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The Mumbai Attacks: More Than Meets the Eye
Jeremy R. Hammond
Foreign
Policy Journal
Friday, Dec 05, 2008
Details have emerged regarding who was responsible
for the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, with the evidence
pointing to the Pakistani-based terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba
(LeT). But the trail doesn't end there.
Indications of a coming attack were reportedly received by intelligence
agencies well in advance. US signals intelligence (SIGINT) picked
up a spike in “chatter” indicating something was brewing,
which was supported by information from assets in Afghanistan
and Pakistan. Some of the information that was received by US
intelligence was passed on to India as early as September.
The details were specific. The CIA station chief in Delhi reportedly
met with his counterpart at India’s intelligence agency,
the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), to pass on intelligence
that LeT was planning a major attack that would come from the
sea.
(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)
Less than a week before the attacks, a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan
purportedly killed a British citizen of Pakistani descent named
Rashid Rauf, who was suspected of planning to blow up commercial
airliners flying from Britain to the U.S. He fled Britain in 2002
after being suspected of stabbing to death his uncle, Mohammed
Saeed. He settled in Bahawalpur, Pakistan, and married a relative
of Maulana Masood Azhar, the leader of another militant group,
Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM).
Besides being linked to JeM, he was also suspected by some intelligence
sources of having connections to the ISI. Pakistani authorities
arrested him in Bahawalpur in August 2006 at the behest of British
authorities, but he escaped police custody when they allowed him
to enter a mosque ostensibly to say afternoon prayers. While police
waited outside, Rauf walked out the back door. He may have just
escaped, but there were also rumors that he was secretly taken
into custody by the ISI in a plan that kept him under wraps while
preventing him from being extradited to Britain.
The location of Rauf was reportedly given to U.S. officials by
the Pakistani government, and may have been a move calculated
to appease the U.S. over charges that elements of the ISI are
still assisting militants engaged in cross-border attacks into
Afghanistan. Earlier this year, terrorists bombed the Indian embassy
in Kabul, and both India and the U.S. claimed that the ISI had
been involved in the attack.
The airstrike that killed Rauf may also have been the result
of early information obtained on the attack on Mumbai, as intelligence
agencies reportedly had learned that he was involved in the planning
of a major upcoming terrorist event. They may have sought to take
him out before such an attack could occur.
Indian intelligence had obtained its own warnings of an attack.
One indication was a request from a LeT operative to obtain international
SIM cards for an upcoming operation. There was also information
that a LeT team was training at a camp near Karachi, and that
part of their training was to prepare for launching attacks from
the sea. The team was trained under Zakir-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, also
known as “Chacha”. Also among the information received
was that the Taj Mahal hotel was pinpointed as a major target.
As a result, security at the hotel was increased, but was lessened
again just a week prior to the attacks because of complaints from
the hotel’s clients. Ratan Tata, chairman of the Tata Group,
which owns the hotel, acknowledged that warnings of a possible
attack had been received.
The Tata Group is also invested in the energy sector, and stands
to gain from the recent deal between the U.S. and India, which
would provide India with nuclear resources outside of the framework
of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards system. Pakistan has voiced
its opposition to the U.S. deal with its nuclear-armed neighbor.
On November 18, RAW intercepted a satellite phone conversation
made to a number in Lahore, Pakistan, known to be used by the
military commander of LeT known alternatively by the names Yusuf
Muzammil or Abu Hurrera, also known as “Yahah”. The
caller notified his handlers that he was heading for Mumbai with
unspecified cargo.
As a result of the intelligence it had received, India’s
Navy and Coast Guard were on the lookout for suspicious ships
entering Indian territorial waters, and were specifically told
to watch for an unidentified ship coming from Karachi.
Only one of the terrorists in the Mumbai attacks was captured
alive, Azam Amir Kasab, a resident of the territory of Punjab
in Pakistan. According to reports, he has told his interrogators
a great deal about how the attacks went down.
Kasab confessed to being a member of LeT. He and his fellow terrorists
were instructed to target foreigners, particularly Americans,
British, and Israelis. They had set out from Karachi in a ship
called the “MV Alpha”, which is allegedly owned by
Dawood Ibrahim, a terrorist wanted by India in connection with
bombings in Bombay in 1993 that resulted in 250 deaths. Ibrahim
is also wanted by Interpol, and has been designated a global terrorist
by the U.S.
Confronted with increased naval patrols that were boarding and
searching suspect vessels, the team hijacked a fishing trawler
called the “Kuber”, registration number 2303, and
killed most of its crew except for Amarsinh Solanki, whom they
kept alive to help navigate.
On November 26, as the terrorists neared their target destination,
they killed Solanki by slitting his throat. An associate of Ibrahim’s
in Mumbai had arranged to pick the team up in inflatable rubber
dinghies. They went ashore at about 9pm. Witnesses reported seeing
them land in the dinghies, which were unusual among the common
wooden fishing boats, and unloading a number of large bags.
