Tomorrow it will be a month since the murderous attacks in Mumbai took place. There are those already listing the series of missed opportunities, before and after the wicked crime perpetrated by ten fanatical gunmen. These range from the abject failure of the Indian intelligence community to act upon and pass along warnings, albeit vague, that Mumbai was once again to become a terror target, to a failure by Pakistan to recognize this outrage for what it is.
India has been loud in its assertions that the assault on Mumbai was planned in Pakistan and carried out by hoodlums from a terror group — Lashkar-e-Taiba. The Pakistan authorities have moved against the group and also Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a charity that the Indians claim is actually a front for its sister organization. But Islamabad has requested that New Delhi pass on the specific evidence that it says implicates some of the shadowy figures behind Lashkar-e-Taiba. The Indians have produced nothing concrete. This is either because they do not in reality have any hard proof or perhaps because they fear the identity and safety of Indian intelligence assets — spies — would be jeopardized if the depth and breadth of their knowledge of the attacks and the organization that directed them were made public.
Perhaps if New Delhi has been receiving reliable information about the likes of Lashkar-e-Taiba, it should have taken this into account before potentially jeopardizing the sources. If, however, Indian accusations have been motivated in the main by understandable fury at the Mumbai attacks, then it has been ill judged and it is time to row back from condemnation without clear proof. Indeed, the problem has been thrown into sharper relief by the complaint yesterday from a visiting Interpol team, that so far they had received absolutely no information from the Indian authorities, which they can then follow up with affiliated national police forces around the world.
But perhaps the greatest missed opportunity has been the failure of both Islamabad and New Delhi to use the Mumbai slaughter as a pressing reason to pull closer together, rather than a lever with which to wrench themselves apart. No decent Pakistani approves of the savage brutality of last month’s young killers. Nor yet do many Indians want to see relations with Pakistan once more deteriorate to the point where the disputed territory of Kashmir could once again become a trigger for war. For sure, politicians on both sides have paid lip service to working together but the reality in the last 30 days has too often been mere vapid and predictable sentiments. These do not appear to be laying the necessary foundations for closer cooperation and deeper dialogue.
The irony is that whatever organization carried out this dastardly attack, it has to be certain that its leaders do not want a rapprochement between these two nuclear neighbors. Yet by failing to pull together in the wake of this callous crime, both countries are effectively handing a victory to the terrorists and thus only encouraging them toward further evil.
