 Scotland Yard has warned businesses in London to expect a Mumbai-style attack on the capital. In a briefing in the City of London 12 days ago, a senior detective from SO15, the Metropolitan police counter-terrorism command, said: “Mumbai is coming to London.” The detective said companies should anticipate a shooting and hostage-taking raid “involving a small number of gunmen with handguns and improvised explosive devices”. The warning — the bluntest issued by police — has underlined an assessment that a terrorist cell may be preparing an attack on London early next year. During a “commando-style” raid by 10 gunmen on hotels and cafes in Mumbai in November 2008, 174 people were killed and more than 300 injured over three days. Officials now report an increase in “intelligence chatter” — communications captured by electronic eavesdropping agencies. One senior security adviser said the police warnings had intensified and become much more specific in the past fortnight. “Before, there has been speculation. Now we are getting what appears to be a definite plot to carry out a firearms attack on London,” he said. Earlier this year, police, military and intelligence services held an exercise in Kent to see whether they could defeat a commando raid in London by terrorists. “The exercise brought out to those taking part that the capability doesn’t exist to deal with that situation should it arise,” said a military source. Security sources said concerns had been raised by “chatter” on a prominent jihadist website two weeks ago. One contributor suggested fighters could use automatic weapons to strike places such as nightclubs, sporting venues and Jewish centres. In an online discussion hosted on December 2, another contributor invited suggestions for carrying out “guerrilla warfare” and proposed “a group of mujaheddin raid police stations and fire at them”. Another said: “Make sure that all those at the location are of age, that there are no children and so on. Insist on the locations and times where no Muslims or children are to be expected. “If machine guns are available, and explosive and expertise for [explosives] are not available, this is a good way ... The [Mumbai] operation is the ideal scenario for operations you are talking about.” A third contributor said targets should be “chosen in a studied manner”. He added: “In general, targeting economic joints and intelligence centres if possible has priority over police stations.” The Met is understood to be struggling to draw up effective plans to deal with the challenge of mass shootings followed by a prolonged siege with terrorists prepared to kill their hostages and themselves. In Mumbai, many victims were killed in the first half hour of the attack. The Met is concerned that it will be much longer before the SAS, which has traditionally dealt with terrorist sieges in London, would arrive from its base at Regent’s Park barracks. Patrick Mercer, chairman of the Commons counter-terrorism sub-committee, said the threat was “very real”. Times Online 
 MUMBAI, India -- The accused gunman in last year's bloody siege of Mumbai retracted his detailed confession Friday, saying police tortured him into admitting his role in the attacks that left 166 people dead. Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, 21, who is being tried in a special court and was photographed carrying an assault rifle during the attack on Mumbai's main train station, told the judge he came to Mumbai as a tourist and was arrested 20 days before the siege began. On the day the attacks started, Mr. Kasab said, police took him from his cell because he resembled one of the gunmen, shot him to make it look like he had been involved in the violence and re-arrested him. Friday's statement was not the first reversal from Mr. Kasab. In February, he told a judge he wanted to attack India in order to free the divided region of Kashmir where Muslim militants are fighting for independence. He later recanted that statement, saying it was obtained under duress. It was unclear what impact Mr. Kasab's statement would have on the case, and the prosecution brushed it off. "All the while, I expected that Mr. Kasab was about to take a U-turn in the case," said Ujjwal Nikam, the prosecutor. "He is a military-trained commando. It's not going to affect our case." In July, Mr. Kasab, who could face the death penalty if convicted, surprised the court when he suddenly confessed, saying he would rather be hanged in this world than face "God's punishment" in the next. In his confession, he spoke of spraying gunfire into the crowd at the train station and described in detail a network of training camps and safe houses across Pakistan, revealing the names of four men he said were his handlers. The photo of Kasab casually walking through the station with his rifle has become the enduring image of the attacks. But Kasab said police tortured him into falsely confessing. The assault 13 months ago lasted nearly three days and paralyzed India's commercial hub. During the attacks, 10 young men armed with assault rifles stormed two luxury hotels, a Jewish center and the train station. Nine of the gunmen were killed, leaving only Mr. Kasab, who was wounded in a shootout with police, authorities said. He told the court Friday he was initially arrested last year after wandering around Mumbai late at night looking for a place to stay, and his Pakistani citizenship aroused suspicion. After he was re-arrested for the Mumbai attack, he said, four white men came to visit him in jail, including David Coleman Headley, who is jailed in Chicago on charges he conspired in the siege. The judge then told Mr. Kasab not to reveal any more details on Headley. Mr. Headley, the 49-year-old son of an American mother and Pakistani father, is also charged with planning to attack a Danish newspaper. WSJ
 New Delhi: The former Union Law Minister and senior lawyer, Ram Jethmalani, caused a flutter at an international conference on terrorism here on Saturday by alleging that Wahabism was responsible for terrorism, provoking a walkout by Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to India Faisal-al-Trad. In his address, Mr. Jethmalani, who is president of the All-India Senior Advocates Association, said:
“Unfortunately in the 17th century, they produced an evil man in Saudi Arabia by the name of Wahab, who was concerned about the decline of the Muslim world, but he hit upon a wrong remedy.” He alleged that the Wahabi terrorism instilled rubbish in the minds of young people to carry out terrorist attacks. When he said “India had friendly relations with a country that supported Wahabi terrorism,” Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador Faisal-al-Trad was seen walking out of the conference held at Vigyan Bhavan. Adish C. Aggarwala, chairman, All-India Bar Association and joint organiser of the conference, said the Ambassador returned after Union Law Minister M. Veerappa Moily clarified that Mr. Jethmalani’s views were not those of the government. Mr. Jethmalani said: “It was unfortunate that entire Islam as a religion was being blamed for terrorism. There are also Hindu terrorists and Buddhist terrorists.”
