Recently in India Category

http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=1381

The highly-enhanced tactics now employed by Islamist terrorist organizations are being met with improved counter-measures by potentially vulnerable countries.

The Israeli spy satellite acquired by India in an extra-fast transaction is capable of day-and-night viewing and all-weather imaging, which enables Indian forces to keep track of terrorist movements through the low-cloud cover prevailing in the monsoon season. India is the first country in the world to acquire a surveillance satellite tailored specifically to counter terror.

What this article does not say is that the police in India are mostly unarmed and are not given half the fire arms training that US cops are. The police there were unable to hit terrorists walking down the middle of the street!

One of the first things that is going to have to change is the way that they train. Having Israeli or US trainers will be a good first step to making things tougher.

Don't get FBI trainers! They are good at investigations, but street cops from LA, Miami, Chicago, or New York would be much better. Having a few cops from Tel Aviv or Jerusalem to fill in the cracks would make a great addition. Think about it guys!

http://www.nasdaq.com/aspxcontent/NewsStory.aspx?cpath=20090225\ACQDJON200902250628DOWJONESDJONLINE000361.htm&&mypage=newsheadlines&title=India%20Studies%20US%20Anti-Terror%20Strategies%20After%20Mumbai

India said Wednesday it was looking at adopting some of the " anti-terror" strategies adopted by the United States in the wake of the deadly Islamic militant attacks on Mumbai last November.

The Congress led-government, which has come under strong opposition criticism over the delayed response by authorities to the attacks that left 165 people dead, insisted it was much better prepared to deal with any new strikes.

"Our level of preparedness is much higher than it was three months back and in the event of any attack, our response will be swift and deterring," said Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram.

Chidambaram, India's former finance minister, was named in December to head the home ministry after the government admitted intelligence and security lapses involving the Mumbai attacks.

The government is keen to be seen acting tough on security which is expected to emerge as a key issue in general elections that must be held by mid-May.

India dispatched a team to the United States to study anti-terror strategies prepared in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Chidambaram told parliament.

When StratFor makes a prediction, then I believe it. They have made mistakes, but not as many as other groups.

Any more terrorist attacks in India will force it to either become more totalitarian or to go to war. I am sure that they will choose the later. They have in the past.

If I was a Liberal, I am sure that I would choose option C - allowing the terrorists to continue slaughtering innocents in the name of Peace.

http://www.stratfor.com/memberships/129587/analysis/20081224_india_pakistan_signs_coming_war

Several major signs of a coming Indian-Pakistani war surfaced Dec. 24.

Indian troops reportedly have deployed to the Barmer district of southwest Rajasthan state along the Indian-Pakistani border. Furthermore, the state government of Rajasthan has ordered residents of its border villages to be prepared for relocation. The decision reportedly came after a meeting among the state's director-general of police, home secretary and an official from the central government. Stratfor confirmed the report with an Indian army officer.

According to India's ZeeNews, the Pakistani army replaced the Pakistan Rangers that regularly patrol the border with India. The Pakistani troop movements were later confirmed by U.K. Bansal, the additional director-general of India's Border Security Force (BSF) in Barmer, Rajasthan.

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20081224_mumbai_corporate_security_and_indo_pakistani_conflict

Facilities and Personnel Security

If conflict breaks out between India and Pakistan, corporate operations will be affected regardless of whether a particular business finds itself in the line of fire. Pakistani retaliation to an Indian strike could take the form of traditional military action, but it also could well involve asymmetric warfare. In this scenario, Pakistan would act through its militant proxies -- who could well target Westerners associated with multinational corporations in a bid to damage the Indian economy.

Previous attacks throughout India have shown that numerous militant organizations can cause serious damage and high body counts. But these attacks largely focused on Indian targets -- including crowded marketplaces, theaters and mosques -- that would cause high casualty numbers among the local population or would damage landmarks. The attacks in Mumbai widened this target set to include foreigners and Jewish interests. While the Taj and Oberoi hotels probably were attacked in part because of their status as Mumbai landmarks, the direct targeting of foreigners indicates the hotels also were chosen in a bid to strike Westerners. (It goes without saying that the attack on Nariman House was intended to target Jews and Israeli interests.)

The Mumbai attacks showed that attacking locations where Westerners are known to congregate, rather than attacks against marketplaces or cinemas that will primary kill Indian nationals, could well be a more efficient and effective way for militants to use their limited resources. And as hotels and other traditional soft targets harden their facilities and implement new security countermeasures to prevent further Mumbai-style attacks, militants will seek less-secure venues that will achieve the same result.

Such targets could include apartment complexes or neighborhoods that primarily house Westerners -- similar to the 2004 attacks on the Saudi Arabian Oil Co. residential facilities in Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia -- or other soft targets such as Western-style marketplaces or restaurants. Though most multinational corporations operate in hardened facilities away from city centers, affording better access control and countersurveillance, their employees cannot remain behind walls at all times. And even within multinational corporate compounds, security cannot be fully guaranteed.

