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India’s Leaders Need to Look Closer to Home: The Assault on Mumbai
TARIQ ALI
Counterpunch
Friday, Nov 28, 2008
The terrorist assault on Mumbai’s five-star hotels was well planned, but did not require a great deal of logistic intelligence: all the targets were soft. The aim was to create mayhem by shining the spotlight on India and its problems and in that the terrorists were successful. The identity of the black-hooded group remains a mystery.
The Deccan Mujahedeen, which claimed the outrage in an e-mail press release, is certainly a new name probably chosen for this single act. But speculation is rife. A senior Indian naval officer has claimed that the attackers (who arrived in a ship, the M V Alpha) were linked to Somali pirates, implying that this was a revenge attack for the Indian Navy’s successful if bloody action against pirates in the Arabian Gulf that led to heavy casualties some weeks ago.
The Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, has insisted that the terrorists were based outside the country. The Indian media has echoed this line of argument with Pakistan (via the Lashkar-e-Taiba) and al-Qaeda listed as the usual suspects.
(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)
But this is a meditated edifice of official India’s political imagination. Its function is to deny that the terrorists could be a homegrown variety, a product of the radicalization of young Indian Muslims who have finally given up on the indigenous political system. To accept this view would imply that the country’s political physicians need to heal themselves.
Al Qaeda, as the CIA recently made clear, is a group on the decline. It has never come close to repeating anything vaguely resembling the hits of 9/11.
Its principal leader Osama bin Laden may well be dead (he certainly did not make his trademark video intervention in this year’s Presidential election in the United States) and his deputy has fallen back on threats and bravado.
What of Pakistan? The country’s military is heavily involved in actions on its Northwest frontier where the spillage from the Afghan war has destabilized the region. The politicians currently in power are making repeated overtures to India. The Lashkar-e-Taiba, not usually shy of claiming its hits, has strongly denied any involvement with the Mumbai attacks.
Why should it be such a surprise if the perpetrators are themselves Indian Muslims? Its hardly a secret that there has been much anger within the poorest sections of the Muslim community against the systematic discrimination and acts of violence carried out against them of which the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in shining Gujarat was only the most blatant and the most investigated episode, supported by the Chief Minister of the State and the local state apparatuses.
Add to this the continuing sore of Kashmir which has for decades been treated as a colony by Indian troops with random arrests, torture and rape of Kashmiris an everyday occurrence. Conditions have been much worse than in Tibet, but have aroused little sympathy in the West where the defense of human rights is heavily instrumentalised.
Indian intelligence outfits are well aware of all this and they should not encourage the fantasies of their political leaders. Its best to come out and accept that there are severe problems inside the country. A billion Indians: 80 percent Hindus and 14 percent Muslims. A very large minority that cannot be ethnically cleansed without provoking a wider conflict.
None of this justifies terrorism, but it should, at the very least, force India’s rulers to direct their gaze on their own country and the conditions that prevail. Economic disparities are profound. The absurd notion that the trickle-down effects of global capitalism would solve most problems can now be seen for what it always was: a fig leaf to conceal new modes of exploitation.
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8 Responses to “India’s Leaders Need to Look Closer to Home: The Assault on Mumbai”
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November 28th, 2008 at 5:13 am
Like our leaders need to look closer to home for the events of 9/II.
November 28th, 2008 at 8:09 am
researching certain local mumbai websites …
another conclusion can be drawn.
one of the main characters that got killed was head of antiterrorist force, mr kerekar.
..he had this month promised to end an investigation of certain ‘hindu’ fundamentalists with connections to previous bomb blasts..one of their laptops had a blue movie of them in it …
the hindutva faction in India has been linked to Mossad…certian outfits have been allowed protection to be outsourced to israeli commandoes.
there has been increasing connection between hindutva poloitics and zionist..even visits sponsored by the previos BJP govt.
all this was being investigated by MR Karekar.
and conveniently he gets killed.
next stop for Mossad and their sell out goons , would most probably be Kerala, or Goa ..where their presence has been noted in the past few years…living outside the tourist season..
if any mossad agent or zionist apologist is reading this ..warn your buddies . in India
… they’re being tracked…
November 29th, 2008 at 2:26 am
British Authorship of Mumbai Terror Spilling Out
November 28, 2008 (LPAC)–London newspapers are headlining British involvement in the ongoing terror attacks in Mumbai, India.
The London Mirror, November 28, headlined its coverage: “SEVEN MUMBAI GUNMEN ARE FROM `LEEDS AND HARTLEPOOL’” and continued, “Seven of the terrorists … are British, Indian government sources claimed yesterday. They said two British-born Pakistanis are under arrest. And another five suspects are said to have been born and raised here.
“Two of the seven are from Leeds, one is from Bradford and one from Hartlepool, the sources claimed…. The Hartlepool suspect was allegedly found in the … Taj Mahal Palace hotel. …. The man from Bradford and one from Leeds were allegedly discovered on the 17th floor of the Oberoi-Trident Hotel…. A second man from Leeds was allegedly captured near a jetty after a gang of around 25 terrorists landed in Mumbai by boat on Wednesday.
