More should be done to nab the militant leaders, says counter-terrorism expert.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: Counter-terrorism guru Bruce Riedel speculating on the potential motivations for the dastardly terrorist attacks in Mumbai on November 26, 2008, says that the Indian, American, and Pakistani governments should be doing more to locate and punish the terrorist leaders responsible for planning the attack.
In an Op-Ed for The Daily Beast, entitled “Five Years On, Mumbai Terror Masterminds Still at Large,” Riedel laments the fact that the leaders of Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) have yet to be arrested and tried for their involvement with the attacks, and focuses specifically on the role played by Pakistani American David Coleman Headley in gathering intelligence for the attack, whose involvement he calls “perhaps the most shocking element of the Mumbai attack.”
Born Daood Sayed Gilani in Washington, DC in 1960, Headley was recruited by the LeT in 2002 after spending some time with the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). Between 2002 and 2005, he developed numerous contacts in Pakistan, including several within the country’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI). In 2005, he began devoting all of his time to gathering intelligence for the Mumbai attacks, changing his name to David Coleman Headley in order to avoid suspicion from the Indian government. He visited Mumbai five times between 2005 and 2008, and was one of the key masterminds behind the attack.
Despite his capture and conviction, however, the heads of the LeT and ISI have not been held accountable, which Riedel blames largely on Pakistan. The leader of LeT, Hafiz Saeed, is “a darling of the ISI,” he says, despite the fact that he routinely calls for more attacks against India and America.
But mainly, says Riedel, the attack was meant to “change dramatically the future of South Asia,” a point he says he made to President Obama as he was taking office. Because it wasn’t just Indians who were targeted – Americans and Jews were also among the 164 people slain that day – Riedel implies that the attack was a taunt against all those who have opposed the Muslim world in the past. Riedel also says that the 26/11 attacks were related, at least in theology, with the jihad started by al-Qaeda in the late 1990s, of which the 9/11 attacks were a part.
A former analyst and counter-terrorism expert with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Riedel is now a senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institute, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and has been a foreign policy advisor for the Near East and South Asia to the last four US Presidents (Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George H.W. Bush).
The entire op-ed can be read here. The fifth anniversary of the Mumbai terrorist attacks will be this coming Tuesday.