Global terror group al-Qaeda or its various groups under its command could have triggered the high profile attacks in Mumbai. US intelligence firm Stratfor has described the strikes in Mumbai as an action which can also be the precursor to a larger conspiracy to gain positive political gains for extremists. Stratfor’s latest report says evidence and logic point to radical Pakistani Islamists having carried out the attack. The 62-hour operation, which literally bought India down to its knees, could have been linked to al-Qaeda or its various franchisees, including Kashmir insurgents, Stratfor says, acknowledging it was difficult to specify one particular group.

US National Intelligence Director (NID) Mike McConnel pointing his finger of suspicion at banned Pakistan-based militant outfit Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) over the strikes reinforced India’s assertions that the Mumbai attack had Pakistani links. Addressing Harvard University students on December 2 night, McConnel’s statement came within hours of India demanding extradition of LeT chief Hafiz Mohammad and other terrorists in Pakistan. India’s demand came in the aftermath of the strikes that left 183 people dead, including six Americans and a number of Israelis. McConnel said the same group might have carried out the attack on Indian Parliament in 2001.

Indicating a larger conspiracy behind the Mumbai attacks, Stratfor’s report said too much planning and training were involved in the attack for it to have been conceived and executed by a ‘bunch of guys in a garage’. The report said whoever invested so much time and undertook the risk in organizing this attack had reasons to do so in the highly politicized atmosphere in Pakistan. Terror frequently has a more sophisticated and strategic objective in such a situation as in the Islamist nation. Stratfor said Indian government this time around is under too much pressure to act unlike in earlier occasions when terrorists acts were traced back to Pakistan.

McConnel is the first US official to publicly blame LeT as the likely group behind the Mumbai attacks. Even as late as December 2 night US State Department and Pentagon couldn’t be drown into what they described as a speculation game attributing information to unidentified sources and officials. Counter-terrorism specialists have been of the view that one of the most likely candidates for the Mumbai strikes was LeT even as there has been a general consensus that there indeed was a Pakistan connection regardless of what has been furnished by officials and leaders in Islamabad and their overseas representatives. US banned LeT in 2001.

As pressure mounted on Pakistan on a global scale to take action against LeT, the country on December 7 cracked down on LeT in Pak-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and arrested LeT commander and suspected Mumbai attacks mastermind Zakir Rehman Lakhwi along with eight other LeT members after a gun battle. A total of 15 members of LeT and its front organization Jannat-ud-Dawah were arrested following an operation. Ajmal Amir Imaam, the lone terrorist captured alive by Indian forces after Mumbai attacks, named Lakhwi as one of the commanders who had planned the attacks.

Imam told Indian security officials that he hails from a place called Faridkot in Pakistan’s Punjab province. His father is Mohammad Amir and mother is Neer. Reinforcing India’s assertion that the Mumbai attacks had Pakistani links, London’s leading daily The Observer said the region in Okara district was an active recruiting ground for LeT. After many people tried to mislead the correspondent of the British daily, one villager confirmed saying, “you are being given wrong information, we’ve all known from the first day of the attacks, that it was him — Ajmal Amir. His mother started crying when she saw her son in TV. They brainwash our youth about jehad, there are the people who do it in our village. It is so wrong.”

The truth about Ajmal’s origin is crucial to the ongoing investigation of where the attackers came from, and will have a profound impact on Indo-Pak relations. The report said LeT founder, Hafiz Saeed had visited nearby Depalpur where there were hundreds of supporters. A LeT office in Depalpur was hastily closed in the past few days even some locals claimed that Faridkot and another poor village nearby called Tara Singh are a recruitment hotbed for LeT. Depalpur, an economically backward area, has been long known for producing jehadis, the report stated.

