LeT role in 26/11 confirmed, India asks Pak to act

Pakistan has finally admitted the Lashkar-e-Toiba was behind the Mumbai terror attacks.

Even though there is no official confirmation but Pakistani Prime Ministers Office has told CNN-IBN that Lashkar-e-Toiba planned and executed 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks.

However, New Delhi is cautious about the admission with sources in the Ministry of External Affairs saying that India is looking for more tangible action.

The sources in Pakistani PMO said that two Lashkar operatives Zaik-ur Rehman Lakhvi and Zarar Shah have confessed to planning and executing Mumbai attacks.

Lakhvi and Shah had been picked up from a Lashkar camp near Muzaffarabad early in December. Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani admitted that both Lakhvi and Shah had been detained but denied it subsequently.

Now a Wall Street Journal report quotes Pakistani security officials as saying that Shah, who heads the technology wing of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, has confessed to being one of the key planners of the 26/11 attacks.

He reportedly admitted to advising and directing the terrorists in Mumbai.

The confessions were backed by US intercepts of a phone call between Shah and one of the terrorists at the Taj Hotel in Mumbai

Earlier Pakistan's National Security Adviser Mahmud Ali Durrani hinted at the possibility of a Pakistani role to the Mumbai attacks.

"Could be…could be. I am not saying more than that because we don't have... I hate to say this we don't have proof," Durrani told CNN-IBN on Tuesday.

Now the Indian Government says there is enough evidence for Pakistan to act upon.

"What more evidence does Pakistan require than the statement of the captured terrorist and his father," Union Home Minister P Chidambaram said.

Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma said, "Under the international law it is the obligation of the State of Pakistan to take action after individuals have been named. There is overwhelming evidence. We hope that the pressure of international committee will continue."

India will prefer to wait for a formal official word from Islamabad on Lakhvi and Shah. Until then it will continue to leverage diplomatic pressures on Pakistan.

Lashkar has Docs, Engineers as recruits: report

The Pakistan-based terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which is blamed for the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, is now attracting "more young, educated men, some of whom even hold advanced degrees," a US daily reported on Thursday.

"The profile of those joining the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba is changing," the Washington Times said citing Brig. Gen. Mahmood Shah, who served the Pakistani Army in the largely ungoverned tribal areas along Pakistan's porous border with Afghanistan.

"The big change is that until a few years back most of the militants were hailing from the [Afghan] frontier, but now the scenario has changed and young men from all over Pakistan are joining," Shah was quoted as saying in a report from Lahore.

A ripe breeding ground for the new militants is southern Punjab, he told the Washington Times. Since the school system in Punjab is better than in the tribal areas, most of the new entrants to militant groups are better educated, Shah said.

The only Mumbai attacker captured, Muhammed Amir Ajmal alias Kasab, had completed only the fourth grade, according to Indian and Pakistani press reports. But in a recent interview, a Kashmir-based LeT commander told the Times that members of the group include young men with master's degrees in business administration and bachelor's degrees in computer science.

The militant commander, who goes by the name Abu Aqasa, spoke by cell phone from Lahore and answered other questions in writing, the Times said.

"We have doctors and engineers and computer specialists working for us," he said. "These people don't necessarily fight wars with us. They mainly help us spread our message in cities and villages and also help us in our dispensaries, hospitals and other charitable works."

Abu Aqasa was quoted as saying the organisation uses educated people and especially those with good communications skills to recruit supporters in religious congregations. Once a young man has embraced the militants' ideology, he is inducted into the organisation and sent for further training.

An organiser for a Lahore-based religious organisation told the Times dire economic conditions are the main reason young, educated people are being attracted to militancy in Pakistan.

"People can't find jobs and have nothing to eat," said the man, who asked not to be identified to avoid attracting attention from the police.

"Families find it attractive that if one person is sent for jihad, then that means one less mouth to feed in their house."

Hundreds of thousands have joined the group in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and that while they have been affected by a government crackdown following the attacks in Mumbai, they are still going strong, he was quoted as saying.

