Pages

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Who Was Behind The Mumbai Terror Attack?

The world is reeling from the reports of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. Attacks that were dealt with in a highly professional and effective manner by the Indian security forces, both police and army. Unfortunately before they were stopped the terrorists killed over 200 innocent people.

Now attention is turning to attributing the blame. We understand that one of the terrorists has been captured, but we don't yet know if he even knows who was behind the attacks. What we know, so far, is that they apparently hijacked an Indian trawler, killed all the crew, except one, and forced that crew member to sail them off the Mumbai coast. Based on a GPS found on the boat it seems that their route included Pakistan and the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is an obvious candidate for being behind the attack, but is that really what happened?

As always the internet is abuzz with conspiracy theories and the finger has been pointed at the CIA, the ISI, the shadowy figures behind the Yorkshire 7/7 attacks, Dawood Ibrahim and even Al Quaeda. Personally I find the claims that the CIA was behind the attacks bizarre as they are reported as having alerted the Indian authorities to the possibility of an attack on the Mumbai Taj hotel.

Whoever was behind these attacks, they intended to damage India by attacking foreigners in India and frightening them into staying away. It's also highly likely that they intended to damage the slowly improving relationship between India and Pakistan. It's difficult to see how the government of Pakistan can see an advantage in goading India into an attack, which suggests that whoever in Pakistan assisted the attack was acting against the interests of their own country and their government. This suggests it is either some disaffected faction in Pakistan's security services or an extralegal force such as Ibriham or Al Quaeda. I wonder if the truth will ever be revealed.

Who do you think was behind the attack?

Originally published on Qondio