Mumbai attacks

Still haunted
By Mazhar Khan Jadoon
Even after one year, the world is still struggling to wriggle out of the mess the Mumbai attacks had created in the South Asia, bringing the nuclear rivals -- Pakistan and India -- to the brink of disaster. The 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai negated all the confidence building measures between Pakistan and India who had been, for years, inching towards peace and a future offering both the countries opportunity to grow by exploring further trade avenues.
India refuses to abandon its pressure tactics and Tuesday has handed over another dossier of charges against elements allegedly operating from the Pakistani soil to the Pakistani High Commission in New Delhi. Fresh diplomatic tensions may surface as Islamabad will likely fall back on its repeated policy of calling for talks and promising to look into the charges, that India alleges is nothing but whiling away the time. Global powers are also finding it hard to convince India for talks with Pakistan, providing the already squeezed Islamabad a breathing space to tackle insurgency along its western borders.
It sounds a bit strange, though encouraging, that the US has finally accepted the idea of getting China aboard and offering it a vital role to normalise relations between Pakistan and India. This is what emerges from a remark made by President Barack Obama and the joint statement issued by the US and Chinese governments in Beijing on November 17. “They (US and China) support the efforts for the improvement and growth of relations between India and Pakistan,” the joint statement said. This is a rare occasion when a US president has acknowledged that Beijing has a role to play in the India-Pakistan relations. India was swift to say no to the third-party mediation. Indian External Affairs Ministry said on Wednesday a third country’s role, alluding to China, cannot be envisaged nor is it necessary. The Indian government, which has always opposed a third-party intervention in the Indo-Pak dialogue, may find the idea hard to accept as it vindicates the Pakistani position which keeps calling for the resumption of talks to settle their issues.
The 2008 Mumbai attacks had ringed alarm bells across the world, specially after Pakistani jet fighters roared over the skies in Lahore and Islamabad and those believing in a doomsday scenario came out on roads chanting Allah-o-Akbar. The move was inevitable as India had gone into an aggressive posture, threatening to carry out strikes inside Pakistan. Indian warplanes had twice violated the Pakistan airspace accros Wahga, triggering a swift and legitimate protest and condemnation from Islamabad. The attacks in Mumbai had pushed the two nuclear rivals to a point that could have spelt a disaster not only for the region, but for the whole world. Realising the fact that any armed, or may be a nuclear, conflict in the region would fling the whole globe into chaos, specially when the war on terror is being sped up along Pak-Afghan border, The United Staes, Russia, China and the United Nations stepped forward to cool the tempers down.
On 7 January 2009, after more than a month of denying the nationality of the attackers, the then Information Minister Sherry Rahman accepted Ajmal Kasab’s nationality as Pakistani. On 12 February 2009, Interior Minister Rehman Malik, in a televised news briefing, confirmed that parts of the attack had been planned in Pakistan and said that six people, including the alleged mastermind, were being held in connection with the attacks.
Following Indian dictates and threats under immense pressure, the Pakitsani government kept tracking down people allegedly involved in the attacks, but unfortunately could not assuage the fire-belching Indian leaders who wanted to cash in on the situation no matter how unrealistic and undiplomatic their approach was. Pakistani government was caught between two hostile fronts – one at the western borders fighting al Qaeda and Taliban militants and the second at the eastern border with India where both the armies were eye balls to eye balls.
The then External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee had declared that India may indulge in military strikes against terror camps in Pakistan to protect its territorial integrity. There were also after-effects on the United States’ relationships with both countries, the US-led NATO war in Afghanistan, and on the global war on terror. According to Interpol secretary general Ronald Noble, who visited New Delhi and Islamabad to help probe the attacks, Indian intelligence agencies did not share any information with them. However, FBI chief praised the ‘unprecedented cooperation’ between American and Indian intelligence agencies over Mumbai terror attack probe.
The Indian External Affairs Minister Mr Krishna sounded positive when he said Tuesday he was looking forward to a meeting with his Pakistani counterpart Shah Mahmmod Qureshi on the sidelines of CHOGM meeting in Trinidad. Hopefully they will come up with some kind of a breakthrough to get the composit dialogue between the two countries going.
During his visit to Srinagar on October 26, the recalcitrant Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh repeated that talks would not make headway unless Pakistan took effective action against terrorism. It is again that typical Indian intransigence that spoils every Pakitani effort to normalize ties. India is continuously ignoring the fact that Pakistan security forces are locked in a deadly fight with terrorists along its western borders. The cost Pakistan is paying for this fight outweighs the losses that the alliance of so many countries is incurring in Afghasnistan.
The question now is whether the US-led international community can encourage India to abandon its no-talks posture and get it to the negotiating table. US President Barack Obama may convince or even push Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, when the latter visit the White House on November 24, to resume dialogue with Pakistan as there seems to be no second option to resolve their differences. When Hillary Clinton visited Islamabad last month, she heard a clear message from her Pakistani people about the need for the US to engage with issues that are at the heart of Pakistan-India tensions: Kashmir, India's escalating arms build-up, Delhi's provocative military doctrine and its involvement in terror activities inside Pakistan.