January 7, 2009
Dossier From India Gives New Details of Mumbai Attacks
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
From www.nytimes.com
NEW DELHI — In the beginning, they were 32. A squad of suicide bombers raised in Pakistan, they were taught how to make bombs, withstand interrogation, and fight to their death.
They were whittled down to 10, and on a Saturday morning in November, they set sail from Karachi with coordinates plotted on a global positioning set. Once in Mumbai, they went on a killing spree, leaving 163 dead, all the while receiving detailed instructions and pep talks from their handlers across the border. Details of their gory mission have been compiled by Indian authorities and officially shared Monday with the Pakistani government. The New York Times has seen a copy of the dossier.
The information seems designed to achieve at least two Indian objectives. First, it seeks to demonstrate that the attackers were sent from Pakistan. It contains photographs of materials found on the fishing trawler, from a bottle of Mountain Dew soda packaged in Karachi to pistols that bore the markings of a gun manufacturer in Peshawar to a Pakistani-made matchbox, detergent powder, and shaving cream, called “Touchme.”
Second, it seeks to rally international support for the Indian effort to squeeze Pakistan. It contains a list of 26 foreigners killed in the attacks, chronicles India’s efforts in recent years to persuade Pakistan to investigate suspects involved in terror attacks inside India and shut down terror training camps inside Pakistani territory. In its final pages, it demands that Pakistan hand over “conspirators” to face trial in India and comply with its promise to stop terrorist groups from functioning inside its territory. It was shared this week with diplomats from friendly nations; one described it as “comprehensive,” another as “convincing.”
Although the dossier takes pains not to blame serving or former officials in Pakistan’s army or spy agency, Indian officials have consistently hinted at their complicity, at least in training the commando-style fighters who carried it out. On Tuesday, the Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, upped the ante but stopped short of making a direct accusation. “There is enough evidence to show that, given the sophistication and military precision of the attack, it must have had the support of some official agencies in Pakistan,” he said.
Pakistan on Tuesday rejected the Indian allegation. “Scoring points like this will only move us further away from focusing on the very real and present danger of regional and global terrorism,” Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s Information Minister, said in a statement, according to the Associated Press. “It is our fond resolve to insure that non-state actors to do not use Pakistan’s soil to launch terrorist attack any where in the world.”
Pakistan has said it is examining the information dispatched by India.
The dossier, along with a power-point presentation made to diplomats here, narrates a journey of zeal, foibles and careful planning, one whose blow-by-blow media coverage was followed by handlers, believed to be in Pakistan, and used in turn to caution the gunmen on the ground about the movement of Indian security forces and motivate them to keep fighting.
“Everything is being recorded by the media. Inflict the maximum damage. Keep fighting. Don’t be taken alive,” says a caller to a gunman inside the Oberoi Hotel close to 4 a.m. on the first day of the three-day siege.
“Throw one of two grenades at the Navy and police teams, which are outside,” came one instruction to the gunmen inside the Taj Mahal hotel.
“Keep two magazines and three grenades aside and expend the rest of your ammunition,” went another set of instructions to the attackers inside Nariman House, which housed an Orthodox Jewish center, on the second evening, with a directive to “conclude” the operation the next morning.
The telephone conversations, selected transcripts of which have been compiled in the dossier, chronicle a steady exchange between the attackers in Mumbai and their counselors.
At the Taj, they are asked whether they have set the hotel on fire; one of the attackers says he is preparing a mattress for that purpose. At the Oberoi, one of them asks whether to spare women (“kill them,” comes the terse reply) and Muslims (he is told to release them and kill the rest, all the while keeping the phone line open so their interlocutors can hear the gunfire). At Nariman House, a residential building which housed a Jewish community center, they are told how to damage India’s standing with a key ally, Israel.
“Keep in mind that the hostages are of use only as long as you do not come under fire because of their safety,” a handler, identified only as Wassi, exhorts. “If you are still threatened, then don’t saddle yourself with the burden of the hostages. Immediately kill them.”
“Yes, we shall do accordingly,” the gunman inside Nariman House replies. “God willing.”
