More bad news on the nuke-nuke boundary
Via the Hindu. New Delhi: India has proof of the involvement of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency in last week’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai but will not level a public accusation because the ensuing tension in bilateral relations would play into the hands of those responsible for the incidents, authoritative sources claimed here on Thursday.
Asked for the sort of proof linking the ISI to the attacks, the sources said investigators had “the names of the handlers and trainers, the locations where the training was held, and some of their communication through Voice over Internet Protocol have addresses that have been used by known ISI people before.”
The sources also clarified that contrary to media reports in India and Pakistan, the demarche which was handed over to the Pakistani side earlier this week did not contain the list of 20 most wanted terrorists that had first been given to Islamabad in 2000. Once the media started saying India was demanding the immediate handing over of the 20 fugitives, of course, the Government could hardly contradict these reports since their return has been a long-standing Indian demand, the sources added.
The demarche made only a pro forma reference to the return of unnamed fugitives but was otherwise exclusively focused on the Lashkar-e-Taiba and its leader Hafiz Saeed, whom New Delhi regards as the perpetrators of the Mumbai terror strikes.
The sources said that India did not believe the civilian government in Pakistan was involved in the incidents. Asked about the Pakistani Army chief’s potential role, they said it would be surprising if the ISI were able to operate without the military leadership’s knowledge.
Describing Pakistan as a country with a fragmented power structure, the sources said India’s response to what has happened in Mumbai could not be the same as in December 2001, when a terrorist attack on Parliament triggered the offensive deployment of troops on the border and the suspension or downgrading of transport and diplomatic links. “Then, we were dealing with one Pakistan. There was Musharraf and that was it. Today, the situation is different.”
The Pakistani Army would very much like a military crisis on the border with India because that would relieve the pressures it was facing on the Afghan front. “Our dilemma is that we don’t want to play their game — we want them to continue being engaged in the fight against terrorism in the west because that’s also our war. But we can’t give them a pass either. The perpetrators have to be fixed.”
It was because of this complexity, the sources added, that India’s public response has been very limited.
Juan has stuff worth reading, making the case that the whole Reagan adventure of setting up resistance to the Soviet attempt to change, and develop Afghanistan, has deeply corrupted Pakistan, and I've been writing for years now in the Is Pakistan? series, that Pakistan has a fragmented power structure,
MUMBAI: Indian intelligence sources have confirmed to The Hindu that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) delivered two warnings of an impending terror attack on Mumbai in September. The first one was delivered through the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) on September 18. The sources said the information was of a general nature, suggesting that the Lashkar-e-Taiba was planning to attack Mumbai.
The sources said that on September 24, the CIA provided further details in response to a request from the RAW. In this second warning, the U.S. agency expressly stated that the Lashkar was planning an attack on targets where large numbers of foreigners were present, including the Taj Mahal hotel.
Both warnings corroborate the testimony of the arrested Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist, Mohammad Ajmal Amir Iman. He told the Mumbai police that the original plan was to despatch the 10-man squad from Karachi to Mumbai on September 27. He also told the police interrogators that he did not know why the operation was deferred.
The warnings also corroborated the information generated by the Intelligence Bureau that suggested that the Lashkar had conducted reconnaissance operations in Mumbai.
A senior government official said the delay raised the possibility that the CIA had quietly exerted pressure on Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate to terminate the Lashkar operation.
In the alternative, he surmised, elements in the ISI may have leaked information that the CIA was monitoring the operation. “No intelligence agency discloses all it knows even to allies. So it is probable the CIA knows more than it told us in September. We hope more information will be forthcoming,” the official said.
Phone call trail
India is also hoping for assistance in accessing electronic evidence on phone calls made and received by the terrorists during the attack – which provided what one police described to The Hindu as a “running commentary” on the operation.
Forensic experts at the RAW have determined that the calls were routed through voice-over-internet service providers based in New Jersey and Vienna. VOIP services allow subscribers to create a virtual phone number, from which cheap international calls can be made and received.
According to a source within the investigation, tracing the calls to their final destination posed “a formidable technical challenge.”
Mumbai police officials listening in to the conversation heard the terrorists inside the Taj Mahal hotel tell their controller that their operation had scored a “bonus” with the killing of the “Police Commissioner.”
The investigators believe that the terrorists inside the hotel had most likely seen television reports on the killing of Anti-Terrorism Squad chief and Joint Commissioner of Police Hemant Karkare.
As first reported in this newspaper, the terrorists used at least six mobile phones fitted with SIM cards purchased three weeks before the strike from Kolkata and New Delhi.
Kolkata police investigators have determined that three of the SIM cards used by the terrorists were part of a set of 10 Aircel and Vodaphone prepaid numbers purchased four weeks ago.
A city resident whose identification was used to buy the cards has been detained for questioning.
Delhi police officials also told The Hindu that efforts were on to discover who had purchased three other SIM cards.
The 'Vindhyagiri' (F42), a Leander class frigate, and helicopters from the Naval Air Station, Kunjali were involved in pursuit of the merchant vessel. The MV Alpha, a Vietnamese registered vessel in route to Panama, was intercepted, boarded and searched. The crew were questioned and the ship's papers checked and the vessel released.
I was just asked to submit an application for the GNSO's representatives to ICANN Geographic Regions WG. I sent the following which I'd written a month ago in a Constituency context.