Avoiding Armageddon

by Bruce Riedel

  MUMBAI ON FIRE

  THE VIEW FROM my room in the Oberoi Hotel was beautiful at dusk, with the sun setting over the blue Arabian Sea while down below the traffic flowed on Marine Drive, which curves along the beachfront in Mumbai. As the lights came alive in the late afternoon sky, the streets of the financial capital of India throbbed with activity. Mumbai, formerly Bombay, the most populous city in India and the sixth most populous in the world, has more than 20 million inhabitants, from some of the world’s richest billionaires to some of the world’s most destitute poor.

  I was there in advance of the coming visit of my boss, William J. Clinton, the forty-second president of the United States. It was my job as special assistant to the president and senior director for Near East and South Asia issues on the National Security Council to oversee Clinton’s March 2000 visit to India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Oman, and Switzerland. It would be the first visit by an American president to South Asia in a quarter-century. The Oberoi and its great rival, the Taj Mahal Palace, were competing to host the president during his visit to the city. Both were trying to explain to me why the president should stay in their hotel.

  Just over eight years later both the Oberoi and the Taj would be the targets of the deadliest terrorist attack since 9/11. The two hotels would be attacked by teams of terrorists from Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT), along with the city’s train station, a restaurant that catered to foreign visitors and the rich, a Chabad house for visiting Israeli and American Jews, and the city hospital. Between November 26 and 29, 164 people would die and more than 300 would be injured by the ten terrorists. In India the horror is known as 26/11 and the battle to kill the terrorists is known as Operation Black Tornado.

  LeT had carefully chosen the targets and meticulously researched them over several years. It received considerable assistance in doing so from two sources, the Pakistani intelligence service, called the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and al Qaeda. Each had its own agenda for the operation. But the targets were the same—Indians, Americans, and Jews, the targets of the global jihad started by al Qaeda in the late 1990s. Although the attack was in India, America was among the targets, and al Qaeda was a common enemy. I pointed that out to President-elect Obama at the time in several briefings by e-mail and telephone.1 The attack was intended to change the future of South Asia dramatically, perhaps even by provoking a war between India and Pakistan, the two nuclear powers rising in the subcontinent.

  Understanding the Mumbai terrorist attack and its consequences is critical to understanding the challenges that America faces in dealing with the rise of India and Pakistan. Simply put, the United States cannot manage one without managing the other. Ensuring the political stability of both states and easing the rivalry between them is an American national security interest of the highest importance in the twenty-first century. The crisis in Mumbai, the first foreign policy crisis for President Obama, demonstrated dramatically how the rise of India and the rise of Pakistan will challenge America in the century ahead.

  THE RISING TIGER AS TARGET

  In a sense, India itself was the terrorists’ target on 26/11, and Mumbai was chosen because it represents India’s ascent over the last two decades. The simplest measure of India’s importance is population. Its growth has been phenomenal. At the time of the Indian revolt against England in 1857, India had 200 million people; at independence in 1947, it had 325 million. But according to its latest census, today, only sixty-five years later, India has 1.15 billion people—one-sixth of humanity. It is now the second-largest country in the world, after China, but by 2030 it will be larger than China. And it is a young, amazingly diverse, country. Sixty percent of Indians today are under thirty years of age. There are 22 official languages, 216 ethnolinguistic groups, and an estimated 1,500 dialects in India. The population is 80 percent Hindu, 14 percent Muslim, 2.5 percent Christian, and 2 percent Sikh. India’s 140 million Muslims make it the third-largest Muslim country in the world, after Indonesia and Pakistan. India is also the second-largest Shia Muslim state in the world, after Iran.