“If the hostages are killed, it will spoil relations between India and Israel,” Wassi continues.
According to the investigation, the 10 men boarded a small boat in Karachi at 8 a.m. on Nov. 22, sailed a short distance before boarding a bigger carrier called the Al-Husseini, believed to be owned by Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, a key operative of a banned Pakistan-based terrorist group called Lashkar-e-Taiba. The following day, the 10 men took over an Indian fishing trawler, called the MV Kuber, killed four of its crew members, spared its captain, Amar Singh Solanki, and sailed 550 nautical miles across the Arabian Sea.
Each man had two-hour watch duties on board. Each carried individual weapon packs: a Kalashnikov, a 9-millimeter pistol, ammunition, hand grenades and a bomb, weighing 8 kilograms and containing a military-grade explosive called RDX, steel ball bearings and a timer with instructions inscribed in Urdu.
By 4 p.m. on Nov. 26, the trawler approached the shores of Mumbai. The leader of the crew, identified by Indian investigators as Ismail Khan, 25, from a town called Dera Ismail Khan in the Northwest Frontier Province, contacted their handlers and received instructions. When darkness set in, they killed the captain of the trawler, Mr. Solanki. Then they boarded a motorized dinghy, the engine of which, Indian investigators say, bore marks from a Lahore-based importing company. They reached Mumbai at about 8:30 p.m., and in five teams of two, set upon their targets: the city’s busiest railway station known as Victoria Terminus, a tourist haunt called Café Leopold, the Jewish center in Nariman House, and two luxury hotels, the Taj and Oberoi.
They made one mistake. As they were leaving the fishing trawler, they told their handlers later on the phone, the waves were high and another boat was approaching, which they feared was an Indian Navy ship. They left behind Ismail Khan’s satellite phone; it was recovered by Indian investigators and its photograph included in the dossier. A GPS, also recovered from the trawler suggests they kept a safe distance of at least 60 kilometers from Indian shore until they got closer to Mumbai.
The gunmen seemed to use Indian mobile phones during the course of the attacks. Their counselors, 6 in all, used Voice-Over-Internet-Protocol numbers, including one from an American company called “Callphonex.”
The telephone calls stop, inexplicably, about 24 hours into the attacks.
The last call transcript in the dossier is at 10:26 p.m. on Nov. 27, between a gunman inside Nariman House and his interlocutor. “Brother you have to fight,” says the caller. “This is a matter of the prestige of Islam.”
By the morning of Nov. 29, Indian forces had killed 9 of the fighters.
And then, there was one: the sole survivor, Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, is in the custody of the Mumbai police. His interrogation turned up the most frightening detail. He was part of a cadre of 32 would-be suicide bombers, that was later joined by an additional three men. A team of six went to Indian-administered Kashmir, Mr. Kasab told his interrogators.
Ten were kept in isolation for more than three months, in a house near Karachi, until they were instructed to go to Mumbai.
The dossier says nothing about what happened to the remaining trainees. Whether or where they will strike next remains a mystery.
Richard A. Oppel Jr. contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan.
Showing posts with label Pakistan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pakistan. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Thursday, September 11, 2008
7 years after....its about damn time!!!!!!!
September 11, 2008
Bush Said to Give Orders Allowing Raids in Pakistan
By ERIC SCHMITT and MARK MAZZETTI
WASHINGTON — President Bush secretly approved orders in July that for the first time allow American Special Operations forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government, according to senior American officials.
The classified orders signal a watershed for the Bush administration after nearly seven years of trying to work with Pakistan to combat the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and after months of high-level stalemate about how to challenge the militants’ increasingly secure base in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
American officials say that they will notify Pakistan when they conduct limited ground attacks like the Special Operations raid last Wednesday in a Pakistani village near the Afghanistan border, but that they will not ask for its permission.
“The situation in the tribal areas is not tolerable,” said a senior American official who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the missions. “We have to be more assertive. Orders have been issued.”
The new orders reflect concern about safe havens for Al Qaeda and the Taliban inside Pakistan, as well as an American view that Pakistan lacks the will and ability to combat militants. They also illustrate lingering distrust of the Pakistani military and intelligence agencies and a belief that some American operations had been compromised once Pakistanis were advised of the details.
