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Terrorists attacking Mumbai have global agenda

By Ashley Tellis - posted Monday, 15 December 2008


Washington’s concern with al-Qaida, however justified, should not obscure the reality of other terrorist groups in South Asia that seek to promote obscurantist versions of Islam by attacking democratic societies. The US also ought not to be diverted by spurious analyses that link the carnage in Mumbai to the complaints of India’s Muslims - however genuine those may be. Whatever their grievances, the Indian Muslim resentment against the Mumbai attacks was most clearly exemplified by the refusal of every Muslim cemetery to accept the bodies of the slain terrorists for burial.

The incoming Obama administration should also not be distracted by calls to interject itself in resolving the Kashmir problem, because as Saeed had publicly declared in an interview in 2001, “Our struggle will continue even if Kashmir is liberated. We still have to take revenge for East Pakistan.” Obviously, this vendetta seems never ending. Saeed had given notice in 1999 that “jihad is not about Kashmir only. About fifteen years ago, people might have found it ridiculous if someone told them about the disintegration of the USSR. Today, I announce the break-up of India, Insha-Allah. We will not rest until the whole (of) India is dissolved into Pakistan.”

The barbarity in Mumbai thus represents the ugly face of Islamist terrorism that threatens India, the US and its allies, and the larger international system, but fundamentally also Pakistan. Saeed has unequivocally declared that the LeT intends to “plant the flag of Islam in Washington, Tel Aviv and New Delhi”. However absurd it might sound, his words could launch thousands of zealots to commit horrible crimes worldwide.

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Consequently, the US cannot avoid the burden of confronting Islamabad to rid itself of this group and other menacing outfits that utilise its territory for loathsome ends. Arresting one or two of the alleged “masterminds”, as Pakistan has now done in the face of US pressure, simply will not do: rather, the entire organisation must be targeted and put out of business permanently.

A good way to begin this process would be for the outgoing Bush administration to publicly declare what it already knows to be the case: that LeT planned and executed the deadly attacks in Mumbai. In any event, it’s in Pakistan’s own interest - to confront LeT’s destructive ideology and subterranean links with the ISI. Such an affray ought not to be precipitated because the US or India demand it, but because it is essential to the success of the civilian government’s own objective of transforming Pakistan.

No matter what Pakistan does, the US has to be clear-sighted about the global nature of the LeT threat and together with India and other allies take resolute measures to defeat this newest challenge.

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Reprinted with permission from YaleGlobal Online - www.yaleglobal.yale.edu - (c) 2008 Yale Center for the Study of Globalization.



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About the Author

Ashley J. Tellis is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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