Investigators probing the carnage have suggested that ten LeT terrorists had used Pakistani merchant vessel MV Al Husseini ahead of shifting to an Indian fishing boat. Ajmal said they were to be near Mumbai waters. Ajmal, who was caught on closed circuit television as he and his associates went on a rampage that Wednesday night, told investigators that they made a last minute decision to transfer to the Indian shipping vessel to avoid detection by Indian Navy and Coast Guards. The LeT terrorists caught hold of five men on MV Kuber and then killed four men keeping one called Amar Singh alive to drive the launch vehicle to Caffe Parade port in Mumbai. Message relayed by one among LeT terrorists to his commanders across the border was char halal ho gaye janab (four have been killed). Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) had intercepted the message but could not make much out of that. RAW had, however, tipped off authorities of an impending attack by sea and even informed about the time. RAW mandate is to send alerts to the Intelligence Bureau (IB) that caters to domestic intelligence. It was reliably learned that IB did pass on ‘actionable intelligence’ alerts to Maharashtra but why the state government failed to take action remains a mystery. The state authorities also failed to react on time, according to the officials, when militants went into action at 9:30 pm on November 26. And so the elite Marine Commandos, known by their acronym Marcos, and the National Security Guards (NSG) were pressed into service.

Marcos commander, with black cloth strapped across his face, appeared on TV and was saying that they were hindered by lack of light and knowledge about Taj Hotel layout. Normally commandos prefer to go into action in darkness because of advantage over the enemy due to better visibility and coordination. Questions now being asked are, were the commandos well equipped for this type of operations; did they have night vision equipment and sophisticated instruments to gather intelligence before or during the operation. Considering that terrorists weren’t using gas masks, people now want to know why those conducting the operation didn’t release morphine gas to make the terrorists unconscious.

Another aspect under security is the viability of security forces to trace satellite phones the terrorists were using. The government too has come under flak for allowing television channels to broadcast minute-by-minute happenings at the three locations. While Marcos arrived on the scene only the next morning, Black Cats or NSG took ten hours to get to Mumbai.

In a twist to the Mumbai strikes, it was later emerged that among foreigners killed in Taj Hotel were US intelligence officials. By 3:40 in the wee hours next day a joint operation involving Mumbai Police, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and Navy commandos had launched a joint operation to flush out terrorists from the hotel. A little after 3 am in the morning and four hours since firing commenced at Chatrapati Shivaji Terminal of the Railways, coordinated attacks spread to other parts of south Mumbai. Army had by this time taken over operation at Oberoi-Trident Hotel, while the NSG commandos took guard at the Nariman House where the terrorists held some Israelis as captive.

Early on by about 2 pm on November 27, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was closeted in a meeting with top brass of defense services and intelligence chiefs to discuss the attacks. Meanwhile, the Marcos progress at Taj Hotel faced difficulty with many guests still inside. Close to 200 guests were held hostage in one of the halls of Taj Hotel even as its old wing caught fire. Marcos stalked vantage points covering all exit points while some of them prowled around the perimeter of the hotel. Meanwhile, Indian Army had moved into the Oberoi and Trident. Military sources said there was no way terrorists could have carried so much ammunition when they launched operation with their guns blazing. They believed arms and ammunition were stored early on in rooms in both the hotels, probably on the upper floors.

There was a complete standoff at both hotels from about 10:30 pm on November 26 to around 8 in the morning on November 27. There was no full scale attack till NSG got there at 8 am. Counter-terror experts said what took place during the standoff is key to understanding motives of terrorists. Some specialists wondered if some terrorists simply dumped their guns and merely walked out of the hotel along with hundreds of other guests who got out of the Taj. Were all of them monitored and accounted for, they asked, stating that some inside the Taj were definitely involved. If two or three terrorists attacked CST, experts wondered about the number of terrorists in Oberoi and Trident Hotels.

While Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, who was later sacked, had said on November 26 there were 20 terrorists, Mumbai Police claimed there were 10 and NSG said eight. An IB official confirmed there were 24 members on teams of three, who carried out the simultaneous attacks. The first batch, the IB official said, entered Mumbai several weeks before the attack even as the second batch came a few days prior to the attack. The final batch, IB said, came in two teams into Mumbai. On D-Day, last of the two batches that created havoc on the streets of Mumbai, may have distracted the security agencies from operating smoothly in the other three targets.

The government and other security agencies must have learnt adequately from the 62-hour siege of Mumbai and let’s hope, they prepare themselves to act and defeat similar forces inimical to India in future.

Vijayanta Sharma Pathak