indian U-turn; india itself involve in mumbai mass killing:
India’s foreign minister denied Sunday that he had phoned Pakistan’s president at the height of the Mumbai terrorist siege, prompting its air force to go on high alert, but Pakistani officials insisted he — or someone else in his ministry — had placed the call.
Meanwhile, India’s investigation into the attacks was running into similar theatrics, with security officials demanding the release of one of only two men arrested so far, saying he was actually a counterinsurgency police officer who may have been on an undercover mission. The arrests, announced in the eastern city of Calcutta, were the first since the bloody siege ended. But what was touted as a rare success for India’s beleaguered law enforcement agencies quickly turned sour as police in two Indian regions squared off against one another.

Venkat,

I have never been to Azad Kashmir/PoK beyond flying over it on a flight to Skardu. If I remember rightly, as a foreigner you have to get permission to go there, whereas you can fly in and out of Srinagar at will.

But I’m not entirely sure this is a fair comparison. The insurgency has been in the Kashmir Valley, so it is somewhat to be expected that the media will focus its attentions there. Don’t forget that the foreign media doesn’t write much about Ladakh either — though arguably it is strategically more important than the Valley. So the focus on the Kashmir Valley may be less to do with press gagging than with a tendency for the media to converge on the obvious.

Also, again in an effort to be fair and balanced to both sides, India also has places which are off-limits to the foreign media. It’s not easy to get near parts of the LoC, and incredibly difficult — or certainly was when I went there — to get permission to go to Siachen. The foreign media will also run into problems in parts of the north-east, in Manipur for example — try driving out of Imphal towards the border with Myanmar/Burma and you’ll soon be turned back. So all countries have their sensitivities — I’m sure the British and the Americans would not allow the media to wander freely around sensitive areas either.

All that to say that media gagging may be something of a blind alley, or at least not the real issue. For what it’s worth, I met quite a few Pakistanis who were surprised that I could go in and out of Srinagar without special permission, including one woman who asked about the “rivers of blood” there, so there do seem to be a fair number of misconceptions on all sides.

Myra

Umair
The Lashkar is not a tribal region player, Local Indian based militants lack such sophistication, RAW is a almost a defunct organization since 1996, when IK Gujral the then PM of India literally cut off their resources, CIA has no tangible gains from India, Mossad has many time tried to enlist support to India but given the strong Muslim presence & India’s excellent relation with most of the Muslim world, India has snubbed it enough for them not to try again & they have once double-crossed India, so to gain Indian trust or clear Indian bureaucratic red-tape is an impossible task & they are well aware of it, The democratic Pakistani Government is nowhere in the picture & would ultimately be the biggest losers of this fallout for no crime of their rather would become more submissive to the Army Establishment, but in every adversity lies a greater opportunity, if they have the courage this is the moment for establishing a vibrant democracy & end the identity crisis of Pakistan once & for all.