He said he was a student of all religions, including Islam, and had the highest respect for the Prophet, who he said was a man of peace. Describing the Non-Aligned Movement and Panchsheel as evil, he said India should align with the forces of good to combat evil forces. “India and its Foreign Ministers must learn to reassess the doctrines of the past. India’s foreign policy establishment should be courageous to shun the country’s relationships with its enemies.” Mr. Jethmalani, who is representing the Anil Ambani group RNRL in the Ambani brothers’ gas dispute in the Supreme Court, said the government, in its arguments, had said it intended bringing gas from the country which supported terrorism, an apparent reference to the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project. Taking exception to Mr. Jethmalani’s remarks, Mr. Moily said: “India’s commitment to the Non-Aligned Movement would not be shaken by any country or any individual. The views expressed by my senior colleague Mr. Jethmalani are not the views of the government.” He said: “Terrorism cannot be attributed to any particular religion, as no religion teaches terrorism.” The government was against any attempt to link terrorism to a particular religious community, but it stood for “inclusive development” of all. In July, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh proposed a comprehensive convention on international terrorism at the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Egypt, and the government was committed to dealing with trans-border terrorism in that spirit, he said. Singapore Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong described the Mumbai terror attacks as a “grave tragedy” against humanity. He called for better coordination among nations to deal with the menace, because no individual nation could fight it on its own. “The countries must exchange and share information with each other to tackle terrorism.” Justice Awn S. Al-Khasawneh, judge of the International Court of Justice, asked Mr. Jethmalani not to make sweeping statements. He decried any attempt to link terrorism to any religion, thus creating a fear psychosis. “The message from this conference must not be fear-mongering, but tackling terrorism within the framework of law. Combat it with methods such as combination of cooperation among countries by preaching the message of law and peace rather than fear mongering.” The Hindu
 The American and Indian authorities are questioning an American citizen of Pakistani descent on suspicion of involvement in last year's Mumbai terror attacks. Indian media reported on Sunday that the suspect pretended to be Jewish, stayed at the Chabad center and prepared the ground for the lethal attack. David Coleman Headly (49) was arrested last month at Chicago's O'Hare Airport while on his way to Philadelphia, and from there to Pakistan. The American Federal Bureau of Investigations suspected he was involved in a plot to carry out an attack in Denmark following the publication of the controversial Prophet Muhammad caricatures. A deeper look, however, revealed that he was also involved in the Mumbai attacks in November 2008, in which at least 173 people were killed. Since Headley's arrest, the US has been investigating his actions along with the Indian authorities. Over the weekend Headley's role became clear: Indian security sources reported that he was the one who scanned the Chabad center for the Pakistani terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is believed to be responsible for the attacks. Head of the Indian National Investigation Agency (NIA) raided a number of locations in Mumbai on Saturday in search of incriminating evidence against Headley. Indian defense ministry sources told the Chinese news agency Xinhua that its investigators found that Headly had visited all ten locations that were attacked last November. According to the report, Headley visited the Chabad center in Mumbai in July 2008 – four months before the attack – and presented himself as a Jew in order to stay at the place. Prior to the Chabad center, he stayed at the Taj Mahal Hotel, which was one of the central targets of the terror attack. "It remains unclear how he entered the building (Chabad center) while pretending to be a Jew," an Indian police source told the Calcutta Telegraph. "We are looking into the matter and are trying to find out if anyone in the city helped him. The American FBI found a book in his bag in Chicago titled 'To Pray as a Jew'. It seems he was meticulously preparing himself to behave like a Jew." Headley, a Pakistani who immigrated to the United States, changed his name several years ago from Dawood Jilani. Between 2006 and 2009 he ran an immigration help center in Mumbai, but investigators believe he was actually an operative in a widespread terror network that spanned seven Indian cities, including Mumbai, Ahmadabad and New Delhi. The American authorities informed the Indians of Headley's arrest in Chicago, and Mumbai police also arrested two local tour guides suspected of assisting him in the city. Indian investigators raided Headley's help center offices and spoke with the center's employees. Officially, the center is meant to help immigrants obtain entry visas to the US and Canada, but investigators are looking into connections he made with other bodies in the city during his stay.
 From CAN: The Justice Department has announced that two people in Chicago have been arrested for planning attacks in Denmark on a newspaper for publishing cartoons mocking the Prophet Mohammed in 2005. David Coleman Headley was arrested on October 3 as he headed to Pakistan. He conducted surveillance on the targets during two trips to Denmark in January and July. Tahawwur Hussain Rana, a Pakistani, was arrested, at his home on October 18. The press release states that at least three other people in Pakistan were involved in the plot.
Two of them are said by the Justice Department to be members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group accused of carrying out the December 2008 bombings in Mumbai, India and one is in Waziristan working with an Al-Qaeda affiliate called Harakut-ul-Islami. “The public should be reassured that there was no imminent danger in the Chicago area.
However, law enforcement has the duty to be vigilant to guard against not just those who would carry out attacks here on our soil but those who plot on our soil to help carry out violent attacks overseas,” the press release quoted Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois as saying. The Long War Journal reported that the attack consisting of an assault on the staff of the newspaper. Source: World Threats
 The attacks began on November 26, 2008, when 10 terrorists, members of a militant Islamic group called Lashkar-e-Taiba, arrived in Mumbai by boat. Their targets included a train station, Nariman House, Leopold Café and two hotels — the Oberoi-Trident and Taj Mahal (above). For nearly three days, they exchanged fire with Indian forces; 166 people were killed. The authorities shot nine of the gunmen, and one survivor, Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, 21, was captured. The attacks heightened Indo-Pakistani tensions; Pakistan only accepted that Kasab was a Pakistani national in January this year. The trial began in April in Mumbai. Kasab pleaded not guilty to 86 charges including murder and waging war against India, and was said to smirk throughout. In July he shocked the court by pleading guilty to some charges. “Very shrewdly, very cleverly, Kasab has tried to save his own skin by showing he was acting as a subordinate,” said the state prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam.
Last month, Kasab claimed he had no faith in the Indian courts and applied for trial in the International Court of Justice. The request was dismissed and the trial continues. Dozens of Brits were injured in the attacks — seven seriously — and one man, 73-year-old Andreas Liveras, was killed. Source: Times Online
 By LYDIA POLGREEN and SOUAD MEKHENNET KARACHI, Pakistan — Ten months after the devastating attacks in Mumbai by Pakistan-based militants, the group behind the assault remains largely intact and determined to strike India again, according to current and former members of the group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and intelligence officials. Despite pledges from Pakistan to dismantle militant groups operating on its soil, and the arrest of a handful of operatives, Lashkar has persisted, even flourished, since 10 recruits killed 163 people in a rampage through Mumbai, India’s financial capital, last November. Indian and Pakistani dossiers on the Mumbai investigations, copies of which were obtained by The New York Times, offer a detailed picture of the operations of a Lashkar network that spans Pakistan.
