Pak accepts terrorists may be from its territory: US
3 Dec 2008, 0229 hrs IST, Chidanand Rajghatta, TNN
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WASHINGTON: The terrorist massacre in Mumbai was plotted in Pakistan and was executed by Pakistanis, Indian and US officials now agree. The big
question now: How culpable are the Pakistani government and its military and intelligence agency, and how can the answer be handled either way it turns out?
That’s the tricky issue facing New Delhi and Washington as they put together pieces of the terrorist jigsaw to claimed 170-plus lives, including nearly 40 Muslims and nationals from 10 countries.
US advice to India: wait and see how Pakistani government cooperates in the investigation before any punitive action. US directive to Islamabad: prove your protestations of innocence and non-complicity at the official level, with a full and transparent cooperation in the face of overwhelming evidence that the footprints of the terror attack lead back to Pakistan.
This is the gist of the exchanges between the three countries. On Tuesday, Washington broadly accepted India’s contention, based on evidence now shared with US law enforcement and intelligence agencies that the terror trail led to Pakistan. The preponderance of proof include detailed confessions by the one surviving terrorist, GPS tracks, e-mail and electronic tracks, telephone intercepts, and ordnance and forensic evidence, among other things.
US acceptance of India’s case — dismissed out-of-hand as knee-jerk, premature etc — was signaled by an unnamed senior American official who was quoted by Reuters as saying
''There are a lot of reasons to think it might be a group, partially or wholly a group, that is located on Pakistan's territory.''
The official, accompanying Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on her trip to the sub-continent, also said Islamabad had accepted the ''possibility that there might be people located on Pakistani territory,'' involved in the attack and had promised to cooperate in the investigation.
On record though, the state department continued to give Pakistan some breathing space, saying ''it’s too early to say where these attackers originated from — where they originated from, who was behind these attacks.'' The White House took the same line on Monday, enabling a relieved Pakistani press to crow that Islamabad had been declared innocent.
But every a cursory reading beyond the generalities indicate anything but a clean chit. ''The investigation will obviously point us in a certain direction. But we need to let the investigation take its course. Finger-pointing is not necessarily the best thing at this particular time,'' State Department spokesman Robert Wood said, while offering a dead giveaway to the origins by immediately adding,
''However, it’s incumbent upon Pakistan to do what it can to make sure that they’re cooperating with this investigation, and help bring these culprits to justice.''
The tricky problem both New Delhi and the international community faces is in determining the culpability of the Pakistani government and its extent — whether through over or covert complicity or through inaction and denial.
Intelligence circles say Pakistan’s government has always tried to maintain a ''plausible deniability'' in all its covert activity, including sponsorship of terrorism and nuclear proliferation. For instance, even in the AQ Khan case, Islamabad initially denied proliferation, then insisted Khan had gone rogue and done it on his own.
Khan now says the government was very much in the loop and authorised it.
In the Mumbai terror strike, intelligence circles surmise that it is possible the ISI had ''outsourced'' the operation to a former controller now functioning as a LeT commander or operative, who may or may not have turned rogue. Since preparation for the strike is thought to have stretched a year or more, it was conceived well before the current civilian government took change, and it might have happened without its approval or knowledge.
But no one, including Pakistani experts, doubts that LeT is a creation of the ISI, whose officers are often seconded to the terror group. ''Lashkar-e-Taiba was fostered by ISI as a surrogate to help Mujaheddin by Kashmir...in recent years they have broken out of control from ISI,'' Shuja Nawaz, a thoughtful Pakistani scholar and brother of former Army chief Asif Nawaz Janjua, who has written a candid history of a militarized Pakistan titled ''Crossed Swords,'' said on public television on Monday, openly articulating what is said in hushed whispers in Pakistan.
Nawaz said the LeT is still operating in Pakistan, holding large meetings and collecting funds, and a true test of Islamabad’s commitment will be to act on it now
. ''If there is any ambivalence (towards LeT), now is the time...there should be no reason not to act,'' he said.
But going by past record, chances are bleak that Pakistan will stick to any commitment on crackdown or cooperation particularly since the military still seems to call the shots in Islamabad. A study of past crises between the two sides compiled by the Washington-based Stimson Center elaborately chronicles Islamabad’s fudging and double-speak on the terrorism issue based on interviews with U.S officials.
In one chapter, the study relates how former military ruler
Pervez Musharraf kept fudging the infiltration and terrorism issue by telling U.S Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage that ''nothing is happening'' across the Line of Control. Armitage, it says, insisted on a more than a present-tense commitment from Musharraf.
''General Musharraf also claimed that training camps for militants did not exist on Pakistani soil. Armitage shared with Musharraf evidence to the contrary,'' the study relates. Musharraf finally commits not to allow Pakistan and the territory under its control not to be used for terrorism. ''Was Musharraf’s pledge substantive or just expedient?''the study asks, going to suggest that it was mostly the latter.