THERE IS SOMETHING FAMILIAR ABOUT THE MUMBAI CARNAGE
By
Air Commodore (R) Khaled Bashir Cheema
2nd December, 2008
The events of Mumbai are in the headlines all over the world. It was a despicable carnage of killing innocent people for an agenda which, as portrayed until now, was perpetrated by a group of zealot Muslim men who killed in the name of their religion. I do not say Islam as this is not Islam. These misguided youth have allegedly been brain washed to do a dastardly act to avenge allegedly the cruelty of the Indian government in Kashmir. I do not even consider these guys “freedom fighters” as they were targeting non combatants and thus can be only termed as terrorist. Having said that, I believe that there is a need to go beyond the obvious. Here was a group of Mis-“guided” group which were tasked to do acts which would make them heroes in their eyes, but actually paint them as villains and terrorist for the rest of the world as is actually a fact. So what have they achieved by these acts of ‘bravado’ (sic). That is what I would like to throw some light on!
I am not for conspiracy theories and would not have written this piece if there was a not an uncanny but definite similarity to other such events that have occurred in the past and in very similar conditions. I will dwell on the conditions later. The timing seems very familiar. I even recall a comment of mine to a close group of friends immediately after the American elections that we can expect some crisis or staged drama in India soon, sometimes in end December or early January. They beat me to it by two to three weeks. Probably my under estimation of their capability! However, before you term my assertions as hogwash and that I am jumping to conclusions, reviewing of some past events is in order. I have been a student of the Machiavellian way of thinking and what he said in “The Prince”, is definitely overshadowed by the prowess of Chanakia, the mentor of the Indian foreign policy and RAW. I am thus looking at these series of incidents in Mumbai through the prism of the teachings of these men.
Somehow, whenever Pakistan is at a cross road where world politics are involved, or a shift is expected and its role or its relations with International players vis a vis its geostrategic position have a say in the ensuing events, there is a crisis in India, which some how has its fallout on us. While there is a lot of gab around of rouge elements in ISI, a notion effectively planted by the relevant quarters, there apparently seems to be none in the RAW of India or is there? Thus, either the politicians are also privy to the core source of these incidents or there are elements in the Indian establishment who are calling the shots with a greater agenda than what meets the eye. The orchestrated blame game of implicit Pakistani involvement is on, with the press and the official statements having started echoing identical preplanned insinuations even while the events were still unfolding. Ironically, they were even giving leads to other saner elements to join them and there were statements given by authorities which smacked of pre-conceived blame on Pakistan. There were two “Pakistani ships” in the area, the Pakistan Navy was involved, here were new guys fresh from Karachi who had landed that evening in rubber dinghies on the coast and fanned out all over Mumbai to spread chaos with impunity. I wonder how they got orientated to such a large mega city and knew the lay outs and floor plans of Taj Mahal and Oberoi Trident so well. What I am saying is the in the reporting of these events, there is that faint but distinct aroma of past events. It seems like I have treaded on this path earlier, or as they say “déjà vu”.
While our press, still rejoicing its new found freedom, has very few in-depth analysts, it is not surprising that none seem to think beyond the obvious. All the reporting is borrowed words from the Indian media and none seem to have the insight of analyzing or of seeing a bigger picture. This is very familiar ground for the Indians as they have once again stage managed another drama to debase Pakistan and achieve their aim of influencing the world of being helpless victims and targets of our direct involvement in spreading terror in India. How can Pakistan be involved in spreading terror there, when it is it self the victim of terrorism? While Indians consider themselves smart in enacting such devious plans, unfortunately most of the time they have stumbled on their own feet and the discerning observers have aptly pointed out their faux pas. I have always followed such events critically, and let me relate some major events the Indians have orchestrated to implicate Pakistan, so that they could achieve their larger agenda of influencing world opinion against us.
