this connection, it is significant that Ajmal Kasab, the lone Pakistani survivor now facing trial, had reportedly stated during his interrogation that the attack was planned for September 26, but was postponed. These experts pointed out that Taj was still the DG of the ISI on September 26, 2008.The Americans had allegedly got Taj removed because of their conviction that his was the brain behind the Kabul attack and that Taj, who has a reputation of being rabidly anti-Indian and anti-US, had leaked out some information shared by the Americans with him to the Taliban. While thus some American experts had an open mind on the possibility of the involvement of Taj in the Mumbai carnage, they tended to give the benefit of doubt to Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha, who has been the DG of the ISI since September 30, 2008. He enjoyed a good reputation in the West as a balanced person, who would not indulge in this type of operation, particularly when it was partly directed against Western nationals and Jewish civilians.
Apart from the way the attack was planned and executed, the most significant aspect of the attack was the targeting of foreign nationals — particularly the cream of the foreign business community who frequent these hotels. It was because of this that the technical intelligence agencies of the Western countries diverted all their capabilities to cover the conversations between the terrorists and their handlers in Pakistan. It was said in well-informed counter-terrorism circles that the US moved one of its communication satellites over Mumbai during the 60 hours that the drama lasted in order to cover these conversations.
Pakistans reluctance to hand over Omar Sheikh was due to the long history of contacts between him and the ISI and between him and Osama bin Laden.
After the drama was over and the National Security Guards (NSGs) had rescued the surviving hostages, the Western countries had all their surviving nationals quietly flown to Europe where they were thoroughly debriefed by special teams from their intelligence agencies. It is said that the French even sent a special plane for evacuating the French and other Western survivors from Mumbai to Paris.
Western experts were surprised that neither the Mumbai Police nor the central intelligence agencies showed interest in detaining the surviving foreign hostages in India in order to debrief them thoroughly. If they had done so, the details collected by them would have formed an important part of the dossier prepared by the Ministry of Home Affairs against Pakistan and disseminated to foreign Governments. It is learnt that such details, which could have been obtained by debriefing the foreign survivors, hardly figured in the dossier.
According to foreign experts, the Mumbai Police and the central intelligence agencies were so excited by the capture alive of one of the Pakistani perpetrators that they seemed to have devoted all their attention to interrogating him and getting as many details as possible, which could help them to fix Pakistan. They complain that other important aspects which might have helped them in reconstructing the terrorist attack, drawing the right lessons from it and preventing a repetition of similar attacks in future did not receive much attention.
In the case of Rashid Rauf, it was alleged by many in Pakistan that he was aware of the contacts of the JeM with the ISI and of the identities of the elements in Pakistan which trained the suicide bombers, who carried out the London blasts of July 2005.
Despite what has been stated above, it must be admitted that the American pressure on Pakistan was a little more than in the past because of two reasons. First, because of the anger in Israel and the Jewish Diaspora in the West over the brutal massacre of six Israeli nationals — two of them with dual US nationality — and a Jewish person from Mexico. Second, because of the concerns of Western businessmen, with business interests in India, over the security of their life and property in India.
Under this pressure, Pakistan ostensibly acted against the JUD, through measures such as placing its Amir Pro. Hafeez Mohammad Sayeed under house arrest, arresting some cadres at senior, middle and junior levels, freezing the bank accounts of the organization, etc. Interestingly, it attributed its actions to the decision of the anti-terrorism committee of the UN Security Council to designate the JUD as a terrorist organization and blacklist four of its top leaders including Prof Sayeed. It sought to avoid adding to the anti-Government anger in the pro-jihadi sections of its population by creating an impression that its actions were dictated by the decision of the UN Anti-Terrorism Committee, which the Government was bound to obey, and not by US pressure.
Since the terrorist attack lasted 60 hours and the lives of the nationals of many countries were in danger, the intelligence agencies of India, Israel, the US and the UK — and possibly of other countries too — were monitoring through technical means the conversations of the terrorists holed up in the two hotels and in the Jewish centre with each other and with their controllers in Pakistan. Thus, a substantial volume of independent technical intelligence exists — collected by the intelligence agencies of these countries independently of each other.
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