Al Jazeera speaks to Mikheil Saakashvili, the Georgian president.

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My views on Pakistan are clear. It is a failed state and it requires an international concert to rescue the country before that failure becomes truly catastrophic. India is angry and rightly so but it is important now more than ever to urge India to show patience and restraint. And it is incumbent upon the rest of the world community to take Pakistani authorities to task over their failure to rein in extremist elements that freely operate throughout the country. This is not about Kashmir nor is this about the treatment of India’s 130 million Muslims. This is Islamic terror bent on establishing an Islamic Caliphate in Central Asia. This is about the 20,000 madrassas in Pakistan that operate outside the jurisdiction of the Pakistani state. These madrassas have become the training ground for global jihad preaching a virulent form of Islam. This no longer threatens just India or Pakistan but the entire world.

In this segment from World Focus, Thomas Sanderson, the deputy director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, assesses the accuracy of the accusation and comments on Pakistan’s commitment to anti-terrorism. Mr. Sanderson explains why these attacks are being described as inspirational for other terrorist groups and asserts that this type of terror is combated with intelligence.

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“We are not saying that it is sponsored by the Pakistan government,” India’s Deputy Home Minister Shakeel Ahmad told the BBC, adding that Pakistani soil was nevertheless being used for “anti-India” activities.

“The terrorists who have been killed in these encounters in Mumbai in the last few days were of Pakistani origin,” Ahmad said, as well as the lone gunman arrested after the stunning coordinated attacks in India’s financial capital.

It’s clear that Pakistan has a problem and by extension we do. The attacks in Mumbai are focusing world attention on Pakistan’s role in global jihad. Certainly no reasoned voices accuse the upper echelons of the Pakistani government of aiding or abetting the Mumbai terror attack, but Pakistan seems unable to control the forces of an evermore violent and extreme global Islamic Jihadi movement that is based on its soil. It is as if Pakistan is but a madrassa for global jihad.

It’s time to confront the bitter reality that Pakistan is a failed state and one with nuclear weapons and 168 million people. Its raison d’etre from the start was born from the whim and determination of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of the state, as a state for Muslims carved out of British India. Problem is that Jinnah failed to provide a compass for the nascent state. Jinnah was no Nehru. The country has drifted aimlessly suffering one brutal dictatorship after another. The brief democratic interludes weren’t any better as one corrupt clique or another ruled with the aim of self-richment. The people of Pakistan deserve better. And the world can no longer tolerate the noxious violence that poverty and ignorance is breeding in the villages of forgotten Pakistan.

“The grim truth is that Pakistan is becoming something alarmingly close to a failed state. And that could have disastrous consequences for the United States, NATO and Afghanistan’’s struggle to hold back its own Taliban insurgency.” — Sumit Ganguly, Director of Research at the Center on American and Global Security at Indiana University on October 10, 2008

Here are a few articles on Pakistan’s role in global jihad and the failure of the Pakistani state to seriously address the problem over the past decade or more as well as the perspective of a Pakistani.

India Is Pointing In the Right Direction
By Claus Christian Malzahn in Der Spiegel.

Is Pakistan a Failed State?

The Pakistani government has long ago given up control of this region. The army and the ISI, which takes a lion’s share of the national budget, lead their own independent existence. Their links to the Taliban and to Islamic groups in Kashmir and India have grown.

Even if the government in Islamabad showed a will to crack down on these tribal areas, it’s doubtful the army and the ISI would follow orders. Even Pakistan’s former President Pervez Musharraf was unable to keep a lid on terrorism, and unlike his successor he had not just political but military power.

All in all, medium-term prospects for the subcontinent are rather gloomy. Pakistan recently had to be taken under the wing of the IMF. The state is as good as bankrupt. Its political leadership is either corrupt or — when it comes to the military-intelligence service complex — almost without influence.

And somewhere in Pakistan, nuclear weapons are stored. The Americans have always vouched that the weapons of mass destruction in the bunkers between Karachi and Lahore were secure — but that was before American helicopters were fired at in Pakastani airspace by, ostensibly, their closest allies in the War on Terror.

From a political point of view Pakistan is nearly a failed state. But no Western statesman will say that out loud, because openly admitting it will not make things any easier.

The next American president seems to understand the reality of power relations in Pakistan. During the campaign, Barack Obama’s rhetoric in this regard set him apart with surprising clarity from his opponent John McCain. Whereas the Republican put diplomatic negotiations with the regime in Islamabad up front and centre, Obama was open about bringing military intervention in the tribal areas into the discussion. Strengthening the US presence there seems, in any case, a firm part of Obama’s agenda. The planned American withdrawal from Iraq could — in a worst-case scenario — be followed by an invasion of Pakistan. This must not be something he wants, at least not in the fullest sense. Even Vietnam was never imagined as a long war.