  The pace of change in India today is staggering. While in 1985 there were only 2 million phones in the country, by 2011 there were 600 million cell phones and 15 million more were being added every month. Poverty remains a huge problem, but that also is changing rapidly. According to a 2011 Brookings Institution study, the poverty level in India is dropping very quickly. In 2005 about 41 percent of Indians were living below the poverty level—defined as living on less than a $1.25 per day—but by 2015 only 7 percent will be living below the $1.25-per-day line (amounts adjusted for inflation). From 2005 to 2010, 230 million Indians escaped poverty; by 2015 another 137 million will have done so. The graduation of 360 million Indians from abject poverty in ten years is more than the rest of the world’s progress in poverty alleviation combined; not even China has reduced poverty levels as fast as India has today. While India has had the dubious honor of hosting the most poor people on Earth since 1999, when it overtook China, by 2015 it will have relinquished that distinction to Nigeria.2

  The change has not been easy. In August 2012, when an estimated 640 million people lost power at the height of summer, India had the largest electrical blackout in history. Next door in Pakistan, the blackouts were just as severe and they lasted longer. To produce power, between 2002 and 2012 India doubled its consumption of coal and increased oil consumption by 52 percent and natural gas consumption by 131 percent, but even that was too little to provide enough energy. India’s urban population will have increased from 340 million people in 2008 to almost 600 million by 2030, when it will have 68 cities with more than 1 million inhabitants and 6 cities with more than 10 million. In 2030 two of the world’s five largest cities will be in India—Mumbai and New Delhi.3

  Pakistan also is a large country, with almost 190 million people, of whom 97 percent are Muslim—77 percent Sunni and 20 percent Shia. When it became independent in 1947, it had only 33 million (counting only what was then called West Pakistan, not what is now Bangladesh). Like India, Pakistan is growing fast. If fertility rates remain constant (3.2 percent today), there will be 460 million Pakistanis by 2050; with a modest decline in fertility rates, the number will be around 335 million. The most conservative population estimate puts Pakistan at 310 million people in 2050. Today Pakistan is the sixth-largest country in the world and the second-largest Muslim state. By 2030 it will be the fourth- or fifth-largest country and the most populous state in the Islamic world.4

  If India itself and its rise were a target of the terrorists on 26/11, Mumbai, as India’s largest city and home to its financial center and many of its new millionaires, was the logical place to strike. It is also a media center, home to India’s huge film industry, Bollywood, and it is filled with journalists and television cameras. Mumbai symbolized the rise of the new India, which, with its international connections, challenged the anti-India ideology of the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Tayyiba and its sponsors.

  THE PLOT AND ITS MECHANICS

  The Mumbai attack was planned after extensive intelligence had been collected and the terrorists were well-trained and -equipped. In July 2009 the lone survivor of the terrorist team, Mohammad Ajmal Amir Qasab, surprised prosecutors during his Mumbai trial by confessing in open court that he and his nine comrades had been recruited by Lashkar-e-Tayyiba; trained in commando tactics at LeT camps in Pakistan; equipped by LeT with AK-56 automatic assault rifles (the Chinese version of the Russian AK-47, which is standard equipment for the Pakistani army), hand grenades, GPS sets, cell phones, and other equipment; and dispatched by senior members of LeT from Karachi, Pakistan, in a small boat. As ordered, they hijacked an Indian boat at sea to take them into Mumbai. In Mumbai the group split into four teams, which attacked their prearranged targets—the city’s central train station, a hospital, two famous five-star hotels known for hosting Western visitors as well as the cream of Indian society, a Jewish residential complex known to host visiting Israelis, an
d a famous restaurant also known for attracting a foreign clientele. The terrorists also set small bombs to add to the confusion and terror after they had fired indiscriminately into the crowds at the various target sites.5

  It was an extraordinary attack in many ways. Throughout the siege of the city, the terrorists stayed in touch by cell phone with their LeT masters back in Pakistan. The handlers provided the terror teams with updated intelligence on the tactical situation around them, gleaned from watching Indian television reports. The Indian authorities have released the chilling transcripts of their calls, showing that the masterminds provided guidance and encouragement to the killers, even ordering them to kill specific hostages. In his confession Qasab identified the leader of the operation as an LeT senior official, Zaki Rehman Lakhvi, who oversaw his training and was actually present when the team left Karachi. His training included three months of intense small-arms exercises with a group of LeT members; afterward Qasab was selected to receive more specialized training in how to launch the attack itself. The team then waited another three months while the LeT leadership determined the best timing for the attack.