HIJACKING OF INDIAN AIRLINES FOKKER “GANGA” IN 1971
The Indians had charted out their strategy to intervene in East Pakistan after the Pakistani elections and were covertly aiding and arming the ‘Mukti Bhani’. They wanted to isolate West Pakistan and its government from the events of its eastern wing and to openly discredit us of abetting terrorism. The hijacking of Ganga, a Fokker on an internal flight from Srinagar to Jammu by an agent cultivated by RAW is now a confirmed part of history. Thus, they found an excuse and banned all over flights for our aircraft between the two wings, and achieved their aim to make it difficult for us to control their perpetrated unrest there and also had an excuse to meddle in East Pakistan. Historians have confirmed the Ganga hijacking as one of the early precursors towards the dismemberment of East Pakistan. That staged hijacking was carried out by RAW and they got the dividends it was meant to gain. The official and their media reports still ring in my ears. They were eerily familiar to the present ones.
HIJACKING OF INDIAN AIRLINES IC-814 IN 1999.
The prevailing events were familiar. Pakistan had carried out its nuclear blasts in 1997 and since then had been ostracized by the world community. Its economy was in doldrums. Another precursor to the Indian need to malign Pakistan had germinated in early 1998. The Americans had identified Osama Bin Laden as a person behind various attacks on their Embassies and other installations and they were trying to get a lead on his whereabouts. ISI was aiding them in trying to find his location. The cruise missiles attack in August 1998 on his known headquarters had been a failure. India was getting disturbed by the American interaction and need for Pakistan to tame the Taliban. The ISI connections were being put to test to extradite or get Osama. The Indians did not want to wait for the partnership to mature. Then we had carried out the Kargil Adventure in early 1999 and the Indian were still recovering from the rude shock of being caught off guard. Pakistan had already blundered in not being able to carrying off a superb strategic military maneuver, by backing out from openly supporting our own troops on the Kargil heights under International pressure and thus had termed them (our own soldiers) as Kashmiri mujahedeen, whom the Indian media called infiltrators or “Gus Bhaitias”. The bad blood between the Army and the Government had fermented for a few months. Then we went on the defensive after the 12th October coup by General Musharaf against Mr Nawaz Sharif’. Meanwhile, the Taliban in Afghanistan were making gains against the Northern Alliance who were being overtly aided by India and Russia. India had to label Pakistan with the Taliban as terrorist states, and had to prove a nexus between them. Thus, RAW carried out the drama of this hijacking. While most Indians consider themselves masters of the Chanakian deviousness, they have a knack of making some obvious goof ups to prove their ineptitude. Consider some of these facts which prove beyond doubt that the whole drama was RAW orchestrated.
The Indian Airlines flight IC-814 took off from Katmandu in the afternoon of 24th December, 1999 and was hijacked on the way to New Delhi. It overflew Delhi and was in Indian airspace for over an hour. No Indian Air Force aircraft scrambled to force it to stay inside India. Then the crew requested for permission to land in Lahore as it was low on fuel. Our Government refused and blocked the runway with fire tenders and other vehicles. The Airbus went back after circling over Lahore and landed back in Amritsar. There was a scuffle onboard there when one of the passengers Rupin Katyal had tried to wrestle with the hijackers and he had been stabbed as the hijackers did not want to use the pistols due to fear of damaging the aircraft fuselage and pressurization system. There, on the ground, no action was taken by the Indians to incapacitate the aircraft from taking off again and neither was it refueled. It stayed started up in Amritsar for over an hour and kept taxiing from one edge of the runway to the other and back. Finally it took off again and dashed to Lahore with desperate calls to Lahore ATC by the captain that he was going to crash land in the vehicles on the runway as he was dangerously low on fuel. Permission was granted on humanitarian grounds. I was stationed in those days at our Air Defence Command and had access to listen to all the conversation which was taking place between the aircraft and the ATCs of Delhi, Amritsar and Lahore. Not once did the hijackers come on the radio and neither did the captain relay any demand from them to any ATC. However, while watching the Indian media channels simultaneously from the time it was overflying New Delhi, I was shocked to see the reported demands being broadcast. The reason most probably was that the trip to over Lahore and back to Amritsar and then back to Lahore was not as per plan. The media got confused and did not coordinate. They had been briefed to announce the demands of the hijackers with prepared scripts handed to them by RAW. They stupidly started flashing the latest demands by the hijackers with actual photographs of the five prisoners (Pakistanis) that they wanted to be freed, when not a single word had been uttered by anyone from IC-814. That got me interested into following the adventure more critically. It was no coincidence when the demand transmitted by the hijackers after 24 hours happened to be exactly the same which the Indian media was flashing so brazenly. Following it more closely, here are a few more faux pas by the Indians in staging that drama.