Naturally Obama will talk with the government in Islamabad. But the fact that he has emphasized military strength shows that he is soberly, if pessimistically, assessing the political power relations between the army and the Pakastani government.

The coming weeks should demonstrate what the Pakastanis are in a position to undertake in the battle against terror. If they want to prevent the Americans from raising the stakes, they must act now. Of course the chances of purging the jihad zone with one, two, or three military actions — whether from Americans, Pakastanis, or some combination — are very slim. If a serious battle there is now envisaged, it will be very protracted.

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A gunman walks at the Chatrapathi Sivaji Terminal railway station in Mumbai

They were 10 gunmen, well-trained and armed with assault rifles and grenades, officials say. They had scouted their targets ahead of time. The knew the hallways and the basements. They even carried bags of almonds for energy. Police say they were Muslim extremists from Pakistan, and may be tied to India’s long-running insurgency in the disputed, largely Muslim, Himalayan region of Kashmir.

They landed in an inflatable rubber boat not long after nightfall on a Mumbai beach, a semi-isolated stretch of sand and stone where fisherman bring in their boats during the daytime. From there, it was less than a 15-minutes walk to their major targets. The group fanned out across the city, hitting 10 spots in two hours. They chose some of the best-known landmarks, many popular with foreigners and the city’s elite. Many of the attacks ended in minutes. But at two luxury hotels and a Jewish center they dug in, fending off hundreds of commandos for days.

India will doubtlessly cast blame towards Islamabad as it should for Pakistan is but one large madrassa of jihadism but the fact remains that the Indian intelligence community and security forces are guilty of serious lapses and incompetence. How did ten twenty-somethings manage to hold off the Indian army for 72 hours?

As an investigation moved forward, there were questions about whether Indian authorities could have anticipated the attack and had better security in place, especially after a 2007 report to Parliament that the country’s shores were inadequately protected from infiltration by sea — which is how the attackers sneaked into Mumbai.

Home Minister Shivraj Patil, responsible for public safety and internal security as one of the most senior members of the government, resigned on Sunday to take responsibility for the failure of the country’s intelligence services and military to prevent the attacks in Mumbai.

Mr. Patil’s resignation is the clearest sign yet that the current government is feeling pressure from the general public in India to make amends.

All the while, tensions are swelling with Pakistan, where officials promised that they would act swiftly if any connection to Pakistani-based militants were found, but also warned that troops could be moved to the border quickly if relations with India worsened.

It was still unclear whether the attackers had collaborators already in the city, or whether others in their group had escaped. And perhaps the most troubling question to emerge for the Indian authorities was how, if official estimates are accurate, just 10 gunmen could have caused so much carnage and repelled Indian security forces for more than three days in three different buildings.

Part of the answer may lie in continuing signs that despite the country’s long vulnerability to terrorist attacks, Indian law enforcement remains ill-prepared. The siege exposed problems caused by inexperienced security forces and inadequate equipment, including a lack of high-power rifle scopes and other optics to help discriminate between the attackers and civilians.

If I were an Indian citizen, I’d be mad as hell. As it is, I am rather steamed and frustrated with a Pakistan incapable of controlling its own destiny and incapable of providing an alternative route of development for its citizens. Pakistan has become a state without frontiers whose primary export is now terror and terrorists. If Pakistan can’t control its own territory then it risks intervention. Already, US forces are encroaching into Pakistan’s Northwest Tribal Areas because Pakistan has failed to stem the violence seeping out of those areas. Now, India gazes across its own border and sees dozens of training camps and hundreds of fighters being trained to wreck havoc and destruction. It’s hard to ask India to show restraint but that is what we must do. Otherwise, we risk a wider war which is precisely what these fundamentalists want. But we also owe India every instrument at our disposal in demonstrating our resolve to Pakistani authorities to act now and act decisively before the entire world comes bearing down on the Punjab and the Sind.

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Here is a round-up of commentary from various Indian blogs:

India’s Nine-Eleven
From Great Bong (Random Thoughts of a Demented Mind).

Is this India’s 9/11? There is no doubt that what we have seen today is as much an act of war as 9/11. Foreigners have breached the nation’s borders (with consummate ease may we add). Not through the snowy slopes in the mountains. We are used to that. Not through the porous borders of Bangladesh. We know of that. But through the coastal waters of India’s biggest, supposedly most secure, city. The waters of which as a route for narcotics smuggling should theoretically have been under heavy government surveillance. Or perhaps it is the very lucrativeness of the clandestine water traffic (after this this is D-country) that makes the local authorities not look too closely.

