Mourning Mumbai (Update 2): Life On Earth Must Be Canceled

Reports that the Indian foreign minister intends to fly to the United States to meet with Obama suggest that the neocons may have succeeded in creating the president-elect's first major crisis. The sheer brazenness of the Mumbai assault was clearly meant to embarrass the Singh government which had been showing crucial restraint in response to constant Pakistani provocation stemming from the bitter conflict over Kashmir.

No doubt Obama will pressure India to tamp down the rhetoric---a nuclear Near East war is to no one's benefit... not even our deluded dystopian neocons. Unfortunately the situation in India is so tense that its government will surely collapse unless it can prove it is truly in charge of the country's security. New Delhi will likely demand that Obama must direct the Pakistani government to rein in the ISI and ensure that its own internal security apparatus becomes more effective. Otherwise the world will be forced to hold its breath while India reassembles its troops along the Indo-Pakistani border.

A Problem Without A Solution

While Musharraf was a threat to Pakistan's civil society the current regime does not control the Pakistani military, nor does it control the religiously affiliated and British influenced (and Western infiltrated) ISI. The country's long-standing military rule remains the chief impediment to Pakistan's stability. [Under the British, the military was a primary recipient of land in canal colonies and this enhanced the stature of the Army and hence laid a foundation for future dominance in politics in Pakistan-- Imran Ali, Punjab under Imperialism]

The reality is-- even if the country's senior military officers were willing to rein in their jihadist surrogates-- thanks to Bush's heavy-handed tactics (bombing villages in western Pakistan and sending drones to carry out assassinations) they are no longer sure of their own chain of command. Their dilemma is further complicated by Pakistan's increasingly paranoid historical view that it must preserve Afghanistan as a bulwark against Indian aggression.

Pakistan sees India's growing influence in Afghanistan as a threat. After India opened consulates in Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif, Jalalabad, and Kandahar, Pakistan charged that these consulates provide cover for Indian intelligence agencies to run covert operations against Pakistan, as well as foment separatism in Pakistan's Balochistan province. "Pakistan's fears of encirclement (PDF) by India have been compounded" by the new Indian air base in Farkhor, Tajikistan, write South Asia experts Raja Karthikeya Gundu and Teresita C. Schaffer in an April 2008 Center for Strategic and International Studies paper.

So while India has been the primary target of Islamic jihadists there is a strong belief among the Pakistanis, including members of the armed forces, that what the neocons really want to see is the breakup of Pakistan. “One of the biggest fears of our military planners is the collaboration between India and Afghanistan to destroy Pakistan,” said an Islamabad government official.

Meanwhile the Washington Post's colorful "Le Carre" opening to the Mumbai tragedy starting with the fisherman's account reads very differently in the Indian papers:

"I saw 6 to 7 boats coming in on Wednesday evening and about ten people unloaded many bags from these boats and then gradually took them into the building, Nariman House', Vitthal Tandel, a fisherman in the area said. "The building has many rooms and these are used a s guest houses by travelers, largely Israeli residents. None of us know what their names are", he said.

Virendra Ghunawat, a television journalist who has been tracking the Nariman House shootout since the time it took place Wednesday night, said "even the cops have been cagey about details."
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It was just after dinner, about 9 p.m., when the fishermen noticed four strangers come ashore on an inflatable raft. Moments later, another four pulled up to the boat launch in a speedboat. Only two got out of the boat. They were young, muscular men, with backpacks and bulky duffel bags slung across their shoulders.

At least one of the fishermen was instantly suspicious and asked the strangers what they were doing. "One of them turned around and said in heavily accented Hindi: 'Don't hassle me. I'm in a terrible mood.' We got nervous and just left them alone," said a 25-year-old fisherman who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

The strangers flagged down two taxis and sped off toward the Oberoi Trident hotel in Nariman Point. It would be among the first stops in a trail of death and destruction spanning 10 sites and three days that left 174 people dead and 239 wounded.

You are forgiven if you thought that description was the opening for a John Le Carre novel. However it is the start of today's remarkable article on the Mumbai tragedy in the Washington Post.