Kashif Alam, senior superintendent of police in Peshawar, told the Times the profile of the average militant in that northwest Pakistani city near the border with Afghanistan has changed but that the number of educated Pakistanis was actually decreasing.

"We're seeing an increase in the number of criminals who are working for these militant organisations," he was quoted as saying. "More and more of their operations are being carried out by criminals. Some of the people we have captured were found with thousands of rupees in their pockets."

However, profiles of two would-be suicide bombers captured in the tribal areas and shown to the press contradicted Alam's views, the Times said.

Ali Raza, who surrendered to the police in November, was in his final year studying mass communications. In Dera Ismail Khan, a young man wearing a jacket loaded with explosives was intercepted inside a mosque. He was later found to have completed his high school matriculation.

800 militants, including 300 foreigners still operating in J&K

Despite significant improvement in the security situation in Jammu and Kashmir, at least 800 militants, including 300 foreigners, are still operating in the state, a top police official said.

"According to information from various agencies working on the ground, the number of Pakistani militants operating in the state is around 800, including 300 foreigners," Director General of Jammu and Kashmir Police Kuldeep Khoda told reporters in Srinagar.

Khoda said the security situation in the state has improved this year significantly as the number of militancy-related incidents has come down considerably.

"The militancy-related incidents have for the first time come below 1,000 and in fact less than 700 such incidents took place during the current year," he said.

Khoda said there has been a 40 per cent drop in militancy-related incidents this year as compared to 2007.

"Even the number of civilians killed in such incidents has come down from 164 in 2007 to 89 this year. It is for the first time that the civilian casualties have come down to double digits whereas in 1996, 1,413 civilians lost their lives in one year alone," he said.

The DGP said security forces achieved commendable success against terrorists during the ongoing year, eliminating 102 self-styled commanders.

Three Jaish terrorists nabbed in Jammu Proves Pakistan Army Is a Terrorist Army

Three terrorists of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) have been arrested in Jammu. One of them is a Pakistani army regular, police said on Tuesday.

"Three terrorists of the Jaish-e-Mohammad went from Karachi to Dhaka and to Kolkata and from there they came to Jammu. On specific information, we arrested them from hotel Samrat in Jammu on Sunday," state Director General of Police Kuldeep Khuda said at a press conference here.
"One of the three has been identified as Ghulam Farid alias Gulshan Kumar, a sepoy in 10 Azad Kashmir regiment of Pakistan Army. His service number is 4319184," Khuda said.

The police officer said that Farid joined Pakistan Army in 2001 and was detailed for terrorist activities in 2005. He was arrested along with other terrorists, namely Mohammad Abdullah belonging to Harpur in North West Frontier Province and Mohammed Imran, who hails from Dera Nawab in Bawalpur.
"These three had come to Jammu and they were to meet a guide, who was to come from the Kashmir Valley to Jammu and provide them weapons for specific targetting, which would be known after interrogation," Khuda said.
He added that preliminary interrogations have revealed they have received specialised training in suicide attacks and driving exlposive-laden vehicles.

Kasab belongs to Pakistan, says Sharif, also slams Zardari

Challenging Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari's assertion that there was no proof that the arrested Mumbai attacker hailed from Pakistan's Punjab province, former premier Nawaz Sharif has said that the suspect's village was cordoned off and his parents were not allowed to meet anyone.

"I have checked myself. His (Ajmal Amir Iman alias Ajmal Kasab) house and village has been cordoned off by the security agencies. His parents are not allowed to meet anybody. I don't understand why it has been done," Sharif, who hails from Punjab, said in an interview to Geo News channel.

"The people and media should be allowed to meet Iman's parents so that the truth could come out in the open," he said, adding that "We need some kind of introspection."

Zardari, who earlier acknowledged that the perpetrators of the Mumbai carnage could be 'non-state' actors from Pakistan, has now said there is still no "real evidence" that the terrorists who attacked Mumbai came from Pakistan.

"Have you seen any evidence to that effect? I have definitely not seen any real evidence to that effect," Zardari told BBC in an interview this week.