Once on shore near the Gateway to India, Mumbai’s main
landing point near the Naval dockyard, the team split up. Four
men went to the Taj Mahal hotel, where an advance team had already
checked in on November 22 and set up a control room. Two went
to the Nariman House, the Mumbai headquarters of Chabad Lubavitch,
an ultra-orthodox Jewish group. Another acquisitioned a taxi and
drove to the railway station. Two others headed to the Leopold
restaurant, a hot spot for foreign visitors to Mumbai.
At about 9:20pm, one team arrived at the Nariman House, where
they took hostages, while another opened fire at the Leopold café.
At 9:45, terrorists entered both the Taj Mahal and Trident Oberoi
hotels, where hostages were again taken. At 10:15, two of the
men began firing indiscriminately outside the Cama hospital. At
10:30, terrorists entered the Chhatrapati Shivaji railway station
and again opened fire.
According to Pakistan’s Daily Times, the terrorists identified
and killed two U.S. intelligence officers at the Taj Mahal hotel.
Indian officials are now saying that just 10 men were responsible,
indicating that two-man teams were able to strike one target and
move on to the next. Teams held out under siege the the Nariman
House and the hotels, with the Taj Mahal the last to be cleared.
By the end, it had taken Indian forces 60 hours to kill or capture
the attackers, with their reign of terror finally ending on the
29th with nearly 200 people reported dead.
According to police, the men were aged 18 to 28. They were found
to have drugs in their system, and traces of cocaine and LSD were
found at one or more scenes of their attack, which they apparently
had taken for an additional adrenaline boost to keep them going
for the long siege and battle with Indian special forces.
A Mauritian government identity card was discovered with the
terrorists who attacked the Taj Mahal hotel, along with credit
and debit cards of a number of different banks, including HSBC
(headquartered in London and named after its founding member,
the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, with global branches),
HDFC, and ICICI (both banks in India). The Republic of Mauritius
is a former British colony and member of the Commonwealth off
the east coast of Africa, near Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.
They were reported to be using AK-47 assault rifles. Photos shown
in the press reveal what appear to be variants with a folding
stock. They were also reported to have handguns and grenades.
Additionally, police recovered sub-machine guns used by the terrorists.
An Associated Press photo of the confiscated guns reveals what
appear to be Heckler & Koch MP5-N sub-machine guns. The “N”
model is a version of the MP5 designed specifically for the U.S.
Navy and used by Navy Seals teams.
BlackBerry cell phones were also recovered from the terrorists,
containing international SIM cards investigators believe correlate
with the early intelligence further connecting the team to LeT.
During the attacks, they received calls from outside the country,
which is apparently among the evidence leading government officials
to early on state publicly that the terrorists had ties to a foreign
nation.
A global-positioning system (GPS) and satellite phone were found
in the abandoned Kuber fishing trawler. Navigation routes plotted
in the GPS revealed the planned route from Karachi to Mumbai and
back again, indicating that the terrorists hoped they might possibly
be able to escape and return to Pakistan. Investigators determined
that this was the phone used to contact Muzammil, the LeT military
commander. Calls from the phone were also traced to Lakhvi, the
LeT training specialist.
The MV Alpha was also intercepted after the attacks by the Indian
Navy.
Responsibility for the attacks was claimed via e-mail by a previously
unknown group calling itself Deccan Mujahideen. This appears to
be a front, apparently designed to direct blame upon groups within
India and give the appearance of a home-grown terrorist attack.
Deccan may refer to a neighborhood in the city of Hyderabad or
to the Decaan Plateau that dominates the middle and south of India.
The RAW traced IP addresses used to send the e-mail to an account
in Russia that was opened on the Wednesday just prior to the attack
and used to relay the message to media in India. The e-mail was
further traced to a computer in Pakistan, and investigators have
also said that it was generated by dictation using voice recognition
software.
India has called for Pakistan to hand over 20 individuals it
has alleged were involved in the attacks. Among the wanted men
are Dawood Ibrahim, Hafiz Saeed, and Maulana Masood Azhar.
As noted, Ibrahim is among Interpol’s most wanted. The
U.S. designated him as a global terrorist in 2003, stating that
he had ties to al Qaeda and that he funded attacks by militant
groups, including LeT, aimed at destabilizing the Indian government.
Ibrahim’s organization is known as the D-Company and is
known to be heavily involved in drug trafficking. According to
the U.S. government, D-Company is involved in large-scale shipment
of narcotics into the U.K. and Western Europe. He is also alleged
to have ties to the CIA through casino operations in Nepal.