Myra
There were Kashmiri elements involved in the Parliament attack, not necessarily Lashkar-e-Toiba , but their imprints were deliberately made very obvious & in the end the Pakistani Establishment for namesake banned it to get Mr. Bush off their back & also at that time didn’t expect India to literally prepare to attack them, although the then PM Mr. Vajpayee was dead against India breaking the thousands of year old tradition of never ever attacking a foreign country, Advani, who was the home minister then would not see reason, the inefficient Indian bureaucracy given their pathetic intelligence track record, even after repeated failures, also find it convenient to impulsively name Lashkar-e-Toiba to immediately save their skin, which in India is also considered synonymous with the ISI & it goes don very well with their Political Bosses, with the BJP because given it’s anti-Pakistan obsession & Kashmir mileage that it derives out of it, with the Congress & it’s ilk, because of it’s politically motivated denial of local elements who are under the Patronage of ISI, as it may risk hurting the sentiments of a large segment of locals, the term is vote bank politics (sic).
The attack on Red Fort / Parliament / Bangalore IISC, all bore the Hallmark of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, there are hardly any footprints of Al-Queda in India, except the recent bombing of the Indian embassy in Afghanistan, which according to me was more direct & serious in nature & in which the CIA had squarely blamed the ISI, facing it with corroboratory proof, ofcourse which it just indicated to India but did not share, all the bomb blasts have lead to the involvement of locals who have been given half-baked training by the ISI,
But I beg to differ on the Mumbai Attack with regards to the Lashkar-e-Toiba,
1 the Saudi funding to them is specifically for Kashmir cause out of which a large chunk goes to the Pakistani Army for supply of arms ammunitions, facilitating training & logistics, in recent time due to almost nil recruits from Kashmir it’s also arranging for Punjabi recruits.
2 Every year after the snow melts, for four months, more than a thousand of their cadres try to cross the LOC & since last two years hardly a handful make it, inspite of cover fire from the Pakistani Army, which are termed as breach of the ceasefire by the Indian Government, only to be encountered within matter of hours, so desperate is their situation that recently they have been recruiting temporary cadres from Kerala, south India, if they had the privilege to use the Karachi Port to sail into India, sneak into Kashmir, then why would they risk getting majority of their men getting killed trying to cross the border & waste so much of time & money as their training lasts only for two months & remaining months the cadres as it is are a liability & because of this predicament in recent times they are forced to lease their cadres to the Taliban.
3 You have very rightly stated about fidayeen attacks being typical to Kashmir, but fidayeen attacks are extremely offensive, with the target being 8/10 time the security forces & remaining time the Politicians or the administration, rarely the public, who are mainly collateral damage in their attacks, which was also the case in the Parliament attack & others, the Kashmiri fidayeens rarely target westerners, being aware of the fact that the Kashmir issue does has clandestine support & sympathy with them & targeting tourist has been always avoided by them, even Indian tourists to Kashmir, for the fear of loosing local support.
4 They are not trained in defensive or prolonged warfare, which is strictly military in nature, they are mainly rustic bodied, but the guys in Mumbai were well chiseled youths, the fidayeens are simply trained as martyrs with a little more than basic & crude training in arm usage & grenade throwing , whereas the Mumbai attackers displayed excellent defense, maximum utilization of ammunitions, sophistication in using arms & prolonged warfare mechanism, they literally held their ground till the last bullet, they were highly skilled grenadiers, well versed in battle deception, highly motivated soldiers,unconfirmed autopsy report of the hapless captive Jewish ladies suggest that they tortured them with such precision that it would put the best of surgeons to shame & the report may probably never become public. Throughout the operation they showcased the highest form of military discipline, At the Tiffin restaurant in Oberoi when they made all the guests line up against the wall, & before spraying bullets on them, they first sought permission on their satellite phone whether to massacre the roughly thirty victims, which Lashkar militant would indulge in such niceties?
At the Taj they first destroyed the in-house CCTV control room, made most of their captives to remove their clothes & used them as human shields in a highly professional manner, one of them was the Chairman of Ing Vyasya Bank, the sole guy captured is spinning yarns to the Mumbai Police, taking them for a ride, which means they have been trained to deceive in torture as part of their training by being subjected to torture, they were professional units executing their task precisely as assigned(most probably they were eight units out of which five have been eliminated & remaining three backup units safely holed with some local contact awaiting further order), the Lashkar comes in hordes not as professional units & many such indications & incidences…all suggesting that they had undergone an average of two years of training to achieve such soldiering mastery.
The complete cost of the operation must have run in more than a couple of hundred thousand dollars, the high skill training, the arms & ammunitions, the intelligence gathering of targets, the recce expenditures of Mumbai, all of them had spent around two/three months in south Mumbai as Malaysian students, the numerous credit & debit cards of Mauritius , Malaysia etc. Identity card of Indian universities, the Jewish target, what could a lashkar fidayeen have to do with all this? It seem they must have targeted the Leopold café & Bar because of some animosity during their stay in Mumbai, now this is a typical hangout mainly for foreign tourists & students who want to chill out on a bottle of beer, I wouldn’t imagine a Lahkar fidayeen ever visiting such an unholy pub, finally why would the Lahkar go through such painstaking exercise & expenditure, when it can use the conduit route, the ammo, the intelligence operation to strike a Military base or if make a statement to the Indian Government then why not target Delhi, or use the same resources to send a hundred fidayeen to J&K? WHY?

The quotes are an example of internet misuse, this article was dated May 2005, and the very next line after this para is that Jamaat-ul-Dawa is on watch list since beginning 2005. The article also says that the first jihadi group emerged from India - but I believe you missed those lines.

Although the significance of Jihad in the Qur’an and Sunnah cannot be overstated, its exact place in the overall framework of Islamic values and imperatives has been a matter of some debate. A highly misleading but popular idea in this respect is that any war in which the Muslims are engaged, even if the motives are other than purely Islamic, is Jihad. The word Jihad is not synonymous with “Holy War” which is what the Western media wants everyone to believe. After four decades of Cold War, the Western powers suddenly found themselves without a legitimate enemy, and, consequently, they have designated Islam and the Muslims as the most deadly threat to world peace. The image of all Muslims as terrorists was inculcated by numerous so-called documentaries, like the infamous Jihad in America (PBS).

We should use media to communicate truth and the whole truth, not just copy/paste the words and paras from other articles, what is written cannot always be true. We, internet users, have responsibility and we should fulfill this carefully.

Also, I believe the Mumbai attacks did immediate damage to India. But it will have far reaching consequences for Paksitan in the long run. I certainly see some Pakistani connection; not that some Pakistani millitant group was involved. But the attack was meant to harm Pakistan in the long run. This incident can flare tensions to very high level. Does anyone has the intution to percieve what could be the fallout?
In other words i appeal to Indians to try to understand Mumbai attack was an attack on both Pakistan and India.
And that should what the Indians think about Islamabad Marriot bombing in September, to be an attack on both Pakistan and India. There is a common enemy which we need to identify, as it is hidden and confront before another destructive Indo-Pak war breaks out and results in nuclear strike.

Anup, as far as I remember, the Lashkar-e-Taiba also denied responsibility for the attack on parliament in 2001, but claimed responsibility for its other attacks in Kashmir. Is that correct?

If so, are you saying that it was not responsible for either the parliament attack or the Mumbai attacks?

That would be quite an important statement, especially since the world’s media is now focusing on Lashkar-e-Taiba.

And given that the Mumbai attacks seemed to bear all the hallmarks of Lashkar-e-Taiba (guaranteeing that many people would jump to the conclusion that it was the likely culprit) would you argue that they were staged to look as though Lashkar-e-Taiba was responsible?

My own understanding is that fedayeen attacks are fairly typical in Kashmir (including those by indigenous Kashmiri groups) whereas al Qaeda has tended to use IEDs and suicide bombers. This is perhaps why everyone so immediately assumed that Lashkar-e-Taiba was behind the Mumbai attacks, despite its denial of responsibility.

If you are challenging this, I’d be very interested to know why.

Myra