Pakistani security agencies and local officials in Faridkot have launched a cover-up since India made it public that Kasab belonged to the village in Punjab province and his father acknowledged to a Pakistani newspaper, that the gunman captured in India was his son.

Sharif also slammed Zardari's rule, saying the functioning of the current Pakistan People's Party-led government is making Pakistan look like a "failed state". ( Watch )

Pakistan presents the picture of a failed and ungovernable state due to the absence of the government's writ and the country urgently needs a new roadmap to pull it out of the problems it is currently facing, he said.

The PML-N chief said the dictatorial rule of former President Pervez Musharraf had made the country ungovernable.

"Since 1977, the army has ruled the country for more than 20 years... A state subjected to frequent military intervention in politics can only become ungovernable."

He said India should have shared intelligence about the Mumbai attacks with Pakistan instead of approaching the UN Security Council.

Sharif also criticised what he described as the government's "clarifications" regarding the purported violation of Pakistani airspace by Indian fighter jets.

Noting that Pakistan was getting isolated in the international community, Sharif said there is a need to find the root causes of terrorism. He also condemned Zardari's reported statement that US drone attacks in Pakistan's tribal areas would continue.

The government should make it clear to the US that such attacks went against the country's integrity and would not be tolerated, he said.

Though the PPP-led government had been in power for ten months, there was little hope of any improvement in the affairs of the state, Sharif said, adding that it was up to the nation to decide whether to make Pakistan a failed state or a successful state.

Sharif said the PML-N wanted an independent judiciary and the repeal of the 17th constitutional amendment, which gives the President sweeping powers, including the ability to dissolve parliament and to dismiss the Prime Minister.

The PML-N will pressure the government to implement the Charter of Democracy, which according to him, was the "will" of slain PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto. Sharif and Bhutto signed the Charter in 2006 when they launched a joint movement against Musharraf while they were both in exile.

The Charter envisages wide-ranging reforms, including the scrapping of the President's powers, making the judiciary independent and clipping the powers of the military.

Why Was Pakistan Army Major-General Faisal Alavi Killed?

Is Pakistan Supporting AlQaida Taliban & Terrorist Organizations : The brother-in-law of VS Naipaul, the British novelist and Nobel laureate, was murdered last month after threatening to expose Pakistani army generals who had made deals with Taliban militants.

Major-General Faisal Alavi, a former head of Pakistan’s special forces, whose sister Nadira is Lady Naipaul, named two generals in a letter to the head of the army. He warned that he would “furnish all relevant proof”.

Aware that he was risking his life, he gave a copy to me and asked me to publish it if he was killed. Soon afterwards he told me that he had received no reply.

“It hasn’t worked,” he said. “They’ll shoot me.”

Four days later, he was driving through Islamabad when his car was halted by another vehicle. At least two gunmen opened fire from either side, shooting him eight times. His driver was also killed.

This weekend, as demands grew for a full investigation into Alavi’s murder on November 18, Lady Naipaul described her brother as “a soldier to his toes”. She said: “He was an honourable man and the world was a better place when he was in it.”

It was in Talkingfish, his favourite Islamabad restaurant, that the general handed me his letter two months ago. “Read this,” he said.

Alavi had been his usual flamboyant self until that moment, smoking half a dozen cigarettes as he rattled off jokes and gossip and fielded calls on two mobile phones.

Three years earlier this feted general, who was highly regarded by the SAS, had been mysteriously sacked as head of its Pakistani equivalent, the Special Services Group, for “conduct unbecoming”. The letter, addressed to General Ashfaq Kayani, the chief of army staff, was a final attempt to have his honour restored.

Alavi believed he had been forced out because he was openly critical of deals that senior generals had done with the Taliban. He disparaged them for their failure to fight the war on terror wholeheartedly and for allowing Taliban forces based in Pakistan to operate with impunity against British and other Nato troops across the border in Afghanistan.

Alavi, who had dual British and Pakistani nationality, named the generals he accused. He told Kayani that the men had cooked up a “mischievous and deceitful plot” to have him sacked because they knew he would expose them.

“The entire purpose of this plot by these general officers was to hide their own involvement in a matter they knew I was privy to,” he wrote. He wanted an inquiry, at which “I will furnish all relevant proof/ information, which is readily available with me”.