“The suspects were allegedly found with documentation, possibly including passports, which revealed their origin. The sources say they also spoke to each other in a heavily-accented Punjabi common in UK Pakistani communities.”
The Mirror reports that British Prime Minister “Gordon Brown yesterday urged caution, saying it was premature to draw any conclusions. He said Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had not told of him of any evidence at this stage that Britons were behind the massacres.”
The Mirror comments, “If the terrorists are Britons, the UK security service will have to urgently discover how they slipped through the surveillance net…. Since the early 2000s Britain has had an unwelcome reputation as a haven for Islamic radicals.”
The Daily Telegraph headlined its story, “MUMBAI ATTACKS: ARE THEY BRITISH? British police have flown to India to establish whether any of the terrorists who killed 150 people in the Bombay massacre had links to the UK.”
The Evening Standard, under the headline “Mumbai siege gunmen are from Britain,” reports that Security sources have told the Standard that “it is known that dozens of British-born Pakistanis have traveled to Pakistan in recent years to train in its [terrorist] camps. One source said recently: `The camps are full and many of the people inside are Brits.”
Briefed on the two Brits being arrested as gunmen in Mumbai, Lyndon LaRouche said: “This phenomenon is suggestively similar to the number of Saudis or people with Saudi pedigrees who were involved in the 9/11 attacks in the U.S. in 2001.”
EIR Exposed British Role As Terror Haven in 2000
November 28, 2008 (LPAC)–On Jan. 11, 2000, Executive Intelligence Review Counterintelligence Director Jeffrey Steinberg submitted a memorandum, on behalf of the Editors of EIR, to then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and eight other top Clinton Administration national security officials, as well as leaders of both the House and the Senate, calling for Great Britain to be put on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism. The Steinberg memorandum exclusively drew upon official government documents from India, Egypt, Israel, France, Algeria, Peru, Turkey, Germany, Libya, Nigeria, Yemen and Russia–all in the form of diplomatic demarches, protesting London’s harboring and supporting of hardcore terrorist organizations.
In light of the ongoing Mumbai attack, it is noteworthy that the Steinberg memo to Albright began by noting that the issue of Britain’s role in supporting international terrorism “has been recently highlighted, as the result of the December 1999 Indian Airlines hijacking, and the response of the British government to the request of one of the freed Kashmiri terrorists, Ahmed Omar Sheikh, to be given safe passage to England. Mr. Sheikh, a British national, was tried and convicted in India, for his role in the kidnapping of four British nationals and an American in 1995. He was sentenced to five years in prison on November 1988. Initially, the British government announced that it would provide Mr. Sheikh with safe passage to Britain, and would not prosecute him or make any effort to extradite him back to India.”
The recurring pattern, documented in the EIR memorandum, was that the British government provided safe-haven and political protection, as well as financing, to known terrorists, and turned a blind eye when mosques in Britain were used as recruiting grounds for terrorists, who were then sent to training camps, and on to live operations. Russia strongly protested the role of British mosques in recruiting terrorists who went for training in Afghanistan, throughout the 1990s, and wound up in Chechnya.
The EIR memorandum was published in the Jan. 21, 2000 issue of Executive Intelligence Review, and was widely circulated, at the time, among governments around the world. Secretary of State Albright never responded to the EIR document.
November 29th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
Sad. What does THAT prove? Absolutely nuthin’ besides gettin’ YOU thrown into Hell. Beyond stupid. Guess they didn’t see my nifty, neet-o blog.
November 29th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
The Illuminati are having a field day, too. GOD BLESS YOU.
November 30th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
“Al Qaeda, as the CIA recently made clear, is a group on the decline. It has never come close to repeating anything vaguely resembling the hits of 9/11.”
Um, what?? “Al Qaeda” didn’t carry out 9/11. It is painfully obvious (and VERY easily provable) that 9/11 had to have been an inside job by elements WITHIN the U.S. government, with approval by Bush and his boss Cheney. “Al Qaeda” is a mythical entity, like Emmanuel Goldstein in that book 1984, a boogeyman designed to whip the ignorant masses into a frenzy of hate on command from the establishment, and to provide the U.S. with pretexts for its pre-planned imperialist adventures like the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, part of the wars for energy resource dominance that are unconvincingly misnamed the “War on Terror”.
November 30th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Wow, TRUTHDEMON who posted in another thread might be onto something. Check this out:
“The Mumbai ATS chief Hemant Karkare and other officers of the ATS have been killed. These were the same people who were investigating the Malegaon Blasts–in which Praggya Singh, an army officer and several other noted personalities of the BJP-RSS-Bajrang Dal-VHP were arrested. Karkare was the man to arrest them. Karkare was receiving threats from several quarters. LK Advani, the BJP chief and several other prominent leaders of the so-called Hindu terrorism squad were gunning for his head. And the first casualty in the terrorist attack was Karkare!”
http://judicial-inc.biz/811mum....._angle.htm