Indian officials last week directly accused Pakistan?s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of plotting the July 11 train bombings in Mumbai , confirming early suspicions by Indian investigators and many observers that ISI played a role in the bombings. Saying that they had ?solved? the case following interrogations of suspects that included the use of ?truth serum,? Mumbai police chief, Anami Narayan Roy, said that ?The terror plot was ISI-sponsored and executed by Lashkar-e-Taiba [LeT;Group Profile] operatives with help from the Students Islamic Movement of India [SIMI;Group Profile].? According to the Washington Post, Roy went on to say ??some of the Pakistanis slipped into India by going over the two countries? shared border, while others went through neighboring Nepal [Country Profile] and Bangladesh [Country Profile]. There they were met by Indians who brought them to Mumbai and housed them in rented apartments?? Pakistan?s Foreign Office quickly issued a rebuttal, saying, ?This statement, like those made immediately after the Mumbai bomb blasts, contains unsubstantiated allegations, which the Indian officials and media keep making for propaganda purposes.?
That Indian officials believe the attack involved three groupings working together?the ISI, LeT, and SIMI–indicates a concerted, multifaceted, and significant terrorist threat against the state, with a center of gravity in Pakistan. The Indian findings support the opinions of many observers that ISI supports, to various degrees, terrorist and insurgents in Kashmir and the tribal borderlands separating Pakistan and Afghanistan , including LeT, the Taliban , and al-Qaeda . With the alleged complicity of ISI in the Mumbai bombings, its support of terrorist and insurgent groups, and US, Afghan, and other Western concerns that Pakistan?s President Pervez Musharraf is not acting forcefully enough against Islamist militants in Pakistan, pressure will likely increase on Musharraf to crack down on both the militants and, to a more limited degree, ISI.
Further, as TRC has noted in recent weeks (July 26 WAR Report and August 9 WAR Report), that the indigenous SIMI group seems to have provided local assistance underscores the potential threat of homegrown terrorism or other political violence emerging from India?s Muslim communities, potentially, as in this case, in collaboration with external terrorist organizations.
India?s internal and external terrorism and insurgency threats?aggrieved and militant indigenous Muslim communities, Kashmiri militant incursions, and the growing Naxalite Maoist insurgency–will continue to pose a threat to India?s national security and ascendancy as a major global economic player.