The Mumbai attack has renewed fears that insiders could be used to carry out future attacks on multinational corporate facilities. Ajmal Amir Kamil, the only Mumbai attacker taken alive, reportedly has told police that at least five people in the Mumbai area aided the attackers in their preparations for the attack. Kamil reportedly told investigators these persons provided information about various locations in the city and police stations, though they were not involved in the actual attacks. Indian media reports also note that an intern chef at the Taj may have assisted the attackers' preparations by providing access to various parts of the hotel, though the Taj has denied the man's involvement. Unconfirmed reports also hold that some of the attackers wore hotel uniforms, indicating possible staff collusion.

Given the high level of technical sophistication displayed in the way responsibility was claimed for the attack, and given that workers in the information technology industry were involved in previous attacks, the IT sector should be especially vigilant about the potential for militant attacks with inside assistance. While the investigation into how the attackers planned their mission is still ongoing, militants seeking to use the lessons from Mumbai might make renewed attempts to infiltrate multinational corporations to gain information that could be used to launch an attack.

Corporations should also take into account the possibility of Hindu-nationalist-led protests against the Mumbai attack long after the attack itself, which could disrupt business operations. Such a delay between a triggering event and the protests themselves has precedent in the February 2002 protests that occurred months after the December 2001 Kashmiri militant attacks on the Indian parliament. These protests continued sporadically through the summer of 2002, involving extensive violence and many casualties. Similarly, the militant group Indian Mujahideen (IM) said many of its recent attacks were in retaliation for the 2002 communal riots in Gujarat in which more that 1,000 (mostly Muslim) people were killed. Indian military action against Pakistan could be the trigger needed to incite widespread public protests against the Mumbai attacks.

http://memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD214008

Zaid Hamid, a former mujahid who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan during the 1980s, is the founder of the Pakistani think tank BrassTacks.

Following are some excerpts from the interview: [1]

"[If] they thrust a war on us, then the war will be fought on the other side of the border, on their side [in India], not within Pakistan Insha Allah..."

"This is not the 9/11 he [George W. Bush] was talking about [recently], but the Indians have themselves always wanted to orchestrate a 9/11, to create the same drama [9/11] in which they could include Americans and Israelis. We have no doubt this was [the result of] a joint plan by Israelis, Americans and Indians - in other words, this was a joint plan by Western Zionists and Hindu Zionists; in it Israelis are directly involved, there is involvement of Mossad.

"The details that are coming up - see, if you look at the images, the terrorist they [Indian television channels] are showing firing in the hotel with machine gun in his hand, he has tied in his hand a saffron band of Hindu Zionists; Muslims do not wear this type of band [on their wrists] - their faces are like Hindus, the language in which they are speaking, this language no Pakistani uses."

"The big part of the game has slipped out of their [Indians'] hands. We have not seen a more badly planned operation than this [the commando operation in Mumbai hotels]. The 9/11 that the Americans committed, they very beautifully camouflaged that in the media; they did a better perception management of that, and the Americans created the pretext to thrust a war on Afghanistan by fooling the entire world.

"The Indians tried to repeat the same game; but [they don't] have intellect; these idiots made a complete disaster in handling this [terrorists' occupation of the hotels]. The game was exposed in the beginning itself, so that now they have lost the moral credibility. They would have probably promised to those terrorists that we will not kill you, we will arrest you, [but] now they are killing them and apparently they are resisting them.

Just an update with new information from and about Mumbai. This just keeps getting worse and worse as more news is released or leaks.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/128717

Fresh evidence unearthed late last week by investigators in India indicated that the Mumbai attacks were directed from at least two Pakistani cities by leaders of the terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba, according to the Associated Press.

Indian and American intelligence officials have already identified a Lashkar operative, who goes by the name Yusuf Muzammil, as a mastermind of the attacks. On Thursday, Indian investigators named one of the most well-known senior figures in Lashkar, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi.

The names of both men came from the interrogations of the one surviving attacker, Muhammad Ajmal Kasab, 21, according to police officials in Mumbai.

Karachi-Lahore-Mumbai connection
While Muzammil appears to have served as a control officer in Lahore, Pakistan, Lakhvi, his boss and the operational commander of Lashkar, worked from Karachi, a southern Pakistani port city, said investigators in Mumbai.

It now appears that both men were in contact with their charges as they sailed to Mumbai from K
"Why didn't the Indians use 'selective fire' as accepted in units that must operate in a terrorist attack with hostages?"
arachi, and then continued guiding the attacks as they unfolded, directing the assaults and possibly providing information about the police and military response in India.

Some of the calls between the commanders and the terrorists appeared to be conversations about who would live and who would die among the gunmen's hostages, according to an official who interviewed survivors and a report by security consultants with contacts among the investigators.

An Indian terrorist was also involved in scouting targets for the plot against Mumbai, authorities said.

Torture of Victims?
Also Thursday, police said there were signs that some of the six victims of the attack on a Jewish center may have been tortured. "The victims were strangled," said Rakesh Maria, a senior Mumbai police official. "There were injuries noticed on the bodies that were not from firing."

However, members of Israeli rescue group ZAKA, which had a team in Mumbai said it was impossible to tell if the bodies had been abused, because no autopsies were conducted in accordance with Jewish tradition.