It included four houses and two training camps here in this sprawling southern port city that were used to prepare the attacks. Among the organizers, the Pakistani document says, was Hammad Amin Sadiq, a homeopathic pharmacist, who arranged bank accounts and secured supplies. He and six others begin their formal trial on Saturday in Pakistan, though Indian authorities say the prosecution stops well short of top Lashkar leaders. Indeed, Lashkar’s broader network endures, and can be mobilized quickly for elaborate attacks with relatively few resources, according to a dozen current and former Lashkar militants and intelligence officials from the United States, Europe, India and Pakistan. In interviews with The Times, they presented a troubling portrait of Lashkar’s capabilities, its popularity in Pakistan and the support it has received from former officials of Pakistan’s military and intelligence establishment. Pakistan’s chief spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, or ISI, helped create Lashkar two decades ago to challenge Indian control in Kashmir, the disputed territory that lies at the heart of the conflict between the nuclear-armed neighbors. Read more here,,,, Source: NYT H/T: GH
 PAKISTAN has registered two anti-terror cases against the head of a banned charity linked by India to the Mumbai attacks.
The charged man, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, heads Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which is blacklisted in the West as a terrorist group.
Police also charge that Saeed founded the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) group accused by India and Washington of killing 166 people in Mumbai last year in attacks that damaged relations with Pakistan.
The cases were registered against him by security officials in Faisalabad, an industrial town in the central Punjab province.
“Saeed has been booked for inciting public sentiments and arranging and addressing unlawful congregation”, police official Mohammad Mansha told AFP.
During a meeting with activists of his banned organisation in Faisalabad, Saeed urged people to wage jihad against anti-Islamic forces and has criticised the Pakistani government in recent speeches, police said.
Another police official, Rana Mohammad Ashfaq, confirmed two cases against Saeed had been registered under anti-terrorism laws after the cleric sought donations to advance jihad.
A spokesman for Jammat-ud-Dawa strongly condemned the case registration.
“The government should not take criticism from someone as a crime. Saeed did not commit any crime by talking about jihad as it is also mentioned in the holy Koran,” said the spokesman, Yahya Mujahid.
Pakistan put Saeed and three of his co-leaders under house arrest in early December and publicly shut offices of the charity after the UN Security Council blacklisted the organisation a terror group.
But Saeed was released in June on order from the high court in Pakistan's eastern city Lahore.
The US considers Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which operates out of a sprawling headquarters near Lahore, a terror group, and Pakistan came under huge Western pressure to round up Saeed and other Dawa members.
Saeed, whom India accused of masterminding the Mumbai attacks, reportedly abandoned LeT when it was outlawed in Pakistan following an attack on the Indian Parliament, which New Delhi blamed on LeT.
New Delhi accused “official agencies” in Pakistan of being involved in the 60-hour assault by 10 militant gunmen on India's financial capital.
Pakistan has arrested five people suspected of involvement in the assault, including the alleged mastermind, Zakiduddin Lakhvi; their trial continues.
 The Counter-Terrorism Bureau at the National Security Council issued a severe terror warning for India on Thursday. A Pakistani terror organization affiliated with al-Qaida and responsible for the attacks in Mumbai last year is planning to carry out a string of attacks throughout the Indian subcontinent, it warned. The warning said that while all westerners in India are in peril of being targeted, Israelis and places where Israelis usually congregate in large numbers are in more serious danger. The bureau asked all Israelis in India to steer clear of places where Western tourists are found in large numbers. It put a special emphasis on Chabad houses, which are popular with Israeli tourists, especially during the High Holidays. The bureau rated the threat as "imminent and concrete," and emphasized the Jammu and Kashmir regions in India's North. Thursday's warning was unusual, as India is a friendly country and there are tens of thousands of Israelis in India at any given time. Arab countries like Jordan, Egypt - including the Sinai Peninsula - and Morocco are regularly mentioned in Counter-Terrorism Bureau statements, especially during and following Israeli military operations. Source: JPost
 In a move likely to inflame an already tense relationship with Pakistan, the Indian government has revealed publicly for the first time a dossier of evidence presented to Islamabad linking the leader of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group blamed for the Mumbai attacks.
The co-ordinated attacks by armed men on several locations across India's financial capital last November left at least 170 people dead and hundreds wounded.
The attacks have strained relations between New Delhi and Islamabad. Now, in an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera's Hamish Macdonald, P Chidambaram, India's interior minister, says Pakistan is "deliberately" stifling the investigation by failing to follow up on the evidence. Chidambaram produced documents detailing names, times and locations of alleged meetings involving Hafiz Saeed, the Lashkar-e-Taiba chief, and those who went on to conduct the attacks.
Pakistan has repeatedly refused to re-arrest Saeed because it says India has failed to produce convincing evidence.
Beyond that, the dossier chronicles India's efforts in recent years to persuade Pakistan to investigate suspects involved in attacks in India and to close down "terrorist training camps" inside Pakistani territory. In the final pages, India demands that Pakistan hand over "conspirators" to face trial in India and comply with its promise to stop armed groups from functioning inside its territory.
"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," Manmohan Singh, the Indian prime minister, said on Tuesday. But Pakistan rejected the 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 to the Reuters news agency. "It is our firm resolve to ensure that nonstate actors do not use Pakistani soil to launch terrorist attacks anywhere in the world." Pakistan has said it is examining the information sent by India. Also, a Pakistani court on Saturday resumed hearing a case against the alleged masterminds of the Mumbai attacks.
Proceedings were initially launched against five men, but two more suspects have since been arrested, according to a state-run news agency report last week.
The five suspects arrested earlier and being tried are Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, a Lashkar commander, and four others - Hammad Amin, Abdul Wajid alias Zarar Shah, Mazhar Iqbal alias Abu Qama and Shahid Jameel Riaz.
The two more recently arrested men are Jameel Ahmed and Younus Anjum. Source: Al Jazeera (English)
By Harmeet Shah Singh July 27th
NEW DELHI, India (CNN) — An Indian court on Monday convicted a couple and another man for explosions that left 54 people dead in Mumbai in 2003.
Public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam described the verdict as a “big blow” to the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, a Pakistan-based militant group blamed for the attack. The court reserved sentencing till at least August 4. On that day, the prosecution will recommend what Nikam called the toughest punishment for the convicts, which is expected to be execution. Monday’s conviction came under what is now a repealed Prevention of Terror Act, which was in force in India when the bombings occurred at Mumbai’s Gateway of India and Zaveri Bazaar gold market. The court examined 103 witnesses, Nikam earlier told CNN. India blames the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba for last year’s terror strikes in Mumbai, in which more than 160 people were killed. Source: CNN Wire
Sadanand Dhume | July 22 TERRORISTS love luxury digs, but not for the same reasons as most of us. LAST Friday's bombing of the J.W. Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta underscores the emergence of a new terrorist target of choice: the international luxury hotel.