However will this the proverbial last straw on the camel’s back that will ultimately make national security the number one national agenda? Will this change India as 9/11 changed USA fundamentally? Though I would like to hope so, I have too much faith in our so-called “resilience” to be more than a bit pessimistic.

To understand the scope of the operation and the sheer scale of India’s failure, one needs to look at historic precedents of similar kinds of amphibious assault. In 1961, in the famous Bay of Pigs invasion Cuban emigres, trained by the CIA, tried to retake Havana by a similar beach-originated attack after days of US air attack. They could not get much beyond the beach despite being supported by the full might of the United States of America, which in the 60s was possibly at the height of its power. Though I do not want to draw exact historical parallels (the scope of Bay of Pigs was to overthrow Castro), the point I am trying to make is that it should be theoretically intensely difficult for foreigners to use the sea route to infiltrate a country, even more so when the country claims to have an extensive defense infrastructure. But these group of men, well trained and equipped they be, managed to do so without detection and without being attacked. If this does not shake every Indian to the core, I fail to see what will.

The two questions that we all ask now: is why and who? The questions we do not ask because we are afraid of the answers are “When next?” and “How much more”? This being a sunny happy blog, let me not even go into those dark areas. For now.

A Night Out in Mumbai
From India Uncut.

This is turning out to be one crazy night. A friend of mine had an opening of her art exhibition a few hours ago, so we ventured to South Bombay for that. We attended the exhibition, sipped the litchee juice, nibbled on party snacks, and then six of us headed out for dinner. First we tried Indigo Deli, which is a couple of hundred metres from the Taj. We were told there would be a 25-minute wait. So we headed to All Stir Fry, the restaurant in the Gordon House Hotel in a lane down from there. They told us we’d have to wait 20 minutes. We stepped out again, and as we did so, we heard gunshots, and saw people running towards us from the left side.

One of the hotel employees rushed out and told us to get back in. “There must have been an encounter,” he said. “Get back in, you’ll be safe inside.”

We followed him in. We waited in the lounge-bar upstairs for a while. The big screen there was showing cricket. India won. Then someone changed the channel.

That’s when we realised that this was much more than a random police encounter, or a couple of gunshots. We heard that terrorists with AK-47s had opened fire outside Leopold’s, the pub down the road. We heard there was firing elsewhere in the city as well, including in the Taj. We watched transfixed, and as the apparent scale of the incidents grew, we realised we couldn’t go home. We asked if they had a room vacant; they did, so we settled in, switched on the TV, and watched in horror.

More below the fold and all are worth reading.

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“Preliminary evidence, prima facie evidence, indicates elements with links to Pakistan are involved.” — Pranab Mukherjee, Foreign Minister of India

Lashkar-e-Taiba (Urdu: لشكرِ طيبه laškar-ĕ ṯaiyyiba, literally Army of the Pure or Righteous, also transliterated as Lashkar-i-Tayyaba, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba or Lashkar-i-Taiba) is one of the largest and most active Islamic terrorist organizations in South Asia. The group was founded by Hafiz Muhammad Saeed in Afghanistan’s Kunar province in the late 1980s becoming especially active after 1993 and has close ties to Al-Qaeda. The aim of the group is the end of Indian rule in Kashmir and establishment of an Islamic caliphate in Central Asia.

Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET) is believed to be based near Lahore and is said to operate several militant training camps in Pakistani-administered Kashmir and is believed to receive support from Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence agency. The group also receives support from South Asians Muslims living in the Persian Gulf region and through “Islamic charities.” Lashkar e-Taiba purports to train its hundreds of thousands of young members for an Islamic Jihad in the troubled region of Kashmir & Jammu. Journeyman Pictures offers a video report on the organization.

Indian intelligence consider Lashkar-e-Taiba to be the military wing of the well-funded Pakistani Islamist organization Markaz-ad-Dawa-wal-Irshad, which recruited volunteers to fight alongside the Taliban. India says that over the last several years, the group has split into two factions, al-Mansurin and al-Nasirin. Known for its expertise in suicide bombing and conventional assault tactics, Lashkar-e-Taiba has carried out many deadly attacks, including the raid on the Indian Parliament in 2002, which killed 14. Although the organization stopped claiming responsibility for attacks after it was ostensibly banned by Pakistan in 2002, Indian authorities have arrested many Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives in connection with attacks in the region. The group is now the prime suspect in the attacks in Mumbai. Again, they have denied responsibility. More on Kashmiri militant extremists from the Council of Foreign Relations.