I folded up the letter and handed it back to him. “Don’t send it,” I said. He replied that he had known I would talk him out of it so he had sent it already. “But”, he added, “I want you to keep this and publish it if anything happens to me.”

I told him he was a fool to have sent the letter: it would force his enemies into a corner. He said he had to act and could not leave it any longer: “I want justice. And I want my honour restored. And you know what? I [don’t] give a damn what they do to me now. They did their worst three years ago.”

We agreed soon afterwards that it would be prudent for him to avoid mountain roads and driving late at night. He knew the letter might prove to be his death warrant.

Four days after I last saw him, I was in South Waziristan, a region bordering Afghanistan, to see a unit from the Punjab Regiment. It was early evening when I returned to divisional headquarters and switched on the television. It took me a moment to absorb the horror of the breaking news running across the screen: “Retired Major General Faisal Alavi and driver shot dead on way to work.”

The reports blamed militants, although the gunmen used 9mm pistols, a standard army issue, and the killings were far more clinical than a normal militant attack.

The scene at the army graveyard in Rawalpindi a few days after that was grim. Soldiers had come from all over the country to bury the general with military honours. Their grief was palpable. Wreaths were laid on behalf of Kayani and most of the country’s military leadership.

Friends and family members were taken aback to be told by serving and retired officers alike that “this was not the militants; this was the army”. A great many people believed the general had been murdered to shut him up.

I first met Alavi in April 2005 at the Pakistan special forces’ mountain home at Cherat, in the North West Frontier Province, while working on a book about the Pakistani army.

He told me he had been born British in Kenya, and that his older brother had fought against the Mau Mau. His affection for Britain was touching and his patriotism striking.

In August 2005 he was visiting Hereford, the home of the SAS, keen to revive the SSG’s relationship with British special forces and deeply unhappy about the way some elements of Pakistan’s army were behaving.

He told me how one general had done an astonishing deal with Baitullah Mehsud, the 35-year-old Taliban leader, now seen by many analysts as an even greater terrorist threat than Osama Bin Laden.

Mehsud, the main suspect in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto late last year, is also believed to have been behind a plot to bomb transport networks in several European countries including Britain, which came to light earlier this year when 14 alleged conspirators were arrested in Barcelona.

Yet, according to Alavi, a senior Pakistani general came to an arrangement with Mehsud “whereby – in return for a large sum of money – Mehsud’s 3,000 armed fighters would not attack the army”.

The two senior generals named in Alavi’s letter to Kayani were in effect complicit in giving the militants free rein in return for refraining from attacks on the Pakistani army, he said. At Hereford, Alavi was brutally frank about the situation, said the commanding officer of the SAS at that time.

“Alavi was a straight-talking soldier and some pretty robust conversations took place in the mess,” he said. “He wanted kit, skills and training from the UK. But he was asked, pretty bluntly, why the Pakistani army should be given all this help if nothing came of it in terms of getting the Al-Qaeda leadership.”

Alavi’s response was typically candid, the SAS commander said: “He knew that Pakistan was not pulling its weight in the war on terror.”

It seemed to Alavi that, with the SAS on his side, he might win the battle, but he was about to lose everything. His enemies were weaving a Byzantine plot, using an affair with a divorced Pakistani woman to discredit him.

Challenged on the issue, Alavi made a remark considered disrespectful to General Pervez Musharraf, then the president. His enemies playeda recording of it to Musharraf and Alavi was instantly sacked.

His efforts to clear his name began with a request that he be awarded the Crescent of Excellence, a medal he would have been given had he not been dismissed. Only after this was denied did he write the letter that appears to many to have sealed his fate.

It was an action that the SAS chief understands: “Every soldier, in the moment before death, craves to be recognised. It seems reasonable to me that he staked everything on his honour. The idea that it is better to be dead than dishonoured does run deep in soldiers.”

Alavi’s loyalty to Musharraf never faltered. Until his dying day he wanted his old boss to understand that. He also trusted Kayani implicitly, believing him to be a straight and honourable officer.