When the aircraft landed in Lahore, the captain requested that he wanted, as per his hijackers magnanimity, to off load women and children. We did not agree and offered only fuel. I was listening to all the conversation between the aircraft and our ATC. When the PIA staff was called in to help refuel the aircraft, they found that the Indian Airlines refueling port was not where the later versions of PIA Airbuses had them. This message was transmitted to the cockpit who unsuccessfully tried to direct the men working under the aircraft. Then a surprising thing happened. Our staff was told to get away from the aircraft and through a trap door near the cockpit, the flight engineer Anil K Jaggia emerged from the nose wheel’s compartment. He directed the ground staff to the refueling port and got the hoses connected and supervised the refueling. And to every one’s surprise, here was a hostage, who had been a free man during the refueling, and there were killers on board the aircraft and he happily climbed back into the aircraft through the same trap door. What a patriotic guy, right? There was no reason for any one to go back as the hijackers could have done nothing to him and neither did they demand at any time to come back onboard.
While the Aircraft was being refueled, no conversation took place between the cockpit and the ATC about their intentions after refueling. But again, I heard on the Indian media that the hijackers are now demanding to go to Kabul. And lo and behold. When the aircraft took off again, well after sunset, and was asked his next destination, the captain says that they are proceeding to Kabul. This was because India was trying desperately to establish a nexus between the hijackers (Masked Pakistanis) and Afghanistan. The aircraft was escorted by two F-16s towards our western border and our ATC started coordinating with Kabul ATC. They were informed that Kabul did not have night landing facilities so they were not welcome. There was silence from the cockpit for quite some time. I did not monitor any call from them back to India or to anyone. Then after some twenty minutes, when they were close to Mianwali, they announced that they would proceed to Dubai. Finally they left our airspace past midnight. This drama continued when the next day, the aircraft set back from Dubai for Kabul minus some women and children and old people, though most stayed on board. It entered Pakistan near Gawadar and when it was close to Quetta, it decided that instead of Kabul, they would proceed to Kandhar. The conversations between the aircraft and Delhi were monitored and it seemed that most of the time the captain was asking that telling their ATC what he was going to do.
While the negotiations were being carried out with the hijackers and the Indians, there was a distinct indication that the deal would be cut very soon as the “hijackers” dropped their demands of 200 million dollars and other prisoner very early. However, the delay was from the Indian side who wanted the news about the hijacking to stay in the headlines for a longer period. On the final day, i.e. 31st December, while the media was blaring that no agreement had been reached as per official statements till after midday, a request was received by Pakistan at 1000 hours to allow an aircraft to overfly to Kandhar at 1330 and for two aircraft to fly back at 1630 hours. The aircraft carrying Jaswant Singh and the three prisoners, who were unheard of till the hijacking started, were flown out and they were exchanged at Kandhar airport.
Another interesting thing through out the whole hijacking was that at no time during the eight days, did the five hijackers ever take off their ski type masks and they had some stamina that they could keep control of 178 passengers in two compartments while there was some one all the time in the cockpit also. I leave the rest to conjecture. Even in Afghanistan, which was supposed to be the destination of the hijackers, they never took off their masks and kept them on till the last. After the release of the three men they had supposedly asked for, they asked for two vehicles from the Taliban. As per the footage I saw, there was no rejoicing or any intimate interaction with the released prisoners and the hijackers and they boarded the vehicles and drove off towards the city in different vehicles, their masks still not removed. No one saw them again.
The released passengers were soon boarded onto the aircraft which had come from India and a spare crew was to fly back the hijacked aircraft back the same day as per the over flight clearance. They, i.e. three aircrew plus two or three stewards suddenly decided that they would stay overnight and proceed back the next day. These five plus some Indian Consulate personnel drove off to the city. The next day, there were some ten or twelve people who boarded the flight back to India. Who were these five or six extra guys, is anyone’s guess, but I believe they were the hijackers now going back as Indian consulate personnel, including a Mr S B S Tomar, a known Indian RAW agent, who was also amongst the passengers list when it was hijacked from Katmandu. After knowing these facts, one wonders that was IC-814 really hijacked? Yes, this hijacking helped India a great deal in painting Pakistan as a party to the hijacking and to be herded in the same category as Afghanistan, while poor India was the victim of these terrorists. Thus India was able to categorize the Kashmiri Freedom Fighters to be having a nexus with the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden and Pakistan was a willing partner to the infiltrators into IHK.