The Central Intelligence Agency has for several years fired missiles at militants inside Pakistan from remotely piloted Predator aircraft. But the new orders for the military’s Special Operations forces relax firm restrictions on conducting raids on the soil of an important ally without its permission.
Pakistan’s top army officer said Wednesday that his forces would not tolerate American incursions like the one that took place last week and that the army would defend the country’s sovereignty “at all costs.”
It is unclear precisely what legal authorities the United States has invoked to conduct even limited ground raids in a friendly country. A second senior American official said that the Pakistani government had privately assented to the general concept of limited ground assaults by Special Operations forces against significant militant targets, but that it did not approve each mission.
The official did not say which members of the government gave their approval.
Any new ground operations in Pakistan raise the prospect of American forces being killed or captured in the restive tribal areas — and a propaganda coup for Al Qaeda. Last week’s raid also presents a major test for Pakistan’s new president, Asif Ali Zardari, who supports more aggressive action by his army against the militants but cannot risk being viewed as an American lap dog, as was his predecessor, Pervez Musharraf.
The new orders were issued after months of debate inside the Bush administration about whether to authorize a ground campaign inside Pakistan. The debate, first reported by The New York Times in late June, at times pitted some officials at the State Department against parts of the Pentagon that advocated aggressive action against Qaeda and Taliban targets inside the tribal areas.
Details about last week’s commando operation have emerged that indicate the mission was more intrusive than had previously been known.
According to two American officials briefed on the raid, it involved more than two dozen members of the Navy Seals who spent several hours on the ground and killed about two dozen suspected Qaeda fighters in what now appeared to have been a planned attack against militants who had been conducting attacks against an American forward operating base across the border in Afghanistan.
Supported by an AC-130 gunship, the Special Operations forces were whisked away by helicopters after completing the mission.
Although the senior American official who provided the most detailed description of the new presidential order would discuss it only on condition of anonymity, his account was corroborated by three other senior American officials from several government agencies, all of whom made clear that they supported the more aggressive approach.
Pakistan’s government has asserted that last week’s raid achieved little except killing civilians and stoking anti-Americanism in the tribal areas.
“Unilateral action by the American forces does not help the war against terror because it only enrages public opinion,” said Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington, during a speech on Friday. “In this particular incident, nothing was gained by the action of the troops.”
As an alternative to American ground operations, some Pakistani officials have made clear that they prefer the C.I.A.’s Predator aircraft, operating from the skies, as a method of killing Qaeda operatives. The C.I.A. for the most part has coordinated with Pakistan’s government before and after it has launched missiles from the drone. On Monday, a Predator strike in North Waziristan killed several Arab Qaeda operatives.
A new American command structure was put in place this year to better coordinate missions by the C.I.A. and members of the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command, made up of the Army’s Delta Force and the Navy Seals.
The move was intended to address frustration on the ground about different agencies operating under different marching orders. Under the arrangement, a senior C.I.A. official based at Bagram air base in Afghanistan was put in charge of coordinating C.I.A. and military activities in the border region.
Spokesmen for the White House, the Defense Department and the C.I.A. declined to comment on Wednesday about the new orders. Some senior Congressional officials have received briefings on the new authorities. A spokeswoman for Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who leads the Armed Services Committee, declined to comment.
American commanders in Afghanistan have complained bitterly that militants use sanctuaries in Pakistan to attack American troops in Afghanistan.
“I’m not convinced we’re winning it in Afghanistan,” Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday. “I am convinced we can.”
Toward that goal, Admiral Mullen said he had ordered a comprehensive military strategy to address the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The commando raid last week and an increasing number of recent missile strikes are part of a more aggressive overall American campaign in the border region aimed at intensifying attacks on Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the waning months of the Bush administration, with less than two months to go before November elections.
State Department officials, as well as some within the National Security Council, have expressed concern about any Special Operations missions that could be carried out without the approval of the American ambassador in Islamabad.
The months-long delay in approving ground missions created intense frustration inside the military’s Special Operations community, which believed that the Bush administration was holding back as the Qaeda safe haven inside Pakistan became more secure for militants.
