Afia Ambreen
The Mumbai terror attacks were claimed by India to be its 9/11. For more than 66 hours, 10 highly trained militants played havoc in India’s commercial metropolis, spraying bullets and shedding the blood of civilians and tourists in November 2008, bringing the two nuclear neighbours to the brink of an all-out war. Ironically, it has been termed India’s “9/11“. But contrary to popular belief, it was not the ‘deadliest’ attacks on the Indian soil. In Mumbai itself, the 2006 Train bombings killed 209 innocents. Since its formation, India has been a victim to numerous terrorist attacks.
The Mumbai case is quite unique: one incident with two jurisdictions and two trials. While the Indians managed to nab Ajmal Kasab and were able to obtain his confession to close the trial, proving conspiracy in a different jurisdiction is more complex and requires a far superior quality of evidence. Therefore, the legal experts from both sides need to sit together rather than sulk and point fingers. However, the 26/11 terror attacks threw up many controversies. Some were forgotten with the passing of time. But even after a year, the death of anti-terrorism squad (ATS) chief Hemant Karkare continues to raise questions. Karkare, additional commissioner of police Ashok Kamte, and encounter specialist Vijay Salaskar were killed on the night of 26/11 when two of the terrorists, Abu Ismail and Ajmal Amir Kasab, opened fire on the vehicle in which they were travelling. “I still do not have the answers to several of my questions,” said Kavita Karkare, the ATS chief’s widow. “I would like to know why it took 40 minutes for help to reach the injured officers in Rang Bhavan Lane despite it being so close to the police headquarters.”
In this context, German author Elias Davidsson in his book titled “Betrayal of India – Revisiting the 26/11 Evidence” disclosed that the 2008 Mumbai attacks were pre-planned and executed by India itself while the United States and Israel were also complicit in conceiving, planning, directing and executing the attacks and India directly blamed Pakistan for these attacks. In the introduction of his book, Davidsson has mentioned that a cursory examination of the news reports regarding the Mumbai events reveals immediately four major reasons for subjecting the official account to an exacting scrutiny: (i) It is puzzling that it took 1,000 police officers, security forces personnel and trained commandos more than 60 hours to subdue ten gunmen scattered over several locations. (ii) The Indian authorities, including India’s prime minister, immediately blamed Pakistani entities for the attacks, i.e. before any investigation had even started. (iii) No organization is known to have claimed responsibility for the complex operation conducted in Mumbai. (iv) The political class of the United States showed immediate and inordinate interest in the events, although they were occurring 8,000 miles away and were not directed at Americans or at an American target.
The book has raised a storm in India. Davidsson has developed his argument with detailed research and authenticated resources. Indian version of Mumbai attacks lies bare and exposed. He has concluded that Indian state’s investigation of the attacks was a big eye wash to bamboozle the state narrative and cheat Indian and international audience, just to blame Pakistan. The author blames Indian establishment and their US partners and writes, “It is highly plausible, that major institutional actors in India, the United States and possibly Israel, were complicit in conceiving, planning, directing and executing the attacks of 26/11; evidence of a deceptive investigation is even stronger”. He further stated that Ajmal Kasab was arrested 20 days earlier and the facilitators of terrorists had used American telephone numbers.
Relations between India and Pakistan have been bad ever since both countries attained independence in August 1947. Disputes over territory, division of common assets of the colonial state, forced transfer of minorities in some border provinces and other related issues constitute a case of clashing nationalisms. Three wars and a dangerous showdown in the hills of Kargil in Kashmir in May 1999 that nearly drove both sides to a nuclear confrontation are indicative of the explosive nature of the rivalry between these two major South Asian states. In the wake of the 13 December 2001 terrorist attacks on the Indian Parliament, their armies were amassed in hundreds of thousands along the border. In both these cases, international troubleshooting played a major role in defusing the explosive situation. Hindu extremist groups were involved in terrorism, most notoriously in the attack on the Samjhauta Express travelling from New Delhi to Lahore on 18 February 2007.
The Mumbai mayhem on 26 November 2008 proved to be sunset of the indo-Pak peace dialogues. India postponed all the secretary levels talks on trade, Siachen and Sir Creek. It also canceled the cricket tour of Pakistan, the meeting of Indian Pakistan Joint Commission on Environment and tensed the visa issuance process for the Pakistani nationals. India opened all the option and highlighted its war alertness to encounter terrorism and concentrated to influence the international community against the Pakistani extremism. Pakistan responded with the same preparedness, the Pakistani military and Political authorities made it clear that they ready to face the war consequence in order to defend their country.
It has clearly proved that Indian secret agencies; particularly RAW arranged coordinated terror attacks in Mumbai and orchestrated that drama only to defame Pakistan in the world, but also to fulfill a number of other sinister aims. Nevertheless, all these terror attacks were planned by Indian security agencies to distort image of Pakistan and its primary intelligence agency, ISI, linking it with the banned group Lashkar-e-Taiba. In these terms, coordinated terror assaults of November 26, 2008 in Mumbai were part of the same Indian scheme.
