The bodies of nine Islamic militants killed while attacking Mumbai in November still lie in a public morgue there. Indian Islamic leaders have refused to bury them in a local Muslim cemetery, saying terrorists "have no religion" and do not deserve a religious funeral. Although India suspects the militants came from neighbouring Pakistan, Islamabad refuses to take the bodies back as this could presumably undermine its claim to have no link to the gunmen. Indian officials say they still need the bodies for their investigations into the Nov. 26-29 massacre, in which 179 people were killed, but those inquiries will end some day. What should the Indians do with the bodies then?

A U.S. historian has come up with a proposal that would dispose of the bodies without requiring Pakistan to take them. Leor Halevi, a professor of Islamic history at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, wrote in the Washington Postthat India should cremate them and scatter the ashes in international waters, as Israel did after executing the Nazi commander Adolf Eichmann in 1962. He notes this would be an un-Islamic method of burial and would avoid a permanent grave that could become a memorial for other militants.  He writes:

"If Indian Muslims can agree, then, that the terrorists died as non-Muslims and that burning their bodies is the optimal solution, they simply need to urge the government to dispatch the corpses to the crematorium after ruling on their lack of religion.

"Cremation would neither shame the bodies of dead terrorists, nor haunt the minds of would-be terrorists, as powerfully as would a symbolic inversion of standard Muslim rites. But it would convey an effective, reasonable and humanistic message to the world: that a Muslim who commits terrorism dies excommunicated, as an infidel."

Is this the answer?

According to Pakistani newspaper the Daily Times, Pakistan’s decision to crack down on the Jammat-ud-Dawa, the charity linked to the Laskhar-e-Taiba, came as the result of pressure from China. Jammat-ud-Dawa was blacklisted by a UN Security Council committee this week.

The Daily Times noted that earlier attempts to target the Jamaat-ud-Dawa at the Security Council had been vetoed by China. “It is the Chinese “message” that has changed our mind. The Chinese did not veto the banning of Dawa on Wednesday, and they had reportedly told Islamabad as much beforehand, compelling our permanent representative at the UN to assert that Pakistan would accept the ban if it came,” the newspaper said. “One subliminal message was also given to Chief Minister Punjab, Mr Shehbaz Sharif, during his recent visit to China, and the message was that Pakistan had to seek peace with India or face change of policy in Beijing. Once again, it is our friend China whose advice has been well taken…”

This is intriguing, all the more so given how much attention has has been focused on what the United States has been doing to lean on Pakistan to curb militant groups blamed by India for the attacks on Mumbai.  So what has been going on? Has China, with its growing economic power, become a pivotal player in global diplomacy even as the United States continues to hog the limelight?

We’ve always known that China has had a major role in South Asia. But in the past it was a seen as the ultimate all-weather ally of Pakistan, to be used if necessary against India, with which it has vied for influence in Asia and against which it fought a border war in 1962.  Is this call for peace an example of it taking on a U.S.-style role of regional policeman, as I discussed in a post back in June about India, Pakistan and China?

The Times of India quotes Shashi Tharoor as saying that there was a feeling in China that its opposition to India on the issue of terrorism would “no longer be compatible with its being seen as a responsible player in the system”. (more…)

India’s governing Congress party’s unexpectedly good showing  in a clutch of state elections should  give Prime Minister Manmohan Singh a little more breathing space as he considers a response to Pakistan for the Mumbai attacks which New Delhi says were orchestrated from there.

Imagine a scenario in which the Congress had lost all five states whose results were announced this week (results from Jammu and Kashmir, the sixth state, will be released later this month). The knives would have been out both within his increasingly restless Congress party and from the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, which has targeted him for being soft on national security, running ads with blood splattered against a black background in the middle of the Mumbai siege.

In the event, the Congress took three of the five states, including Delhi, which though small was this  election seen as a bit of a barometer of middle-class India, the section perhaps most outraged by the Mumbai attacks. Ultimately, local issues appeared to have played a decisive role as they have in most elections especially in a democracy like India’s where a large number of people depend on the government for jobs, subsidies  and general patronage.

But the anger for the attacks remains, quite apart from the bread and butter issues. Singh himself  said as much, telling reporters in New Delhi last Friday that India feels a sense of hurt and anger as never seen before and was waiting for Pakistan to act.

{Jamaat-ud-Dawa’s HQ in Muridke, Pakistan. Photo by Reuters’ Mohsin Raza]

So what will he do now ? Stratfor says given the political and national security compulsions, it’s hard to  see a path that avoids Indian retaliation for the attacks New Delhi says were carried out by members of  the Lashkar-e-Taiba, a militant group suspected of close ties to Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence. (more…)

Pakistan has begun a crackdown on Lashkar-e-Taiba following intense pressure from India and the United States to take action against the militant group blamed by New Delhi for the Mumbai attacks. According to intelligence officials and local residents,  Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, a leader of Lashkar-e-Taiba, was arrested following a raid on a camp near Muzaffarabad in Pakistani-held Kashmir.

As discussed in an earlier post, India has long complained about what it saw as Pakistan’s failure to crack down on Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, another Pakistan-based militant group, which it says were nurtured by the Pakistan spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI, to attack Indian targets in Kashmir and elsewhere. 

So would the raid signal a major change of heart? And would it be enough to satisfy India?