In the 19 months leading up to the Jakarta attacks, Islamic terrorists have brought their holy war to upscale properties in Kabul, Islamabad, Mumbai and Peshawar. The casualties thus far number about 116 people killed and hundreds more injured. More often than not, the terrorist predilection for five-star mayhem is explained in purely practical terms. Compared with fortified and heavily guarded embassies, hotels, welcoming to strangers by design, make relatively soft targets. Their international clientele, as well as the visual effect of the mangled facade of a familiar building, guarantees terrorists publicity. When the hotel brand in question is American, such as the Marriott or the Ritz-Carlton, the terrorist faithful gain the added benefit of hurting their foremost foe. From a radical Islamic perspective, however, an international hotel is much more than merely a convenient target of opportunity. It also represents, in microcosm, the antithesis of the world that radical Islamists, violent and non-violent, seek to create. In a modern hotel, for example, men and women are treated equally. More effort is expended on segregating smokers from non-smokers than on segregating the sexes. The bar, the gym and the swimming pool are gender-neutral spaces. Nobody seeks to enforce special dress codes on women. Nor would any international hotel dream of privileging one faith over another. By contrast, under the radical Islamic world view, Muslims are entitled to special privileges. This world view provides the underlying principle for things such as Pakistan's harsh anti-blasphemy laws and Malaysia's lopsided affirmative action program for its Malay-Muslim majority. True, a hotel in, say, Jakarta, may place a Koran by the bedside table and mark the direction of prayer to Mecca on the ceiling. But these are innocent gestures, designed as a convenience for Muslim guests rather than to inconvenience, much less to actively discriminate against, those of other backgrounds. For Islamic radicals, who seek to order all aspects of 21st-century life, from banking to burkas, by the medieval precepts enshrined in sharia law, the secular nature of a hotel is galling enough. But perhaps this would not matter as much if it didn't appeal to local elites. In a place such as Peshawar or Kabul, and to a large degree even in Jakarta or Mumbai, a five-star hotel represents an island of order and prosperity in a sea of squalor. It hints at the prosperity promised by free markets and a culture of individual liberty. It is living proof that the worldly can be split successfully from the divine. Read more here,,, Source: The Australian Sadanand Dhume is a Washington-based writer and author of My Friend the Fanatic: Travels with an Indonesian Islamist (Text Publishing, 2008).
This is Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, caught on film as he unleashed a devastating and indiscriminate attack in Mumbai that left 166 people dead. But this picture is not the most dramatic record of that day. During the raid, the Indian intelligence services intercepted mobile phone calls between Kasab, his terrorist comrades and a mysterious handler hundreds of miles away, who issued commands to shoot civilians without mercy. These shocking tapes reveal the sinister mind control used to turn young men into killing machines - and the casual, off-hand brutality of the men who masterminded the massacre
By DAN REED | 27th June  Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab at the Victoria Terminus railway station in Mumbai during last November's terrorist attack 'Do you want them to keep the hostages or kill them?' asks Brother Wasi of someone else in the control room.
The person replies with a casual grunt, barely audible through the background babble of the news channels playing on a nearby television. At the other end of the line, 500 miles away, Akasha, a 25-year-old Pakistani, is squatting on the floor inside a besieged building in the centre of Mumbai with a murdered rabbi's mobile phone in one hand and a Kalashnikov in the other.
He knows with complete certainty that this will be his last night on Earth. For his mission to be a success, he must be killed. The two women hostages are on a bed nearby, trussed up and blindfolded. Another gunman, Umer, is dozing. Now Wasi comes back on the phone. His manner is warm and paternal - the kind of calm, commanding voice you instinctively trust. Wasi: 'Listen up...'
Akasha: 'Yes sir.'
Akasha speaks in a gentle, dopey murmur. He sounds exhausted. Wasi: 'Just shoot them now. Get rid of them. Because you could come under fire at any time and you'll only end up leaving them behind.'
Akasha: 'Everything's quiet here for now.'
Wasi: 'Shoot them in the back of the head.'
Akasha: 'Sure. Just as soon as we come under fire.'
Wasi: 'No. Don't wait any longer. You never know when you might come under attack.'
Akasha: 'Insh'Allah' (God willing).
Wasi: 'I'll stay on the line.'
There's silence for 15 seconds. No gunshots.
Akasha: 'Hello?'
Wasi: 'Do it. Do it. I'm listening. Do it.'
Akasha: 'What, shoot them?'
Wasi: 'Yes, do it. Sit them up and shoot them in the back of the head.'
Akasha: 'Umer is asleep. He hasn't been feeling too well.'
Wasi consults his associates in the control room, then comes back on the line. Wasi: 'I'll call you back in half an hour. You can do it then.'
 The Taj Palace Hotel during the raid in November 2008 This conversation, remarkable for its off-hand cruelty, was intercepted by India's intelligence agencies at 8.40pm on Thursday, November 27 last year, two days into the three-day terrorist attack on Mumbai. I first became aware of these wiretaps in January, when the Indian government released a dossier of evidence about the massacre. The dossier pointed an accusatory finger at Pakistan and included a few paragraphs of transcribed wiretaps as evidence. At the time the thought of getting hold of the audio recordings themselves seemed fanciful. This was classified material, perhaps some of the most important wiretaps ever recorded by the Indian secret services.
Yet one morning four months later I returned to my hotel room in Mumbai looking over my shoulder and clutching an almost complete set of recordings. Soon the long-dead voices were playing through my headphones. Gunmen caught on CCTV at the Taj Hotel - behind the double doors, 300 guests are sitting silently in a function room Despite the difficulties we had in obtaining the tapes, I immediately questioned whether they were genuine, as it's well known that the Indian government was keen to pin blame for the attack on Pakistan. I recognised in the recordings the voices of people I'd spoken to at length - a surviving hostage and an interpreter. Read it all here... Original Source: Mail Online UK (link no longer available).
 MUMBAI: Behaviour of Ajmal Amir Kasab and his statements in court prove that he is a 'fidayeen', who has been well trained physically and psychologically to even dodge clutches of law, said Ujwal Nikam, public prosecutor of the 26/11 case.