From the Indian Express:

Interrogation of the lone gunman nabbed alive by the Mumbai Police after Wednesday’s Terror attacks has left investigators in little doubt that the unprecedented raid on the country’s financial capital was the work of Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

According to details of the interrogation accessed by ‘The Indian Express’, the man has been identified as Azam Ameer Qasab, a 21-year-old Pakistan national and is believed to have admitted that he is a Lashkar-e-Toiba operative.

According to a statement recorded by the police following his arrest, Qasab is a resident of Faridkot in Chipalpura Taluka of Ukhad Zilla in Pakistan’s Punjab. Qasam admitted that he was trained, along with several others, at two separate camps in Pakistan. The first camp lasted for close to three months and involved training in the use of firearms and explosives.

After a short break of a few weeks, the second camp focused on marine drills which were used by the attackers to land on the city’s shores. During his training, he was also shown CDs with footage of different spots in Mumbai including some of the locations targeted, Qasam is believed to have said. “During his preliminary interrogation, Qasam said that the instructions given to them were to fire on sight with orders that the maximum possible number of people should die at their hands,” said a police source who grilled Qasam.

From the New York Times:

American intelligence and counterterrorism officials said Friday that there was mounting evidence that a Pakistani militant group based in Kashmir, most likely Lashkar-e-Taiba, was responsible for this week’s deadly attacks in Mumbai.

The officials cautioned that they had reached no firm conclusions about who was responsible for the attacks, or how they were planned and carried out. Nevertheless, they said that evidence gathered in the past two days pointed to a role for Lashkar-e-Taiba or possibly another group based in Kashmir, Jaish-e-Muhammad, which also has a track record of attacks against India.

The officials requested anonymity in describing their current thinking and declined to discuss specifics of the intelligence that they said pointed to Kashmiri militants. In the past, the American and Indian intelligence services have used communications intercepts to tie Kashmiri militants to terrorist strikes. Indian officials may also be gleaning information from at least one captured gunman who participated in the Mumbai attacks.

According to one Indian intelligence official, during the siege the militants have been using non-Indian cellphones and receiving calls from outside the country, evidence that in part led Indian officials to speak publicly about the militants’ external ties.

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The coordinated terror attacks in India’s commercial capital of Mumbai are still unfolding with at least one or two of the attackers still at large and holding hostages. We are not yet past the latest round of Islamic terror unleashed upon the world and in still in shock at the ferocity of these attacks. But in India and indeed around the world, tough questions are emerging even as the story remains incomplete. Who were these men? Who helped them procure their weapons? Who carried out their intelligence? Who trained them? Who financed them? The answers to these questions increasingly point to Pakistan. These men landed in small crafts by sea. They clearly had the benefit of advanced training under fire and in combat. It is premature to accuse the Pakistani government of direct involvement but there remain elements of Pakistan’s ISI who are opposed to any rapprochement with India. Pakistan needs to establish control over its military and intelligence services or risk isolation and backlash over a disturbing pattern of behaivour by rogue elements of the Pakistani state.

Prime Minister Singh’s Approach to Pakistan Comes Back to Haunt Him
In India, questions are being raised about Prime Singh’s approach to Pakistan. Here’s the Times of India

Of all his formulations, the one that has returned most often to haunt Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is the assertion that Pakistan
too, like India, was a victim of terrorism. The macabre irony embedded in the peculiar hypenation plays itself out in a ghastly re-run with every terror strike.

The PM’s remark, made before a meeting with Pakistan’s former dictator Pervez Musharraf in September 2006, indicated a singular failure to appreciate the nature of the terror threat and Islamabad’s role in ensuring India remains in a near-permanent state of fearful expectation. In a stroke, the wolf had been turned into a lamb.

Not only do wolves usually don’t really change colours, what was remarkable about Singh’s statement was it came barely two months after the 11/7 Mumbai train bombings where the government saw a Pakistani hand. Yet, a yo-yo response — just a month earlier he said the peace process with Pakistan was under threat — has marked the PM’s approach to terror.

His tough-sounding words after the massive November 26 attack on Mumbai — that he would “take up” with neighbours the use of their territory for launching strikes against India and that “individuals and organisations” behind the outrage would be hunted down — sound like a tinny, worn out record. Even the PM’s aides might find the cowboy act a little hard to swallow.

Politics can be an unforgiving line of work but the PM has chosen to ignore the perils of not learning from mistakes. Soon after serials blasts in Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Delhi shook the country, Singh told a governors conference that he was not opposed to tightening anti-terror laws.

