Officials Say Two Mumbai Attackers Voiced Numerous Grievances
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
NEW DELHI, Dec. 15 -- During the three-day siege of Mumbai, an Indian television news anchor took a call from one of the suspected attackers, a young man who identified himself as Imran Babar.
"You're surrounded. You're definitely going to die. Why don't you surrender?" the anchor at India TV implored him.
The voice on the other end of the line, sounding robotic, rattled off a list of grievances: the 2002 riots in Gujarat state during which more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed; the 1992 demolition of the centuries-old Babri mosque by Hindu mobs; and India's control over part of the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.
The caller was holed up in an ultra-orthodox Jewish outreach center where the assailants had taken hostages, according to cellphone records obtained by Indian investigators. "Are you aware how many people have been killed in Kashmir? Are you aware how your army has killed Muslims?" the caller demanded. "We die every day," he told the news anchor. "It's better to win one day as a lion than die this way."
The caller offered the first inkling of why 10 gunmen came ashore in Mumbai last month to carry out a rampage in which 171 people were killed and more than 230 were injured. Although investigators say they have established the identity of the attackers, they are still piecing together the assailants' motives.
Indian officials suspect that the group allegedly behind the attack, Pakistan-based Lashkar-i-Taiba, draws support from security and intelligence forces within that country and is fueled by a growing list of grievances that stretch from the 17th century to the subcontinent's partition in 1947, which created the independent nations of India and Pakistan. The grievances also include India's increasingly warm ties with the United States and Israel, counterterrorism experts say. Mumbai police have said that interrogations of the lone gunman captured during the attacks, Ajmal Amir Kasab, have revealed links between the gunmen and Lashkar operational commanders based in Pakistan.
"Lashkar has a very specific pan-Islamic vision: the recovery of all Muslim lands once ruled by Muslims, including India, Central Asia and Spain. And they've gone after those countries that they believe were usurped from traditional Muslim rulers," said Ashley J. Tellis, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who has been tracking Lashkar since 2001. "The goal is very apocalyptic and simple: attack these enemies and the symbols of those enemies," he said.
"You have a cocktail of radicalization and a pervasive sense of deprivation and injustice," said John Wilson, a senior fellow and terrorism expert at New Delhi's Observer Research Foundation.
Experts pointed out that the attackers targeted the more visible symbols of India's prosperity -- two of Mumbai's most prestigious hotels -- along with the city's only orthodox Jewish outreach center, a busy but relatively obscure building nestled in a crowded alleyway.
"The targets of the killers in Mumbai -- Americans, Brits, Israelis and Indians -- fit exactly into the profile of those that al Qaeda and its partners vilify and plot against," wrote Bruce Riedel, a former South Asia analyst for the CIA and the National Security Council, in a recent article posted on the Brookings Institution Web site.
Another caller reportedly phoned India TV several hours before Imran from inside the Oberoi Trident hotel. He called himself Shadullah and used the cellphone of a Swedish tourist in Room No. 1856, Indian investigators said. "We demand the release of all mujaheddin put in jails. Then will we release these people. Otherwise, we will destroy this place. . . . You must have seen what's happening here," the caller said.
The television station asked, "Do you have the single demand that all mujaheddin arrested be released . . . or do you have any other demand?"
Shadullah replied, "Yes, release them, and we, the Muslims who live in India, should not be harassed . . . Things like demolition of Babri Masjid and killings should stop."
Intelligence sources said Imran's call to India TV was made from the cellphone of slain Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg, head of the Jewish center at the Chabad House. Imran criticized the visit by Israel's army chief, Maj. Gen. Avi Mizrahi, in September, apparently to give a counterterrorism briefing to Indian officers.
"You call their army staff to visit Kashmir. Who are they to come to J and K?" Imran told the anchor, referring to the disputed Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. "This is a matter between us and the Hindus, the Hindu government. Why does Israel come here?"
India and Israel have had a defense alliance since 1992, when diplomatic relations between the countries were established. India has become a major purchaser of Israeli weapons, which has angered some of India's Muslims. The visit by the Israeli general was kept secret for days, news reports said, for fear of riots by Muslims in Kashmir, a predominantly Muslim area patrolled by more than 300,000 mostly Hindu Indian troops.
"Kashmir is a symbol, like Palestine, of a sense of injustice. It is a rallying cry for a much larger anger at India and the West," said Riedel, author of "The Search for al Qaeda."
The Mumbai police, drawing from a seven-page statement by the surviving gunman and intelligence gathered from U.S. and Indian sources, say they suspect the young gunmen were motivated not only by perceived injustices in Kashmir, but also by religion, anger, poverty and the desire to acquire weapons.
In his statement, Kasab, 21, reportedly told police that he came to Lashkar-i-Taiba last year while looking to buy guns to commit robberies after quitting a low-paying job at a catering company. Kasab, police said, told them that he visited at least six Lashkar camps, where he was shown "clippings highlighting the atrocities on Muslims in India."
Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan have fought two wars over Kashmir, which is claimed by both countries. In Kashmir, the younger generation has largely shifted from an armed struggle to a generally peaceful campaign for self-determination.
Tellis said, "The world should know the composition of Lashkar is not Kashmiri. It's Pakistani Punjabis who, in the name of Kashmiris, end up doing all these horrible things. Of course, Kashmiris are concerned now, because they don't want to be at the receiving end of Indian retribution."
Many Indian Muslims have also made a point of protesting the Mumbai attacks. The bodies of the slain gunmen were refused for burial in Muslim cemeteries.
Hafiz Sayeed, the founder of Lashkar whom Pakistan placed under house arrest at India's request after the attacks, has spoken less about Kashmir and more about creating instability in the rest of India that would eventually enable Muslims to take over the country, experts noted. Sayeed warned in 1999 that "jihad is not just about Kashmir."
"About 15 years ago, people might have found it ridiculous if someone told them about the disintegration of the U.S.S.R. Today, I announce the breakup of India, inshallah. We will not rest until the whole [of] India is dissolved into Pakistan," he said in a speech.
Correspondents Candace Rondeaux in Islamabad and Craig Whitlock in Berlin contributed to this report.
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