Nikam said Kasab has not only been trained in terror warfare but also given intelligence training to escape the clutches of law by ‘dishonest’ means.
"From what he has told the court, it is clear that he is "misguiding". He has been misleading from time to time in regard to his age so that he can go in for a trial under Juvenile Justice Act, which does not attract rigorous punishment like the one prescribed under IPC," Nikam said.
"He is unpredictable and says one thing at one moment and totally opposite at some other time. Kasab gave his age as 21 years to the jailor and the doctor who examined him after his arrest but in the court he pleaded he was 17.
After the court inquiry found he was not a minor, Kasab again blurted out that he was 21 when charges were being framed against him in the court.
"This shows the pattern how well he has been trained to mislead. He is definitely a 'fidayeen' and knows how to influence people by harping on their psychology. Even his mood patterns indicate this trend,” Nikam added.
THE trial of the lone Islamist militant suspect captured by police during the Mumbai attacks is due to start on Wednesday, amid tight security and under close international scrutiny. Mohammed Ajmal Amir Iman, also known as Kasab, is to make his first public appearance since being arrested on November 26, soon after 10 gunmen began an assault that left more than 160 dead and more than 300 others injured. The 21-year-old Pakistani national, said to belong to the banned Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Toiba, faces charges including "waging war" against India, murder, attempted murder and kidnapping. He faces the death penalty if convicted. The trial is being held before a single judge without a jury at a special court in Mumbai's Arthur Road jail because of the same security fears that led to all previous hearings being held by video-link or behind closed doors. Proceedings have been delayed while workers reinforced the structure and reportedly built a bomb-proof tunnel from Iman's cell after he received death threats. There was also uncertainty about whether he would even be represented in court after the home of his state-appointed lawyer, Anjali Waghmare, was attacked by irate Hindu radicals and she was denounced for taking on the case. She has since been given the highest level of police protection. Iman, the nine dead gunmen and 35 other LET "terrorists" sought in connection with the attacks are said to have carried out a "heinous criminal conspiracy" against the city and people of Mumbai and India, according to the charge sheet. Two other men are also on trial, Indian nationals Fahim Ansari, 35, and Sabauddin Ahmed, 24, who are said to have provided the group with invaluable logistical support before the attacks. Iman was arrested as he and an accomplice tried to flee after planting a bomb in a taxi. Meenakshi Ganguly, from Human Rights Watch in Mumbai, said since 26 foreigners had been killed in the attacks, the case was assured of international attention. HRW has already expressed concern about the delay in Iman getting legal representation and over calls, including from some senior lawyers, that no Indian counsel should agree to defend him. "The fair-trial issue is the most important thing," Mr Ganguly told Agence France-Presse. "It's important to understand that there are reasons why the law exists and the law is followed." Prosecutors say they have ample evidence that "undoubtedly and conclusively" links the attacks to Pakistan, including mobile and satellite phone communication between the gunmen and their LET "handlers". Iman's DNA and fingerprints were found on items retrieved from the hijacked Indian fishing trawler the gunmen used to get to the Mumbai coast, according to a version of the charge sheet released in February. Police and security experts say Iman was ripe for recruitment by Islamist militants. "He fits the profile if you look at the terrorists recruited by Lashkar-e-Toiba," said Wilson John, senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi and a specialist in extremist groups. Source: The Australian
The trail of terror continues with cricketers as the latest target. The Mumbai and Lahore attacks, public executions and the murder of over a thousand civilians in the Swat valley by Taliban style terrorists are horrifying examples of atrocities committed by militant groups thriving on political Islam. Global Muslim communities require urgent measures in condemning the agenda of political Islam that distorts religious scriptures to legitimise violence. This ideology of Islamism is threatening to replace a moderate and spiritual Islam, leading to the destruction of society, particularly oppressing women and minorities. Muslims have a moral responsibility to engage in the social, political and economic development of the societies they live in. Global Muslim societies would do well in following the exceptional efforts of the Indian clerics in denouncing terrorism and de linking it with Islam. Sincere moral outrage needs to be expressed at Taliban atrocities in Afghanistan and Pakistan, political kidnappings and assassinations, militancy in Kashmir, Shia Sunni killings in Iraq and Pakistan, fatwas that condone suicide bombings in the Israel Palestine conflict and other such atrocities that effect innocent lives. Muslims require the consensus of the international in combating extremism but our credibility is lost when we demonstrate selective outrage as in the aftermath of the Danish cartoons. Political Islam draws its lifeblood from the ideology of fighting the oppressor, but has clearly become the oppressor. Even though some Islamist groups have renounced violence and accepted the principles of democracy, marginally improved their stand on women and minority rights, they remain socially conservative. In Jordan, the Islamist party does not support the rights of women to file for divorce. In Kuwait the Islamists fought against the right of women to vote. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood will not allow a woman or a person from a minority community to become head of state. Unfortunately, militant Islamist groups thrive in the political vacuum created by oppressive regimes in most Islamic countries. Muslims must stop blaming the problem of extremism on catastrophic foreign policies for two wrongs simply do not make a right. Islamism is primarily a Muslim problem, threatening both Muslim and non- Muslim societies. We need to acknowledge there is a problem of theology when extremists talk of going straight to heaven after taking innocent lives. The roots of all modern militant Islamic movements can be traced to one man called Abdul Wahab from Nejd in the Arabian Peninsula. He set out to ‘purify’ Islam, believing that Muslims had drifted away from true religion. Wahab’s followers destroyed many sacred sites he considered idols. Attacking the arts for being frivolous and dangerous, Wahab sanctioned the rape; murder and plunder of those who refused to follow his injunctions. He was considered a heretic by most, for Makkah and Madinah were then centres of contemplative Islam, inhabited by Sufis from all over the world. In 1774-5 Wahab negotiated a deal with the then nomadic tribe of Saud, forebears of the current royal family in exchange for support in their quest for political domination. Most Saudi’s reject the name Wahabbi; they either call themselves Muwahuddin- Unitarians- or Salafi, refering to salaf, the venerated companions of the Prophet. In this blinkered view, no other version of religious truth can exist. This new face of Islam has nothing to do with Sufis, music, poetry, miracles or the countless devotional customs of Muslim cultures across the world. Under the patronage of the Saudi Arabia, Wahabism went from strength to strength. Abul Ala Mawdudi, a journalist who translated the Quran outside the paradigms of classical propagated the Wahabi ideology. He founded the political party Jamaat e Islami in Pakistan, making jihad central to Islamic discourse. Addressing non-Muslims as infidels, he grouped Muslims into ‘partial’ and ‘true’ Muslims. Mawdudi’s ideas of Islam as a revolutionary doctrine to take over governments and overturn the whole universal order deeply influenced Syed Qutub of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. These groups have been motivated by political upheavals and the rejection of traditional scholars. Syed Qutub’s brother happened to be among the teachers of Osama bin Laden. The extremism now found in Makkah and Madinah, the heartland of Islam, is the Wahabi ideology that the Saudis have spent millions in promoting through their outreach programs. There is no tolerance for Shias, Sunni Sufis or other Muslim traditions, leave alone non -Muslims. Unfortunately, there is no collective Muslim protest against the Saudi regime for bulldozing graveyards, destroying cultural and religious heritage in the holy cities, imposing a certain sexual segregation of the sexes inside the Prophets mosque at Madinah, radical sermons, or the distribution of radical literature outside Saudi mosques, many of them issuing calls for death to whoever they view as infidels or innovators of Islam. The problem of Muslim extremism began in the Muslim world and the responsibility of resolving it lies with us. The inability to present a picture of Islam as a peaceful religion is a collective failure of global Muslim communities. We could begin with increasing the decibel in condemning violence, sectarianism, standing up for the rights of women, stop demonising the other as kufaar (infidels) and show increased support for democratic movements in Muslim countries. It is time for the devout, silent peace-loving Muslim majority to speak for Islam. Let us become louder than the radical voices that claim to represent us. Sadia Dehlvi is a Delhi based writer and author of the forthcoming book, “Sufism: The Heart of Islam” published by HarperCollins India. Source: Indian Muslims
 Sri Lankan cricket teamAmanda Hodge, South Asia correspondent and Peter Kogoy | March 04
PAKISTANI President Asif Ali Zardari has strongly condemned yesterday's terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore, as authorities scramble to find the gunmen responsible.