Rice: Pakistan Cooperating
"Why didn't the Indians censor the online filming of their operatives climbing on the roof of the building?"

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters that "the Pakistani Government has made clear its intention to cooperate" with the response to the terror attacks, "because Pakistan also is at war with these extremists."

"That's a point that President Zardari has made many times, that extremists have wreaked havoc in Pakistan," she said, on board the jet that was taking her to Pakistan Thursday. "And so the global threat of extremism and terrorism has to be met by all states, taking a very tough and hard line," she said.

The Pakistani response to the Mumbai massacres "needs to be a robust response, and it needs to be one that is effective in both helping the international community, the United States, which lost citizens in this attack, the UK, which lost citizens in this attack and, of course, India, to respond to this situation so that the perpetrators can be brought to justice," she added.

Some Tough Questions
Almagor, an Israeli terror victims' group, praised India for reacting with military force to the terror attacks. "The Indian government understands that capitulating to terrorism only means that there will be even more victims in the long run," the group stated.

However, the group raised a series of questions regarding the Indian raids on Chabad House and other targets. Among these were:

1. Was there an intelligence command post in Israel or in the Consulate in India that collected information on Chabad House from previous visitors? Did the command post assist the Indians with vital information?
2. Why didn't the Indians use 'selective fire' as accepted in units that must operate in a terrorist attack with hostages?
3. Why was the cleansing operation carried out gradually and not by deploying numerous forces simultaneously, as is generally mandated in scenarios involving hostages, so as to save the lives of the abductees?
4. Why didn't the Indians censor the online filming of their operatives climbing on the roof of the building? The entire world had access to those films including, evidently, the planners and commanders of the terrorists who were able to communicate with the terrorists inside via phones and walkie-talkies.

"We must not agree to bury the truth together with the victims; we must not allow the whitewashing of the facts under guise of diplomatic good manners," the group stated.
"We may well be viewing the beginning of a trend of terrorist acts abroad. Thus it is vital that we draw accurate conclusions and set guidelines for cooperation with foreign governments in the war against terror," it concluded.

http://www.debka.com/

Israeli experts help India prepare commando raids into Pakistan

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

December 6, 2008, 4:23 PM (GMT+02:00)
Indian commando

Indian commando

New Delhi has asked Jerusalem to assist in the operational and intelligence planning of Indian commando cross-border strikes against Islamist terrorist havens in Pakistan - including al Qaeda, Indian counter-terror sources report.

The Indian government's decision to embark on these in-and-out incursions in reprisal for the Mumbai outrage of Nov. 26-29 was first revealed in DEBKA-Net-Weekly 375 published Dec. 4 (Indian Retaliatory Raids inside Pakistan Impending).

DEBKAfile adds: Israel is willing to help the Indians carry out punitive forays into Pakistan because it has its own scores to settle for the brutal murder of six Israelis in Mumbai's Chabad Center by the Islamist terrorists and for the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency's hand in the atrocity.

Security sources in New Delhi disclosed Saturday, Dec. 6, that ISI officers actively trained the terrorists on military lines and selected their targets, including two big hotels and the Jewish-Israeli center.

Indian sources told DEBKAfile that Israel was asked for assistance because its special undercover forces were long seasoned in plotting and executing reprisals for terrorist attacks; above all, they were expert in getting away after covert operations without leaving a trail. New Delhi wants its commando operations in Pakistan to be stealthy and focused, and does not propose to admit responsibility.

Four Pakistani locations are targeted:

1. Pakistani Kashmir where scores if not hundreds of extremist Muslim training facilities are situated - many of them ISI-run and funded;

2. Punjab in eastern Pakistan on the border of northern India. DEBKAfile's counter terror sources report that Lahore and Multan have attracted a cluster of Islamist terrorist centers.

3. Pakistan's southern coast - from Karachi north to Gwadar close to the Iranian border. Indian intelligence (RAW) has evidence that this strip was where the terrorists who besieged Mumbai ten days ago were trained for their assault.

Our New Delhi sources disclose that Indian leaders showed the outline of this plan to US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice when she visited last week. She commented guardedly that the United States was strongly opposed to a full-scale war between India and Pakistan but not averse to limited counter-terror operations.

I am doing a presentation on the terror attacks and the Laskar-e-Taiba (LET) tomorrow morning. I am just posting some of my notes here for ease of finding them tomorrow when I am on the road. Maybe anyone else who is looking into this can use some of this.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JL02Df05.html

http://threatswatch.org/rapidrecon/2008/12/operational-metamorphosis-mumb/

http://www.metimes.com/International/2008/12/01/mumbai_islamist_terrors_new_modus_operandi/7185/

http://www.stratfor.com/memberships/128140/analysis/20081130_title

http://www.stratfor.com/memberships/128093/analysis/20081129_india_pakistan_movement_post_mumbai_world

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.1916/pub_detail.asp

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=313114177076938

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081203/ap_on_re_as/as_india_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lashkar-e-Toiba

http://www.investigativeproject.org/profile/136