The stepped-up campaign inside Pakistan comes at a time when American-Pakistani relations have been fraying, and when anger is increasing within American intelligence agencies about ties between Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, known as the ISI, and militants in the tribal areas.
Analysts at the C.I.A. and other American spy and security agencies believe not only that the bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, in July by militants was aided by ISI operatives, but also that the highest levels of Pakistan’s security apparatus — including the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani — had knowledge of the plot.
“It’s very difficult to imagine he was not aware,” a senior American official said of General Kayani.
American intelligence agencies have said that senior Pakistani national security officials favor the use of militant groups to preserve Pakistan’s influence in the region, as a hedge against India and Afghanistan.
In fact, some American intelligence analysts believe that ISI operatives did not mind when their role in the July bombing in Kabul became known. “They didn’t cover their tracks very well,” a senior Defense Department official said, “and I think the embassy bombing was the ISI drawing a line in the sand.”
Instead of getting bogged down in Iraq...this strategy or squeezing Pakistan between Indian and US special ops operating from Afghanistan is 7 years too late....Better late than never! Pakistan's ISI is a government sanctioned pro-terrorism intelligence organization and one of the most deadly and destabilizing entities in the world. They're one of the pillars behind the Taliban and Al Qaeda. They originally helped Americans with managing the Afghani "freedom fighters" during the Russian invasion and now they're working against us. The question, I am everyone has is where are Pakistan's nukes? Hopefully are either being watched by us (US) or have been "secured" by us as has been previously reported.
Bush Said to Give Orders Allowing Raids in Pakistan
By ERIC SCHMITT and MARK MAZZETTI
WASHINGTON — President Bush secretly approved orders in July that for the first time allow American Special Operations forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government, according to senior American officials.
The classified orders signal a watershed for the Bush administration after nearly seven years of trying to work with Pakistan to combat the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and after months of high-level stalemate about how to challenge the militants’ increasingly secure base in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
American officials say that they will notify Pakistan when they conduct limited ground attacks like the Special Operations raid last Wednesday in a Pakistani village near the Afghanistan border, but that they will not ask for its permission.
“The situation in the tribal areas is not tolerable,” said a senior American official who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the missions. “We have to be more assertive. Orders have been issued.”
The new orders reflect concern about safe havens for Al Qaeda and the Taliban inside Pakistan, as well as an American view that Pakistan lacks the will and ability to combat militants. They also illustrate lingering distrust of the Pakistani military and intelligence agencies and a belief that some American operations had been compromised once Pakistanis were advised of the details.
The Central Intelligence Agency has for several years fired missiles at militants inside Pakistan from remotely piloted Predator aircraft. But the new orders for the military’s Special Operations forces relax firm restrictions on conducting raids on the soil of an important ally without its permission.
Pakistan’s top army officer said Wednesday that his forces would not tolerate American incursions like the one that took place last week and that the army would defend the country’s sovereignty “at all costs.”
It is unclear precisely what legal authorities the United States has invoked to conduct even limited ground raids in a friendly country. A second senior American official said that the Pakistani government had privately assented to the general concept of limited ground assaults by Special Operations forces against significant militant targets, but that it did not approve each mission.
The official did not say which members of the government gave their approval.
Any new ground operations in Pakistan raise the prospect of American forces being killed or captured in the restive tribal areas — and a propaganda coup for Al Qaeda. Last week’s raid also presents a major test for Pakistan’s new president, Asif Ali Zardari, who supports more aggressive action by his army against the militants but cannot risk being viewed as an American lap dog, as was his predecessor, Pervez Musharraf.
The new orders were issued after months of debate inside the Bush administration about whether to authorize a ground campaign inside Pakistan. The debate, first reported by The New York Times in late June, at times pitted some officials at the State Department against parts of the Pentagon that advocated aggressive action against Qaeda and Taliban targets inside the tribal areas.
Details about last week’s commando operation have emerged that indicate the mission was more intrusive than had previously been known.