The suspected Islamic terrorists opened a new front by launching an attack on the cricket squad’s bus, wounding eight team members and killing at least eight people, six of them police
It had plunged Pakistan into a "state of war," Rehman Malik, the Prime Minister's interior adviser, said. "Be patient, we will flush all these terrorists out of the country.”
The attack, in Pakistan's most cosmopolitan city, bore all the hallmarks of the terror group responsible for November's deadly Mumbai attacks.
Punjabi Governor Salman Tahseer said the 12 masked and heavily armed gunmen who attacked the cricket convoy as it approached the Gaddafi stadium were not ordinary terrorists, but highly trained.
While last night no group had claimed responsibility for the attack, Mr Tahseer said the terrorists appeared to follow the same modus operandi as the Mumbai gunmen, who have been linked to the Pakistani Islamic terror group Lashkar-e-Toiba.
"I want to say it's the same pattern, the same terrorists who attacked Mumbai," Mr Tahseer said.
The terrorists, travelling by rickshaw and taxi and armed with Kalashnikov rifles, rocket launchers and grenades, attacked the Sri Lankan team's bus about 9am (3pm AEDT) as it headed into the stadium for the third day of the final Test match of the series.
All 12 terrorists managed to escape, but four armed suspects were arrested late yesterday by police after a manhunt was launched in the city. Lahore police also defused two car bombs yesterday and found a stash of weapons in the city.
"The plan was apparently to kill the Sri Lankan team but the police came in the way and forced the attackers to run away," police chief Habib-ur Rehman said.
Sri Lanka's captain Mahela Jayawardene, who received minor shrapnel wounds in the attack, said officials and players dropped to the floor as one of the attackers fired a rocket launcher at the bus. It missed its target.
"The gunmen targeted the wheels of the bus first, and then the bus. We all dived to the floor to take cover," Jayawardene said.
As well as opening fire on the bus, the terrorists lobbed grenades before engaging in a 25-minute shootout with police. TV footage showed gunmen, carrying backpacks, firing at the convoy. A police official said two civilians and six policemen guarding the players were killed in the attack.
Vice-captain Kumar Sangakkara, who had shrapnel removed from his shoulder, said last night the entire touring squad was safe.
"There are a few injuries, but everyone is safe and all the players are out of danger," Sangakkara told the Indian news channel CNN-IBN from Lahore.
"We are shocked, but apart from that everyone is OK.
"It's very unfortunate that this has happened. I don't regret coming here to play cricket because that's what we have been doing all our lives.
"That is our profession. But all we want to do now is to go back home to our families, get back home and be safe."
Mr Zardari strongly condemned the violence and ordered an inquiry, while Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse called the incident a “cowardly terrorist attack”.
US President Barack Obama said he was “deeply concerned” about the latest violence to hit Washington's “war on terror” ally, while British Foreign Secretary David Miliband condemned the incident “unreservedly”.
The Pakistan Cricket Board said the attack was “beyond (its) control,” adding that it was “deeply shocked” by the incident.
Despite heightened security for the visiting team, the bus was not bulletproof and the route to the stadium was open to traffic.
As well as Jayawardene and Sangakkara, five other players were wounded, including opening batsmen Tharanga Paranavitana and Thilan Samaraweera.
Paranavitana had shrapnel removed from his chest and Samaraweera -- who this week became only the seventh batsmen to notch a double hundred in consecutive tests -- was operated on for a gunshot wound to the thigh.
Also wounded were Ajantha Mendis (shrapnel in neck and scalp), Suranka Lakmal and Chaminda Vaas. British assistant coach Paul Farbrace was also wounded. Australian-born head coach Trevor Bayliss was unhurt.
Two Pakistani air force helicopters evacuated the Sri Lankan team from the stadium to an air base, from where they were to be flown home by charter aircraft.
Sixteen members of the touring party ran towards the military aircraft on the pitch under the guard of security officials.
Samaraweera and Paranavitana were carried on stretchers to a helicopter that also evacuated from the stadium Jayawardene and manager Brenden Kurrupu.
Mr Bayliss's wife, Julie, told The Australian her husband was lucky to have escaped the attack.
"Trevor's OK, thank God, but they took an inch and a half of shrapnel from the back of Paul Farbrace's head," she said.
"Trev told me there was a lot of blood on the team bus from the injuries suffered by the other blokes on the team."
Sydney-born Pakistan cricket team trainer David Dwyer, who was travelling in another bus in the convoy, described hearing a noise like firecrackers going off before his bus came to a screeching halt.