The Economist calls it “a small sop” and much less than India had demanded of Pakistan. India’s Livemint condemns it as a “cheap” action to buy legitimacy. It complains that Pakistan took similar steps in 2002, banning Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) after it was blamed, along with Jaish-e-Mohammed, by New Delhi for a raid on India’s parliament in December 2001 that brought the two countries close to a fourth war.  (more…)

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has urged Pakistan to cooperate “fully and transparently” in investigations into the Mumbai attacks, while U.S. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell has pointed a finger at Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based Kashmiri militant group.

That’s probably the kind of language that would go down well in India, which has been frustrated in the past by what it saw as the United States’ failure to acknowledge the threat from Pakistan-based Kashmiri militant groups, instead preferring to rely on Pakistan as a useful ally in the region while focusing its own energies on defeating al Qaeda and the Taliban.

But what exactly can either the United States or India do if they want to put pressure on Pakistan? India has long complained that Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, another Pakistan-based militant group, were nurtured by the Pakistan spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI, to stage attacks in both Indian Kashmir and elsewhere in the country. And while Pakistan denies providing more than moral support to Kashmiri groups, it has never cracked down on Lashkar-e-Taiba, based in Punjab and Pakistan-held Kashmir, in the same way that it has begun to tackle militants from al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.

Lashkar-e-Taiba’s charitable wing, the Jamat-ud-Dawa, earned popular support by working to rescue victims of the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir, as discussed in this article by Steve Coll in the New Yorker. And much to India’s irritation, the Jamat-ud-Dawa continues to operate openly in Muridke outside Lahore. (more…)

In the aftermath of the Mumbai massacre, a lot of attention has been focused on the militant Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba that has been blamed for the bloodbath. Simon Cameron-Moore, our bureau chief in Islambad, has written an interesting piece on what they've done in recent years. As a religion editor watching this story unfold, I was also curious to know how they think. What kind of religious views do they have? My Google search has turned up an interesting answer.

An article entitled "The Ideologies of South Asian Jihadi Groups" gives a very concise and complete run-down of Lashkar-e-Taiba's thinking (hat tip:Times of India). In today's context, the article's author is just as interesting as its content. An academic at the time he wrote the article in 2005, Husain Haqqani is now Pakistan's ambassador in Washington. He's been in the media quite often arguing that Islamabad did not support Lashkar-e-Taiba even if it was operating in Pakistan. Indian media arent't buying it.

Sorting that out is not my job. I just wanted to note a list of the goals Lashkar-e-Taiba has set for itself. In a publication entitled Why Are We Waging Jihad? that Haqqani cites, the goals are listed as:

1) to eliminate evil and facilitate conversion to and practice of Islam;

2) to ensure the ascendancy of Islam;

3) to force non-Muslims to pay jizya (poll tax, paid by non-Muslims for protection from a Muslim ruler);

4) to assist the weak and powerless;

5) to avenge the blood of Muslims killed by unbelievers;

6) to punish enemies for breaking promises and treaties;

7) to defend a Muslim state; and

8 ) to liberate Muslim territories under non-Muslim occupation

Can we call these Lashkar-e-Taiba's "religious goals?" It's hard to draw a dividing line, but these cover both religion and politics. In South Asia, where they have first-hand experience of this kind of thinking, they would describe these as "politico-religious" goals. That clumsy term is more precise, but could it catch on elsewhere?

The language is deliberate, the signals unmistakable: India is turning up the heat on Pakistan for the Mumbai attacks that have  killed at least 195 people, and there is no knowing where this downward spiral in ties between the uneasy neighbours will end.

Beginning with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s warning that a cost will have to be paid by neighbouring nations that allow militants to operate,  to Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s direct call to Islamabad to “dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism”, there is a sharp, cold edge to the tone that you can’t miss even factoring in the immediate anger and sense of outrage the attacks have evoked  across India.

Then the signs: Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi in India on a previously scheduled visit to review the peace process packing his bags and heading home because Indian political leaders cancelled meetings with him following the attacks.

We have been here before, for sure. A 2001 attack on the Indian parliament, for which like the Mumbai attacks, the  Lashkar-i-Taiba was blamed, triggered a set of measures by New Delhi including breaking sporting and cultural links, downgrading diplomatic relations, and the deployment of the military in full combat readiness all along the Pakistan border.

That military stand-off ended six months later after considerable diplomatic pressure from the United States, Britain and other powers worried about two nuclear-armed nations on the brink of war.

So what are the options for Delhi this time around, beyond striking a menacing posture to force Pakistan to go after elements there which it believes are responsible for violence in India?

It can’t risk another extended military deployment - you can only do that sort of “coercive diplomacy” once a while for it to be taken seriously. Limited military strikes on the militant camps that New Delhi says exist across the border?

The New York Times raised that possibility following what were arguably the most audacious attacks India has ever seen even its violent history as a free nation.  It’s hard to tell, especially now that those training camps don’t exist so openly, given the Americans’ scrutiny of Pakistan. And India has always been reluctant to cross the Line of Control dividing Kashmir, fearing this would undermine its status as a de facto border and basis for a permament settlement to the Kashmir dispute.

Ending a five-year ceasefire along the Line of Control, which has in recent months come under strain? Or a freezing of ties, turning back the four year-peace process which if nothing else ensured the foes kept talking?

All bets are obviously off . The Times said American military and intelligence officials believed there was mounting evidence that the Lashkar–Taiba was most likely involved in the Mumbai attack. That can only strengthen New Delhi’s case as it confronts Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence with evidence when its representative arrives in India to discuss the attacks, itself an extraordinary move.

Islamabad had earlier agreed to send the head of the ISI to India but it later lowered that to a representative.
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