Ibrahim is the son of a police constable and worked as a police
informant, only to become involved in crime. He rose through the
ranks of the underworld in Bombay (now Mumbai) to become one of
the city’s leading organized crime bosses. He later fled
to Pakistan, where he is believed to have stayed in Karachi under
the protection of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI) agency. Some Indian analysts have suggested that it was
at the behest of the ISI that Ibrahim planned the Mumbai attacks.
Pakistan has denied that he is in the country.
Wanted along with Ibrahim for the 1993 Bombay attacks is Aftab
Ansari, also an Indian national. Ansari is linked to Omar Saeed
Sheikh, a British national of Pakistani origin. Omar Sheikh is
an associate of Osama bin Laden and has been accused of masterminding
the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, a journalist for the
Wall Street Journal.
Omar Skeikh was also the paymaster of the 9/11 hijackers and
wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta in Florida. According to Indian
intelligence, working with the FBI a link was established between
Omar Sheikh and the head of Pakistan’s ISI, Lt. Gen. Mahmud
Ahmed. Sources revealed to the media that the evidence obtained
from Omar Sheikh’s cell phone indicated that it was at the
behest of Mahmud Ahmed that the money was sent to finance the
9/11 hijackers. While this has widely been reported internationally,
including by the Press Trust of India, Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper,
Agence France-Presse, and UK’s The Guardian and The Times,
it has not received any mention in the U.S. mainstream media.
Hafiz Saeed is the founder of LeT. He travelled to Peshawar to
join the CIA-backed effort to overthrow the Soviet-backed government
of Afghanistan. Peshawar served as the command base for both the
CIA and Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK). Haiz Saeed became the protégé
of Abdullah Azzam, who, along with Osama bin Laden, founded MAK
to recruit and train foreign fighters to join the mujahedeen.
The CIA worked closely with the ISI to finance, arm, and train
the mujahedeen.
By about 1988, MAK had been evolved into the group known as al-Qaeda
by bin Laden. The name “al-Qaeda” literally means
“the base”, and may either refer bin Laden’s
base of operations for the mujahedeen war effort or the actual
database of names of jihadist recruits. While numerous terrorist
attacks have been attributed to al-Qaeda over the years, it isn’t
so much a centralized organization as a loose network of individuals
and affiliate groups having roots or otherwise associated with
the CIA-backed effort against the Soviet Union.
Maulana Masood Azhar is the head of Jaish-e-Mohammed, and is
also wanted by Interpol. Like LeT, JeM is said to have close links
with the ISI, which has used the groups to wage a proxy war against
Indian forces in Kashmir.
Like Hafiz Saeed, Azhar was numbered among the veterans of the
Soviet-Afghan war. He was educated at Jamia Binoria, a madrassa
(religious school) in Karachi that also served as a recruitment
center for the mujahedeen.
He later became a leader of Karkat-ul-Mujahideen, a Pakistani
militant group, and was captured by India in Kashmir in 1994.
He was tried and acquitted, but spent six years in jail before
being freed in exchange for the release of the crew and passengers
of a hijacked Indian Airlines plane in 1999. He formed JeM after
returning to Pakistan.
Omar Saeed Sheikh was also caught and imprisoned by India for
involvement in that hijacking, and was likewise released in exchange
for the hostages. Like Azhar, Omar Seikh is reported to have close
links to the ISI and, according to former Pakistan President Pervez
Musharraf, was also an agent of MI6, Britain’s spy agency,
which sent him to engage in operations in the Balkans.
Relations between India and Pakistan also reached a crisis point
in December 2001, when gunmen attacked the Indian parliament.
JeM and Let were held responsible for that attack as well, and
both countries amassed troops on the border, a situation that
led to fears of war between two nuclear-armed countries. The U.S.
helped mediate an end to the crisis, pressuring Pakistan to crack
down on militant groups and setting in motion the plan to assist
India with its nuclear program that was finally realized this
year.
LeT was banned in Pakistan in 2002 following the attack on the
Indian parliament, but remained active in the country nevertheless.
The group has denied responsibility for the attacks in Mumbai
last week.
Pakistan has on one hand said it would formulate a response to
India’s request to turn over the 20 wanted men, and on the
other hand indicated it would not do so, insisting that the men
are either not in Pakistan or that they have been under Pakistani
surveillance and no indication seen that they were in any way
involved.
While the evidence strongly points to LeT and a network of associates
affiliated with the group or with each other, that web also includes
the CIA and MI6. One early report said that some of the Mumbai
terrorists were, like Rashid Rauf, British nationals. This was
picked up by numerous press accounts around the globe, but the
Indian government official this information was attributed to
denied ever having said such a thing.
Theories that this was a false flag operation have already begun
to spread around the internet, with varying culprits and motives.
Whatever the truth is, what is clear from the facts one is able
to piece together from media accounts is that there is more to
the Mumbai attacks than meets the eye.
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