There seemed to be a lot of confusion and panic around the Sri Lankan team bus, which was "behind us when we passed it on the road", Dwyer said.
"It was only when we got back to the hotel and were told to stay in our rooms that we were told what had happened," he said. "Right now I'm still trying to get my head around what had just happened to a lot of our mates on the Sri Lankan cricket team."
Security concerns have plagued Pakistan for years and some foreign sports teams, including the Australian cricket team, have refused to play there. Just last month, after the Mumbai attack in which more than 170 people were killed, the Indian Government refused permission for the national cricket team to tour Pakistan.
Yesterday's attack was the first time a sporting team had been targeted in the nuclear-armed South Asian nation, which appears to be losing its battle to contain Islamic extremists within its borders.
It also rocked the South Asian heartland of cricket and prompted an immediate review of arrangements for the 2011 World Cup. The showpiece tournament is due to be jointly hosted by India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
"Quite clearly, this event puts a great question mark over the ability of Pakistan to host cricket World Cup matches," International Cricket Council president David Morgan told the BBC.
The Sri Lankan military is also engaged in a bloody battle with Tamil separatists in the north of the country. But Sri Lanka military spokesman Udaya Nanayakkara said he did not believe the attack was carried out by Tamil Tiger rebels, who are now on the brink of defeat after a 25-year armed struggle for a separate Tamil nation.
Reg Dickason, a security expert for the Australian, English and New Zealand cricket teams who opposed the Champion's Trophy being played in Pakistan last year, said yesterday he had tried to dissuade the Sri Lankan team from touring Pakistan a fortnight before their scheduled visit.
"Pakistan is in a volatile situation and travelling there needed careful consideration," he said. Source: The Australian
 Alice Thomson and Rachel Sylvester | February 05
It is 20 years since Salman Rushdie published his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, about two Indian actors, Gibreel and Saladin. Within weeks Islamist groups were accusing the writer of blasphemy and burning effigies of him in the streets. On February 14, 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against him, calling for his death, forcing him into hiding for nearly a decade and turning him into one of the most famous authors in the world.
With hindsight, Rushdie says, he realises the fatwa was merely the prologue in a very long novel that is becoming ever more terrifying.
On September 11, 2001, one of his three favourite cities, New York, was attacked, four years later his adopted home of London was targeted by suicide bombers and last year, Mumbai, the city of his birth, was overwhelmed by extremists intent on causing havoc.
The West, he thinks, should have realised the fatwa was just the beginning of a new era. "There was a tendency from everybody to believe that it was an isolated incident rather than an indicator or something wider, to believe that it was all my fault," he says.
He is not worried about the anniversary. "I am sure there will be some nasty noises but there are nasty noises every year." But as someone who has lived much of his life under the shadow of fundamentalism, he believes successive British governments have pursued the wrong policy over religious extremists. "This country became the safe haven for every extremist group in the world. It was idiocy, idiocy," he says.
Rushdie has always been riveted by the disruptions and migrations between the Eastern and Western world, and his latest book, The Enchantress of Florence, brings together the extravagant Islamic Mogul empire and the equally extraordinary Florentine world of Machiavelli.
"I thought the thing that would be interesting was how different the two worlds were. I kept finding echoes. Both cultures were very hedonistic, both trying to choose between a puritanical and secularist view," he says.
There are, of course, striking parallels with the rising tensions between East and West in this century. Rushdie is not convinced that there is a clash of civilisations between Islam and Christianity. "There is a kind of Islam which is at war with an idea of the West but neither the West nor the Muslim world is monolithic," he says.
He watched with horror as flames tore through the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai. "Those are the streets I grew up on. Two of the characters in my novel Midnight's Children consummate their love affair in the Palace, as so many of us did." His voice trails off for a moment. "It is strange that the three cities in my life that I have loved have all been subjected to terrorist attack in the last 10years."
The people of Mumbai showed extraordinary courage under attack, he says, but now the overwhelming mood is of great anger. "There is no question that this was Pakistan. You could see it as an act of war. The West should be tougher on Pakistan. It is trying to play both ends against the middle: to look like the friend of the revolutionaries on the one hand and a friend of the West in the fight against terrorism. It can't be both things. (Britain) should make clear that as long as Pakistan harbours terrorists it's not going to get any Western aid."
In his view Britain has been far too complacent about the rise of extremism. "Both Thatcher and Blair made the same mistake, which was the so-called Londonistan policy where you allow these (Islamist) groups to set up shop here in the belief that if you do that they won't attack this country and that you can monitor them."
Labour became much tougher on suspected terrorists after 9/11, raising concerns that civil liberties were being brushed aside.
"The War on Terror was always a terrible phrase," Rushdie says. "You are never going to defeat terror. But I sometimes think that liberal opinion in this country doesn't see that there actually are enemies. We just saw in Mumbai a demonstration of the extraordinary barbarism that people are prepared to unleash on the world. How many of these attacks do we need before we understand what's going on?"
There can be few people who feel the threat of fundamentalism more keenly than Rushdie. He lived with the threat of assassination for nine years but he does not regret writing The Satanic Verses. "Of course I don't, why would I? But I'm pleased that finally it's being read like a book. It used to be taught on politics and religion courses; now it's getting taught on fiction courses."
Some people would think of the time in hiding as missing years but he says: "You never really lose your time because if you are any good as a writer you learn from whatever happens to you. I met a lot of men of power in those years, so when I have to set out to create one I have quite a lot of models in my head."
There are, he tells us, many myths about his time in hiding. "I have read that I slept in 56 beds in three months. But for seven of the nine years I lived in the same house."
He hates the idea that he was sponging off the state, pointing out that he was never given a government safe house. "They told me I couldn't live at home and I had to find somewhere else to live and pay for it."
It is hard to imagine what he did when he was hidden away for nine years. "Like everybody else I played a computer game or two ... Martin (Amis) had these poker nights."
His would, he admits, be an extraordinary autobiography. "I have the Chinese curse of living in interesting times." He was deeply hurt when a former driver tried to publish a book last year in which he made many false allegations including suggesting that Rushdie was suicidal and did not get on with his protection officers. "Somebody tried to make a few bucks by telling a bunch of total lies. One of these days I will have to tell the story because otherwise I am going to be constantly vulnerable."
Rushdie is baffled by the hostility he inspires among some. "People can be very generous or very unfair and you never know which way they are going to go. Many of my friends were extraordinary in that period (in hiding). But there was also this surprising level of media hostility that still goes on. The subtext being: it's his own fault, he made the mistake of living and now he appears to be having a good time. He ought to be sitting inpenance."
