Mumbai: new evidence points to Pakistani agents

As the war of words between India and Pakistan grows shriller and a worried America, anxious not to divert attention from its operations on the Afghan border, tries to calm both sides, the question remains in US and Indian minds, at least: to what extent was Pakistan, or rather its rogue military intelligence agency, the ISI, involved in the terrorist attack on Mumbai and how much did the Pakistani government know about the plot?
 
A report emerging from Pakistan this week, that appears to have been corroborated in part by Ajmal Kasav, the sole surviving terrorist, claims that the terrorists were trained by Zakiur Rahman, commander-in-chief of the radical Islamic group Lashkar e Taiba, under the aegis of a junior ISI major. 
 
However, the report goes on to say that the original target of the operation - said to be conceived by General Ashfaq Kiani, as head of the ISI, and continued after his promotion to army chief - was not Mumbai, but Indian Kashmir.

The few dozen Lashkar militants in training were to be ferried there from Karachi via the Indian state of Gujarat, as part of the ISI's continued, minimal support to Kashmiri jihadis, some 500 of whom still infiltrate Indian Kashmir each year.
 
Two months ago, following a major reshuffle within the ISI and increased focus on the tribal areas, the operation was officially retired. But for reasons that are not yet clear, it was apparently continued under the ISI major, possibly working independently, and Rahman.
 
According to Pakistani journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad, who uncovered details of the plan, the operation was then taken over by the Harkat-ul-Jihad, a Pakistani and former Bangladeshi militant movement now working with al-Qaeda groups on the Afghan border, where they have been under increasing pressure from American and Pakistani operations.
 
It was they, he claims, who drastically revised the operation into an attack on Mumbai, specifically targeting Western tourists and the Jewish community and hoping to inflame Indo-Pakistan relations and thus divert attention from the border regions.
 
Evidence so far uncovered by Mumbai police suggests increasingly explicit links between last week's attackers and handlers in Pakistan. Recovered satphones show calls to the Lashkar commander and other contacts in Pakistan. The email sent to Indian media by the 'Deccan Mujahideen' - ­ an apparently fabricated name - ­ claiming responsibility for the attack has been traced by the FBI to Lahore in Pakistan.

Grenades used by the Mumbai attackers have Chinese and Austrian markings, such as those used by the Pakistan army. An intercept made by Indian military intelligence warned that a Lashkar-controlled ship carrying dangerous cargo had sailed from Karachi and might try to enter Indian waters.
 
How much or how little Pakistan's government knew of all this is still unclear. Despite the appearance of its grim multi-storey headquarters in Islamabad, the ISI is neither a monolithic organisation nor is it under state control. Instead, the 10,000-strong agency functions as a state within a state, answerable neither to the army nor the President, nor the Prime Minister, and within it are numerous factions. If the ISI has now lost control of the myriad jihadi groups it trained, armed and supported over the last 25 years, Pakistan's institutions have equally lost control of the ISI.
 
Equally, there are numerous serving and former ISI officers with a wide remit, who clearly act autonomously or semi-autonomously. For some years, I had a friend, whom I will call Arif, a retired ISI major, responsible for field operations in Afghanistan.

Communications with Arif were cryptic and he was in some ways a shady character; but he had many years' first-hand experience in Afghanistan and his information was good. I never really knew how he earned his living. But I did know that he was one of a group of retired ISI officers who were still involved in freelance activities and making money in their former fields.
 
After 9/11, President Pervez Musharraf attempted to rein in the ISI, purging Islamic fundamentalists from senior positions. The Kashmir and Afghan units were also officially disbanded, although the agency continues to operate in both areas, covertly. Likewise various jihadi groups continue to operate in Pakistan, with apparent impunity. Lashkar e Taiba, which has been officially banned, has splintered into various groups, functioning under new names, and its leader, Hafiz Muhammed Syed, still operates untroubled from his base outside Lahore. ·