If investigations eventually prove that Alavi was murdered at the behest of those he feared within the military, it may prove a fatal blow to the integrity of the army he loved.

Britain and the United States need to know where Pakistan stands. Will its army and intelligence agencies ever be dependable partners in the war against men such as Mehsud?

James Arbuthnot, chairman of the defence select committee, and Lord Guthrie, former chief of the defence staff, were among those who expressed support this weekend for British help to be offered in the murder investigation.

Will Pak Really cooperate on Terror? Answer Is No

'Non-state actors' call the shots in Pakistan :

Pakistani Army General The Biggest Terrorist>>>>>>>>>>>>

The rather clumsy attempts by Pakistani security agencies to cover up the origins and links of the terrorists responsible for the Mumbai carnage are a clear sign of the lack of sincerity and seriousness with which Pakistan will crack down on the terror networks operating in that country. Demands by Pakistani authorities for sharing evidence, while legally and diplomatically correct, are little more than a diversionary tactic. Within hours of the Mumbai attack the dirty tricks department of Pakistani intelligence agencies would have got a fix on the perpetrators of the attack and have all the information needed to prosecute and punish those responsible for the outrage. And yet it took a UN ban for Pakistan to crack down on the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, and that too very softly, almost apologetically.

Pakistanis are being disingenuous when they compare Mumbai with Marriott. The Islamists who blasted the Marriott hotel are waging an al Qaeda/Taliban-inspired war on Pakistan. The Mumbai attackers, on the other hand, belong to an Islamist organisation that has been and remains a close ally and instrument of the Pakistan army against India. But more than the fraternal links between the Pakistan army and jihadist militias, it is the changed power equation between the state and non-state actors in Pakistan that will block all attempts to dismantle and destroy the jihadist infrastructure. The Pakistani state has neither the capacity nor the capability, and even less the commitment, to eradicate the non-state terror machine thriving in that country.

The real state within the state in Pakistan is not the ISI or the 'ISI within the ISI' but the jihadist network in Pakistan's hinterland, Punjab. The so-called non-state actors, with the help of elements within the state structure, are today as powerful and influential as the Pakistani state. So much so that anything more than a cosmetic clampdown on the jihadists will invite a reaction so severe that the state might not be able to withstand it. So, in all likelihood, the formal government in Pakistan will probably request the informal government to lie low and let the storm pass before the latter can re-emerge in a new incarnation. The charade will finally end when the non-state actors become the state.

Even though Pakistan is under intense pressure, the seriousness of Pakistan's political leaders to tackle terrorism is still not evident. While Pakistan is faced with difficult choices, the political will is clearly missing. There are fundamental reasons to believe that the cooperation is more likely to be posturing in the hope that the pressures will fizzle out over a period of time.

Whatever action Pakistan has taken so far, it has also made it clear that this action is not due to the pressures from India. No government in Pakistan can be seen to be succumbing to its traditional rival. To what extent Pakistan is going to cooperate, will also be dependent on what the expectations of the international community are. If it is to clamp down on some terrorist groups, there can be the pretence of doing that. If it is to hand over a few terrorists and fugitives, they might also agree to that. But if it is to permanently dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism in Pakistan, as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has demanded, then it cannot be. For, unfortunately the Pakistani ruling elite, including the army, is in no position to do that.

The foundations of the terrorist infrastructure are so deep-rooted that it would require years of political and social engineering to make a dent on it. A political culture of violence, spawned by an intolerant interpretation of Islam and a distorted view of history, lies at the foundation of this terrorist infrastructure. Opportunistic use of religion and politics by successive governments and political groups has created a state that is no longer in control of society. The "non-state actors", which the Pakistani establishment created to pursue its strategic objectives in Afghanistan and India, have gained their own dynamism and autonomy. It will be impossible to excise them without Pakistan itself undergoing serious destabilisation.

But Pakistan is also vulnerable; it can be made to act under pressure. To make Pakistan cooperate in the fight against terrorism, whether through persuasion or coercion, is going to be a long haul. It has to be seen whether India has a creative strategy and the resilience to carry it through.