The man once forced to be a recluse is now portrayed as a party animal, a favourite for the paparazzi, because he often has a beautiful woman on his arm.
At times he has played to the camera - he had a cameo role in the film Bridget Jones's Diary, and appeared in a music video with Scarlett Johansson - but he remains uncomfortable with the idea of celebrity. "Everybody goes to parties; it's just that when I go to parties they are always in the press." After four failed marriages, he says he has no intention of tying the knot again. "I'm not saying I am never going to fall in love again but there is no need to marry." Nor does he want any more children. "I'm 61, enough already." His latest project, however, is a children's book. "When I wrote my last children's book my oldest son was 11. He's 29 now. I have another 11-year-old now who wants a book. I read him the first 15 pages and he liked it."
He is fascinated by the success of the Harry Potter books. "The conventional thought about children's books was to keep them short; J.K. Rowling turned that on its head." Publishers, he thinks, should be more willing to challenge readers, whatever their age. "The whole world is commercial, including publishing. There's been a kind of bestselleritis ... If anyone likes my books, I am happy. I don't mind if they don't."
He is not a fan of misery lit. "At its best it's as interesting as any other form. The trouble is, at its worst it does become this kind ofblurt."
The literary world has changed since he started writing. "In the late '70s to late '80s there was a real desire for originality and a lot of us benefited from that - Angela Carter, Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, me."
The man who last year won the Best of the Booker for Midnight's Children says the British obsession with prizes baffles him. "They've become a marketing device, a way of selling books."
The Orange Prize for women is in his view patronising. "This is one world where women can more than hold their own and you don't need to create a ghetto."
He believes longevity is more important than instant success. If he submitted a manuscript to a publisher now, however, he doubts it would be accepted. "I wouldn't like to be starting now," he says. "I was lucky to get published in the first place." Source: The Australian
  Shashi Tharoor January 19, 2009
AS Israeli planes and tanks exact a heavy toll on Gaza, India's leaders and strategic thinkers have been watching with an unusual degree of interest, and some empathy.
Unsurprisingly, India's Government has joined the rest of the world in calling for an end to the military action, but its criticism of Israel has been muted. As Israel demonstrates anew its determination to end attacks on its civilians by militants based in Hamas-controlled territory, many in India, still smarting from the horrors of the Mumbai attacks in November, have been asking: Why can't we do the same?
For many Indians, the temptation to identify with Israel was strengthened by the terrorists' seizure of Mumbai's Chabad House Jewish centre and the painful awareness that India and Israel share many of the same enemies. India, with its 150-million strong Muslim population, has long been a strong supporter of the Palestinian cause and remains staunchly committed to an independent Palestinian state. But the Mumbai attacks confirmed what has become apparent in recent years: the forces of global Islamist terror have added Indians to their target list of reviled "Jews and crusaders".
Just as Israel has frequently been attacked by rockets fired from across its border with Gaza, India has suffered repeated assaults by killers trained, equipped, financed, and directed by elements based next door in Pakistan. When US President George W.Bush's press secretary equated members of Hamas with the Mumbai killers, her comments were widely circulated in India.
Yet there the parallels end.
Israel is a small country living in a permanent state of siege, highly security conscious and surrounded by forces hostile to it; India is a giant country with notoriously permeable borders and an open society known for its lax and easygoing ways.
Whereas many regard Israel's toughness as its principal characteristic, India's citizens view their country as a soft state, its underbelly easily penetrated by determined terrorists. Whereas Israel notoriously exacts grim retribution for every attack on its soil, India has endured with numbing stoicism an endless series of bomb blasts, including at least six major assaults in different locations in 2008 alone. Terrorism has taken more lives in India than in any country other than Iraq, and yet, unlike Israel, India has seemed unable to do anything about it.
Moreover, whereas Israel's principal adversary is presently Hamas, India faces a slew of terrorist organisations: Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Jamaat-ud-Dawa and others. But whereas Hamas operates without international recognition from Gaza - its legitimacy questioned even by the Palestinian Authority - India's tormentors function from Pakistan, a sovereign member of the UN. And that makes all the difference.
Hamas is in no position to repay Israel's air and ground attacks in kind, whereas an Indian attack on Pakistani territory, even one targeting terrorist bases and training camps, would invite swift retaliation from the Pakistani army. Israel can dictate the terms of its military incursion and end it at will, whereas an Indian military action would immediately spark a war with a well-armed neighbour that neither side could win. And, at the end of the day, one chilling fact would prevent India from thinking that it could use Israel's playbook: the country that condones, if not foments, the terror attacks on India is a nuclear power.
So India has gone to the international community with evidence to prove that the Mumbai attacks were planned in Pakistan and conducted by Pakistani citizens, who maintained contact with handlers in Pakistan throughout the operation. While India's Government had briefly hoped the proof could enable Pakistan's weak civilian Government to rein in the malign elements in its society, the Pakistani authorities' reaction has been one of denial.
Yet no one doubts that Pakistan's all-powerful military intelligence has, over the past two decades, created and supported terrorist organisations as instruments of Pakistani policy in Afghanistan and India.
When India's embassy in Kabul was hit by a suicide bomber last July, US intelligence sources revealed that not only was Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence behind the attack, but that it made little effort to cover its tracks. The ISI knew perfectly well that India would not go to war with Pakistan to avenge the killing of its diplomatic personnel.
The fact is that India knows that war will accomplish nothing. Indeed, it is just what the terrorists want: a cause that would rally all Pakistanis to the flag and provide Pakistan's army an excuse to abandon the unpopular fight against the Taliban and al-Qa'ida in the west for the more familiar terrain of the Indian border in the east. India's Government sees no reason to play into the hands of those who seek that outcome.
Yet, when Indians watch Israel take the fight to the enemy, killing those who launched rockets against it and dismantling many of the sites from which the rockets flew, some cannot resist wishing that they could do something similar in Pakistan. India understands, though, that the collateral damage would be too high, the price in civilian lives unacceptable, and the risks of the conflict spiralling out of control too acute to contemplate such an option. So Indians place their trust in international diplomacy and watch with ill-disguised wistfulness as Israel does what they could never permit themselves to do.
Shashi Tharoor, an acclaimed novelist and commentator, is a former undersecretary-general of the UN. Source: The Australian
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Scotland Yard has warned businesses in London to expect a Mumbai-style attack on the capital. 
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