Less than three days after the terrorist assault on the Taj Mahal Hotel and the heart of Mumbai's vital financial center, the Indian government assures our credulous corporate press that they have gathered all the relevant facts despite having received advance warning of a possible attack [Something like... Bin Laden determined to strike inside the U.S?]:

The chairman of the Tata Group, the conglomerate that owns the Taj hotel, asserted that it had been warned about the possibility of a terrorist attack and had taken some measures, but that the assailants knew exactly how to penetrate the hotel’s security.

“They came from somewhere in the back; they planned everything,” the chairman, Ratan Tata, said in an interview broadcast Sunday on CNN. “They went through the kitchen; they knew what they were doing.”

Despite being caught flat-footed India's intelligence services are now completely confident about the alliances of the terror perpetrators: "we are not going to sit back with Pakistan unleashing this terror on India,” quotes an unnamed government spokesman.

One always wonders why such provocative statements deemed to be worthy of public consumption are never attributable. I suspect the reason lies in the fact that the quoted official would be pressed to provide the evidence that would justify launching hostilities. Even as Pakistan gears for a possible border war there is cause to suspect that just as in the government's instant dubious analysis following 9/11 any verifiable evidence to India's charge will prove rather flimsy.

Indeed there are eerie similarities between the life and death of FBI agent, John O'Neill and Hemant Karkare, the Indian anti-terrorism police chief, who was also killed in what is being purposefully labeled as India's 9-11 tragedy.

[From 2002] Former Afghanistan CIA agent Robert Baer has published a book charging that the cover-up of the 1990’s pipeline negotiations revealed extensive financial corruption inside the Clinton administration, and contributed to the lack of intelligence before 9/11. However, in January 2001, Vice President Cheney allegedly reinstated the intelligence block and expanded it to effectively preclude any investigations whatsoever of Saudi-Taliban-Afghan oil connections. Former FBI counter-terrorism chief John O’Neil resigned from the FBI in disgust, stating that he was ordered not to investigate Saudi-Al Qaida connections because of the Enron pipeline deal.

There Are Only Two Ways of telling The Truth--Anonymously and Posthumously
--Thomas Jefferson

Like John O'Neill, Hemant Karkare was willing to follow wherever the evidence led. As a result he had uncovered the secret links between the Indian military and Hindu terror groups.

Kakare's investigation had exposed the involvement of three Indian military intelligence officers in terrorist acts that were blamed on Muslim groups. At the time of his murder, Karkare was pursuing leads that were supposed to uncover the depth of the nexus between the Indian military and the sudden rise of well armed and well financed Hindu terrorism groups with training camps spread across India.

[From the NYTimes] The ruling Indian government had lately hit back at the Bharatiya Janata Party with evidence that its supporters, belonging to a range of radical Hindu organizations, had also been implicated in terrorist attacks. Indeed, in a bizarre twist, the head of the police antiterrorism unit, Hemant Karkare, killed in the Mumbai strikes, had been in the midst of a high-profile investigation of a suspected Hindu terrorist cell. Mr. Karkare’s inquiry had netted nine suspects in connection with a bombing in September of a Muslim-majority area in Malegaon, a small town not far from Mumbai.

The new Pakistani government already under siege caught between the U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and their own religious extremists are naturally alarmed at being (wrongly) fingered. From their point of view there is a core group of rightwing ideologues within India’s military, intelligence and political elite at work trying to overthrow Manmohan Singh’s conciliatory government. The plan (they firmly believe) is to help the rise of rightwing elements in power and push India into a showdown with Pakistan and facilitate a closer alliance with Washington.

India's (opposition) B.J.P. has pressed for the resurrection of a tougher antiterrorism law that was in place during its administration. That measure allowed for longer periods of preventive detention and enabled confessions extracted by the police to be used in court. Its critics said it was an unfair and ineffective tool used too often to round up innocent people, largely Muslims, and it was repealed in 2004 by Mr. Singh’s administration.

But history suggests violent religious eruptions are almost always a cover for deeper state-interests if not out and out greed.