While on hijacking, I recall there was another incident also more recently which was concerning some Indian plane having been hijacked and the India media also started showing the hijackers profiles and demands and even the defence minister tuned in with criticism and then poof, they found that some flop had happened and it was a false alarm. Most probably some other link in the chain had snapped before they could unveil the curtain. Who had fed those profiles and demands to the press and how they got transmitted even before the breaking news of a hijacking.
INDAIN PARLIAMENT ATTACK
This was probably the lamest and most obvious charade that the Indians carried out for scoring a point in the Indo-Pak relations roller coaster. This came as the stage managed crisis by the Indians on 13th December, 2001. A quick look at the world affairs at that time is essential. After the unsuccessful attempt to put Afghanistan and Pakistan in the same basket of terrorist states, the Indians were hard pushed to follow up on their endeavors to isolate us internationally. The year 2000 had seen active American involvement in Afghanistan due to Al Qaeda and their interest in the CIS states. However, the unfortunate and tragic incident 9/11/2001 was even more macabre from the Indian point of view. The attacks by Al Qaeeda on the World Trade Center’s twin tower in New York and Pentagon followed by the pragmatic and sane step by General Musharaf to openly go against their benefactors i.e. the Taliban did not help the Indian cause at all. It actually put Pakistan right in the lap of the Americans as they needed our all out support to topple the Taliban. The NATO guided invasion of Afghanistan required bases in Pakistan for logistic and other back up facilities and also overflying corridors of American aircraft to Afghanistan and back to the aircraft carriers stationed in the Arabian Sea. This Pak-American partnership was too hard to swallow and so the Indians came up with the plan to militarily put pressure on Pakistan.
A Kashmiri double agent known as the Guru or by some other alias was cultivated to come up with some human fodder to enact a drama at the Indian Parliament. Five die hard ‘Freedom Fighters’ were recruited and briefed by the middleman as per the RAW instructions to create havoc at the Indian Parliament. These men got inside the Parliament gates supposedly using fake number plates, managed to approach the building and were out to “kill the political leadership of India”. Well, this attempt by allegedly ISI backed terrorists was supposed to be the last straw on the Indian leaderships back and they decided to go for a military adventure against Pakistan to teach us a lesson for all our deeds and to wash off the ignominy of the Kargil Affair, which the Indians’ still agree, albeit only to themselves, that we had them cornered. I will quote from an article by the venerable Ardeshir Cowasjee, which says it all. “Take the staged attack upon the Indian Parliament on December 13 during which not one furl of a dhoti of one Indian legislator was unfurled, during which not one brick was dislodged from one pillar.” He further quoted Kamila Shamsie from the Gaurdian “…gunmen miraculously got through security checks, in a time of heightened alerts, and attempted to destroy the Indian parliament. In a further miracle, none of the ministers were hurt and the terrorists were killed.”
The Indian government started giving similar statements which are being heard now after the Mumbai crisis, and the Indian government mobilized their troops to move to the border to “teach us a lesson”. The main aim at that time was, that the Indians wanted to send a message to the Americans not to disregard India in the ensuing war on terror which was going on in Afghanistan with open assistance of Pakistan. General Musharaf took the bold steps as were required from the Chief of the Army and the country. The strategic and tactical movement of troops done by him and the war plans prepared started giving the Indians cold feet. The Indians got a discrete message that the next war would be fought in their territory and some of their strategic errors had made their deployment too predictable and the responses devised were very potent. Add to that the nuclear deterrence and it had to fizzle out. The American intervention by admonishing India towards military adventurism and movement of troop too close and in provocative vicinity of our border, ended in their face saving suspension and removal of their No 2 Corps Commander.