  The masterminds of the plot were very careful not to reveal their plans through electronic media. They used multiple Internet websites to communicate, jumping from one to another to avoid detection. LeT had set up a special section to ensure the security of its communications, led by Lieutenant Colonel Saadat Ullah, a retired officer from the special communications division of the Pakistani army.6 As a foot soldier Qasab did not know everything about the plot, but he was briefed along with his comrades on the plans and targets. For the most part the goal was just to create carnage, to kill as many people as possible. The team that was headed to the Chabad house, however, had a more elaborate mission: they were to take hostages to use them to demand the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. To work, this part of the plot required the terrorist team at the Chabad house to communicate with the masterminds back in Pakistan. According to Qasab’s account of their briefings, the terrorists were shown videos and photos of all of the targets and maps to find them on laptop computers.7 The Chabad house in particular, which is on a back street in Mumbai, is not easy to find (it took me considerable effort in 2011).

  The videos, photographs, and maps had been carefully collected for Lashkar-e-Tayyiba by David Coleman Headley, an American citizen of Pakistani descent. In fact, for Americans the most shocking element of the Mumbai attack was the role that he played in the collection of intelligence that preceded the attack. Headley was born Daood Sayed Gilani in 1960 in Washington, D.C., where his Pakistani father worked for Voice of America. He got into trouble with the law as a youth and was arrested on drug charges. Headley pleaded guilty in March 2010 to a charge of conspiracy to commit murder based on his role in the Mumbai attack. According to his guilty plea, he joined LeT in 2002 on a visit to Pakistan. Over the next three years he traveled to Pakistan five times for training in weapons handling, intelligence collection, surveillance, clandestine operations, and other terrorist skills.8

  Headley, whose confession of guilt is available on the website of the U.S. Department of Justice, has been an extraordinary source of information on the plot, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, al Qaeda, and the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence. In 2011 he was the key witness for the prosecution of his partners in the plot, and the Department of Justice (DOJ) provided considerable additional evidence from e-mails and intercepted phone calls to back up his claims. As part of the plea agreement that Headley signed to avoid execution, he consented to be interviewed by Indian security officials. Their report on their interview with him has been provided to me by friends in India, and much of the key material is available in the Indian media.9 In short, the United States has unique and voluminous insight into the Mumbai plot from a key participant.

  Beginning in 2005, Headley was given the task of traveling to India from the United States to conduct surveillance for the Mumbai attacks. As a first step, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba told him to change his name to David Coleman Headley in Philadelphia to hide his Pakistani identity when traveling abroad. He then made five trips to India between 2005 and 2008, visiting all of the targets, recording their locations with a GPS device, and carefully studying the security around each. On the way back, he stopped in Pakistan each time to get new instructions from LeT and the ISI and to present his surveillance reports. He thus became one of the masterminds of the plot. During his interrogation by the Indians and in his confession, Headley said that the raid was planned with active ISI involvement at every stage and that at each of his meetings in Pakistan he met with ISI officers as well as LeT leaders. Sometimes the ISI gave him tasks separate from those assigned by LeT; for example, the ISI asked him to take photos of an Indian nuclear facility near Mumbai. ISI provided money to help him set up his cover in Mumbai, including an initial $25,000 in cash. Headley also said that the ISI provided some of the training for the attackers, including training by elite Pakistani naval commandoes. According to Headley, the ISI was especially pleased with the choice of the Chabad house as a target.10

  Headley could not answer the question of at what level in the Pakistani intelligence service his activities had been approved; as an intelligence asset, he did not have access to that information. He has allegedly said that ISI leaders did not know.11 But it is hard to believe that an asset like Headley, an American citizen operating for years in India, would not get the constant attention of officials at the highest levels of the ISI. No intelligence service would “run” an agent like Headley, an American citizen plotting mayhem, without the direct supervision of the top leadership. Headley had a co-conspirator in Chicago, Tahawwur Hussain Rana, a Canadian citizen, who helped devise a cover story for Headley: he was working for a travel agency, which Rana had set up in Chicago. Rana also traveled to Mumbai and stayed in the Taj Hotel to assist in the reconnaissance mission. Rana has been convicted of his role in the attack; at his trial he said that he believed that he was working for the ISI all the time.