According to two American officials briefed on the raid, it involved more than two dozen members of the Navy Seals who spent several hours on the ground and killed about two dozen suspected Qaeda fighters in what now appeared to have been a planned attack against militants who had been conducting attacks against an American forward operating base across the border in Afghanistan.
Supported by an AC-130 gunship, the Special Operations forces were whisked away by helicopters after completing the mission.
Although the senior American official who provided the most detailed description of the new presidential order would discuss it only on condition of anonymity, his account was corroborated by three other senior American officials from several government agencies, all of whom made clear that they supported the more aggressive approach.
Pakistan’s government has asserted that last week’s raid achieved little except killing civilians and stoking anti-Americanism in the tribal areas.
“Unilateral action by the American forces does not help the war against terror because it only enrages public opinion,” said Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington, during a speech on Friday. “In this particular incident, nothing was gained by the action of the troops.”
As an alternative to American ground operations, some Pakistani officials have made clear that they prefer the C.I.A.’s Predator aircraft, operating from the skies, as a method of killing Qaeda operatives. The C.I.A. for the most part has coordinated with Pakistan’s government before and after it has launched missiles from the drone. On Monday, a Predator strike in North Waziristan killed several Arab Qaeda operatives.
A new American command structure was put in place this year to better coordinate missions by the C.I.A. and members of the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command, made up of the Army’s Delta Force and the Navy Seals.
The move was intended to address frustration on the ground about different agencies operating under different marching orders. Under the arrangement, a senior C.I.A. official based at Bagram air base in Afghanistan was put in charge of coordinating C.I.A. and military activities in the border region.
Spokesmen for the White House, the Defense Department and the C.I.A. declined to comment on Wednesday about the new orders. Some senior Congressional officials have received briefings on the new authorities. A spokeswoman for Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who leads the Armed Services Committee, declined to comment.
American commanders in Afghanistan have complained bitterly that militants use sanctuaries in Pakistan to attack American troops in Afghanistan.
“I’m not convinced we’re winning it in Afghanistan,” Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday. “I am convinced we can.”
Toward that goal, Admiral Mullen said he had ordered a comprehensive military strategy to address the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The commando raid last week and an increasing number of recent missile strikes are part of a more aggressive overall American campaign in the border region aimed at intensifying attacks on Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the waning months of the Bush administration, with less than two months to go before November elections.
State Department officials, as well as some within the National Security Council, have expressed concern about any Special Operations missions that could be carried out without the approval of the American ambassador in Islamabad.
The months-long delay in approving ground missions created intense frustration inside the military’s Special Operations community, which believed that the Bush administration was holding back as the Qaeda safe haven inside Pakistan became more secure for militants.
The stepped-up campaign inside Pakistan comes at a time when American-Pakistani relations have been fraying, and when anger is increasing within American intelligence agencies about ties between Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, known as the ISI, and militants in the tribal areas.
Analysts at the C.I.A. and other American spy and security agencies believe not only that the bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, in July by militants was aided by ISI operatives, but also that the highest levels of Pakistan’s security apparatus — including the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani — had knowledge of the plot.
“It’s very difficult to imagine he was not aware,” a senior American official said of General Kayani.
American intelligence agencies have said that senior Pakistani national security officials favor the use of militant groups to preserve Pakistan’s influence in the region, as a hedge against India and Afghanistan.
In fact, some American intelligence analysts believe that ISI operatives did not mind when their role in the July bombing in Kabul became known. “They didn’t cover their tracks very well,” a senior Defense Department official said, “and I think the embassy bombing was the ISI drawing a line in the sand.”
Instead of getting bogged down in Iraq...this strategy or squeezing Pakistan between Indian and US special ops operating from Afghanistan is 7 years too late....Better late than never! Pakistan's ISI is a government sanctioned pro-terrorism intelligence organization and one of the most deadly and destabilizing entities in the world. They're one of the pillars behind the Taliban and Al Qaeda. They originally helped Americans with managing the Afghani "freedom fighters" during the Russian invasion and now they're working against us. The question, I am everyone has is where are Pakistan's nukes? Hopefully are either being watched by us (US) or have been "secured" by us as has been previously reported.
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