MUMBAI CARNAGE
Now let’s look at the Mumbai events in an unbiased manner. Why has India enacted this drama? The world stage is already under going some dramatic changes. The economic crisis and the fall out has been hurting the Indian shine quite seriously The recent uprising in Indian Held Kashmir and the farce elections there and the media coverage all over the world were eroding the largest democracy’s credibility. The American Elections results and the statements from the upcoming leadership to try to resolve the Indo-Pak issues were not taken lightly by the Indians. The war on terror in Pakistan and its adjoining area in Afghanistan has started showing some tangible results. The Indian attempt to malign Pakistan after the bomb blasts at their embassy in Kabul did not make the desired ripples, though they managed to persuade Afghanistan to allow them to bring in troops for security reasons. The American interest and need of a dependable logistic life line through Pakistan to support their operations there is not a savory picture from the Indian point of view. All these events when looked at from a vantage point of view and from the Indian mindset, gave a clear picture that some Chinakian school of thought maneuver was expected. I believe Mumbai carnage is a piece of the same jigsaw puzzle.
The latest carnage carried out by the terrorists is also smacking of very similar insinuations which were done in the afore-mentioned Indian orchestrated events. The usual scapegoat, ISI, was already being flogged while the security agencies were still not fully aware of the quantum and gravity of the situation. The assertions by the army general that the terrorists were Punjabi speaking and were briefing each other to give specific statements were all part of the orchestrated and already rehearsed scripts. The arrival by sea of a bunch of Pakistani youth, who fanned out to various key locations so conveniently, cannot be digested by the most gullible observer. How do you get orientated with a new city, just with maps and briefings? Some of the Indian media reports have already belied these assertions that have confirmed that some of the terrorists had already checked in the hotels and were well entrenched. The Indian media charge aside, if one looks at this event and tries to comprehend what was the aim of these misguided youth, it does not make sense. Knowing Indian phobias of Pakistan and any thing connected, how could such an event take place? The India RAW has infiltrated into most of the Freedom Fighter organizations and it is not expected that they would not be having some indication of any such operation. Either that or their intelligence agencies are really inept. I believe that they are some how connected to the whole event. They most probably cultivated some double agent to instigate such an event and probably then lost touch with the planners who got more and more audacious. Their Intelligence agencies must be knowing that some splinter group was up to some thing and must have gauged it as a low intensity affair. It got out of hand and that they could not get to grips with it in the very beginning is a failure on their part.
Yes, the mileage they wanted to achieve from this will definitely be a success. They want the new American administration to be more benign and appreciative of their point of view. They want to continue the cooperation in the nuclear sales and other fields with the next American government. They want Pakistan to be placed in its due place in the scheme of things. They would want to put us on the back foot where Kashmir issue or any other irritant issue is concerned, whether it’s Baghlihar, Chenab water, trade issues or the track two diplomacy. This can now be achieved with the saber rattling and official statements already emanating from them. They would soon endear the Americans and the European Union with their vulnerability and victimization by the horrid Pakistan, the most dangerous place in the world and the base of all terrorism in the world.
So where do we go from here. I think our government is over reacting to diffuse the situation. Let’s not be apologetic for some thing we have nothing to do with. Scratch below the surface and ask ourselves who the benefactor in all this is? We are capable of defending our selves and should not take dictation from the Indians. The involvement of any organization, whether based in Kashmir, Deccan or Mumbai is not our concern. We denounce killing of innocent citizens and do not indulge in any such activities. We have more such derailed fanatics on our hand in FATA and adjoining Afghanistan and are fighting these misguided elements for many years. We need not to become the lamb downstream and the wolf can go climb the nearest tree. We have more at stake in stabilizing our economy and sorting out our governance. The war on terror inside and on our border areas is far more serious than the Mumbai event. We need to stand as a nation in the face of all this intimidation and should not be apologetic unnecessarily. If India wants to show any evidence which implicates Pakistan, we should be given all access to that source for verification. The Indians would soon be issuing findings (Read unfounded) which would be as per their original design to discredit Pakistan in the eyes of the world comity. It is high time we catch them at their game and expose the actual culprits. Does RAW have a rouge element, if the Indian leadership was ignorant about the Mumbai events?