  The arrest of Sayeed Zabiuddin Ansari, alias Abu Jindal, at New Delhi airport in June 2012 was another major breakthrough in the investigation of the deadliest terror attack in the world since 9/11. Abu Jindal, an Indian citizen traveling with a Pakistani passport, was in the control room in Karachi in 2008 talking on the phone to the ten terrorists. He gave them advice on where to look for more victims in the Taj Hotel, for example, and instructed them when to murder their hostages. His voice was recorded by the Indian authorities listening in on the phone calls and has been replayed in chilling detail by the Indian police since then for all to hear. Abu Jindal has also been linked to other attacks in India, including the bombing of the Mumbai metro and train system in July 2006, which killed more than 180 people. According to press reports from India, Jindal was arrested after being deported from Saudi Arabia to India. The arrest was a joint counterterrorism effort by India, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. Abu Jindal was in Saudi Arabia recruiting and training new LeT volunteers from the enormous Pakistani diaspora in the Persian Gulf states and was allegedly in the final stages of plotting a “massive” new terrorist operation. He told the Indian authorities that two members of the ISI were also in the control room, both allegedly majors in the Pakistani army. That confirmed the long-standing accusation that the 2008 plot was orchestrated and conducted with the assistance of the ISI, but because Abu Jindal was actually in the control room in Karachi, his accusation is more powerful.12

  Lashkar-e-Tayyiba used a criminal network—the infamous Dawood Ibrahim gang, which was responsible for an earlier terrorist attack on Mumbai on March 12, 1993—to try to cover up its involvement in the 26/11 attacks. Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar, one of the world’s most wanted criminals and drug dealers, operates from Dubai and Karachi. LeT contracted with the gang to send a professional assassin to Mumbai to kill Qasab to eliminate the human evidence of their involvement in the crime. The Indian security services reportedly disrupted the hit man’s plans before he could
carry out his mission.13

  LeT continued to use Headley to collect intelligence after the Mumbai attacks. First, LeT sent him back to India to look at more targets, including Israeli targets like the offices of El Al airlines. But it also outsourced him to al Qaeda for another intelligence collecting mission in Europe. LeT and al Qaeda sent him to Denmark, where his task was to do surveillance of the offices of a Danish newspaper that had published cartoons mocking the prophet Mohammad. The cartoons had aroused a storm of anger in the Islamic world, where depictions of the prophet in any form are rare but ones making fun of him are considered heresy. Al Qaeda had promised to make Denmark pay and had already attacked the Danish embassy in Pakistan. Headley made at least two trips to Denmark to survey the newspaper’s offices in Copenhagen; he even got inside the offices by using his cover as a travel agent.

  This time he reported directly to al Qaeda in Pakistan, meeting with Muhammad Ilyas Kashmiri, a senior al Qaeda operative who had once worked for the ISI. Kashmiri told him that the “elders” of al Qaeda were very interested in this project and that an al Qaeda cell already in Europe was ready to conduct the operation once Headley collected all the necessary intelligence. They would mount a mini-Mumbai operation, seizing the newspaper’s offices, beheading all the employees captured with maximum media coverage, and finally fighting to the death with the police and Danish security forces. According to his guilty plea, Headley had a meeting with the al Qaeda team in England to prepare for the attack.14

  Headley was arrested at Chicago’s O’Hare airport in October 2009 before he could get on a flight back to Pakistan for a final planning session with Kashmiri. There is speculation among Danish authorities that the plan was set to take place in December 2009, when Copenhagen would host the Climate Change Summit and dozens of world leaders including Obama and Singh would be in the city along with major media outlets from around the world. Kashmiri was killed in a drone attack in Pakistan in June 2011.