US Plays Spoiler in India-Pakistan Pipeline Accord

Siddharth Srivastava, NEW DELHI, June 23, 2005

India's 10-day campaign to tie up a deal on a fresh source of energy has met with resistance from the United States. Reports, confirmed by Foreign Ministry officials in New Delhi, say the US has warned Pakistan of sanctions if it goes ahead with the proposed $4 billion, 2,600-kilometer Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline.

The latest US threat comes in the wake of a marathon nine-hour meeting between Indian and Iranian officials in Tehran that reiterated both countries' firm commitment toward building the pipeline. Apart from the pipeline issue, India signed a US$22-billion deal to buy liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Iran over 25 years starting 2009. India recently signed a LNG deal with Qatar as well to tide over its energy shortages. Pakistan's newspaper Dawn, as well as The Times of India, quoted officials in Washington saying that the US warned Pakistan of sanctions if it went ahead with the project, disregarding US concerns over Iran's nuclear plan.

This is despite Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khurshid M Kasuri making a strong plea in favor of the pipeline given the potential revenue ($700 million in transit fees alone) and the country's need for energy security. Kasuri, who was in the US last week, impressed upon US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that Pakistan cannot abandon the project. However, the US believes that given the $1-billion-plus yearly aid that it has been advancing to Pakistan since 2002, the country should fall in line.

"Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline a natural thing to do": Henry Kissinger

NEW DELHI (IRNA) -- The former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has indicated his support for the proposed Iran-Pakistan- India (IPI) gas pipeline which the Bush administration had objected to. Speaking on “American Foreign Policy After Elections,” organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Aspen Institute India in Mumbai, Thursday, Kissinger, answering a query on the multi-billion project, initially said he had no knowledge about every problem in the world, The Hindu reported here Friday.

Later, however, he said, “The pipeline will be a natural thing to do”. He said he had always advocated negotiation with Iran. “I expect the new administration [to be headed by Obama] to begin discussions with Iran.”

Prashant Agrawal, CEO of Indipepal.com, says the attacks have change the Indian landscape.

"As the Indian landscape changed, so has the Indian attitude. The first Bollywood movie on the attacks highlighted the resilience of Mumbai citizens. But in conversations, writings and film, people have shifted from resilience to wanting revenge. One of the most successful movies of 2008 highlights an ordinary citizen taking revenge. The surprise hit of 2008 in India is a low-budget thriller called "Wednesday." "Wednesday" is a taut thriller where the audience is held in suspense. The person the audience believes is a terrorist hell-bent on releasing his jailed compatriots is actually a vigilante. He doesn't secure the release; he blows them up.

The audience cheers as he tells the police, "We (the people) are tired of being resilient. Our hands are not tied, we too can hit back." Audiences around the country clapped and cheered his soliloquy. And now with these attacks, the attitude hardens even more. CNN-IBN, the local English news channel, not known for hyperbole, is calling its coverage not Terror in Mumbai, but "War on Mumbai."

Is it farfetched to link the oil lobby's objection to a potential India-Pakistan rapprochement coupled with a more flexible Obama administration to the Mumbai massacre? After the Taliban-Enron fiasco followed by the disastrous Iraq occupation one need not read the Wall Street Journal or be as plainspoken as Joe Biden to realize it would be dense to simply pooh-pooh it. On the other hand the benefits of such an attack could prove far more mundane.

Indian oil union calls off strike after Mumbai terror attack
New Delhi (Platts Oilgram)--1Dec 2008
An association, which represents officers of India's state-run oil and gas companies, which had called for an indefinite strike from December 2, has decided against going ahead with it, a senior association official said Monday. The Oil Sector Officers' Association had said the strike would cripple the entire nation and adversely impact the Indian economy.

Live Earth Canceled

"Due to circumstances far beyond our control, we are saddened to announce that Live Earth India has been cancelled. We will continue to work for solutions to the climate crisis for the good of the people of India and around the world. But for now, our thoughts and our prayers are with the victims of this terrible attack, with the bereaved, with the people of Mumbai and with everyone in India."