The point really is whether the government is flexible to the point of bending before every storm. Soon, after Congress’s political calculations ruled out special anti-terror laws, the PM developed an amnesia that afflicts politicians. Until the fidayeen struck Mumbai. “Existing laws will be tightened to ensure there are no loopholes for terrorists to escape,” the PM intoned on Thursday. Disbelief wrestled with incredulity.

No one really believes any laws will be added or changed. The promise of a federal investigative agency has been part of a file in PMO for many months now.

After having bought into the political argument that anti-terror laws “target” minorities, Congress has found it difficult to retrace its steps. Yet, with each succeeding terrorist atrocity, the pressure to be seen to be doing something has increased. But the PM has sought to make concessions that Congress is not prepared to underwrite.

Apart from the India-US nuclear deal, the PM has tended to see peace with Pakistan as part of his legacy. But even as he built useful CBMs with Musharraf, the bid to de-militarise Siachen shocked the armed forces which felt the plan was ill considered. Today, the “mountain of peace” line seems more tacky than it ever did.

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Tonight, the news from Mumbai is grim indeed. Terror affects us all no matter if we are there in Mumbai or half way around the world here in San Francisco. As a Colombian who has twice been to India and who dearly relished every moment I have spent in India, I say with pride that I am an Indian tonight.

My deepest hope is that whoever is behind these brazen attacks is not tied to Pakistan nor Pakistan’s rogue agents of the ISI. If links are established back to Pakistan, the repercussions might lead to all out war. The group that has so far claimed responsibility is a new one, the Deccan Muhajedin. I assume that the Deccan refers to the Deccan region of India that runs down the west coast of India. The other departure from the norm is the attacks were aimed at foreigners. While India has seen much violence and terrorism this year and in the recent past, the targets have been other Indians. My initial read is thus that these attacks may have an Al-Qaeda or a Taliban component. India has been one the major donors to the Karzai government in Afghanistan. Earlier this year, the Indian embassy in Kabul was hit by a car bomb. Indian authorities suspect Pakistani involvement in that attack.

The New York Times is offering continuous updates from Mumbai including reports from Indian bloggers at The Lede Blogs.

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Carla Robbins of The New York Times and Gideon Rose of Foreign Affairs magazine join Martin Savidge to discuss the weeks top stories: A new intelligence report suggesting al-Qaeda may be on the decline, the discussion over Senator Hillary Clinton as a potential member of the Obama cabinet and reports that Iran now has enough uranium to produce a nuclear bomb.

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The National Intelligence Council (NIC) has released its “Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World.” It is the fourth unclassified report produced by some of the nation’s keenest global anaylsts on developing trends in the world. From the introduction of the report:

It offers a fresh look at how key global trends might develop over the next 15 years to influence world events. Our report is not meant to be an exercise in prediction or crystal ball-gazing. Mindful that there are many possible “futures,” we offer a range of possibilities and potential discontinuities, as a way of opening our minds to developments we might otherwise miss.

Some of our preliminary assessments are highlighted below:

The whole international system—as constructed following WWII—will be revolutionized. Not only will new players—Brazil, Russia, India and China— have a seat at the international high table, they will bring new stakes and rules of the game.

The unprecedented transfer of wealth roughly from West to East now under way will continue for the foreseeable future.

Unprecedented economic growth, coupled with 1.5 billion more people, will put pressure on resources—particularly energy, food, and water—raising the specter of scarcities emerging as demand outstrips supply.

The potential for conflict will increase owing partly to political turbulence in parts of the greater Middle East.

China and India are likely to emerge atop a multipolar international system as the US economic and political clout declines over the next two decades.

I would add Brazil to that latter prediction. I would also add while a transfer of wealth from West to East is occuring there is also one from energy-poor to energy-rich. One transfer of wealth not occuring is from North to South however and I am not yet sure if a reallocation of wealth internally in the United States from rich to poor will occur or if we will continue on our present trajectory of ever-widening income inequality (it has actually narrowed modestly during the last four years but that’s from a declining stock market not from a progressive tax scheme or other redistributive policies). If income inequality does continue to widen both between North and South and within the United States then I would expect social pressures to build if not explode. I also wonder how nations like China and India will handle widening social inequality and if their own demise might not be in their socio-economic policies that favour the few over the many. Brazil has actually fared better in terms of lifting the poor out of endemic poverty though it has a long way to go.

You can download a copy of the NIC Global Trends 2025 report here (pdf). Below the fold a section of the report on Europe: (more…)