According to a report by the BBC, the United States warned the Indian government of a potential threat one month before the Mumbai attacks. Further, Mike McConnel, The Director of National Intelligence is implying that the US suspects the attackers were members of the Kashmiri based group Lashkar-e-Toiba, which Indian authorities believe to be responsible. Lashkar-e-Toiba denied involvement while the attacks were still occurring.

According to the BBC, the Associated Press was told that the US had warned India about a potential operation targeting some of the locations ultimately struck during the attack and that those responsible would most likely enter the country by sea. Indian authorities are also now claiming that on November 18th they intercepted a satellite phone message tipping them off to a seaborne attack on the city.

US speculation will most certainly add fuel to an already substantial fire in India regarding Pakistani culpability, as tension between the two countries increases.

I’m not going to bother really speculating about what happened in Mumbai. To many it will be viewed as an al-Qaeda plot, to others an operation undertaken by the Kashmiri group Lashkar-e-Taiba. While aspects of it appear to reveal significant training and preparation on the part of those responsible, something that I have even asserted, a question has to be asked, one that I had not asked myself until this morning – has all the speculation floating around done more to define the intentions of the attackers than their true intentions?

The Telegraph is reporting today that the only surviving member of the group behind the attacks, which is now in Indian custody, is believed to have joined Lashkar-e-Taiba a year ago and that he received training at a camp in Pakistani governed Kashmir where the plot was hatched. That, of course, would rule out al-Qaeda and place the emphasis on the ongoing Kashmiri conflict that has raged on and off between India and Pakistan since 1947. Then again, Lashkar-e-Taiba released a statement almost immediately denying any responsibility. Depending on the severity of the interrogation techniques being used by the Indians on the 19-year-old in custody, he could be copping to the Kennedy assassination for all we know. The Indians have already taken the position that Pakistan was the group’s point of origin, so ensuring that outcome might be something that they’re not willing to abandon at this point, despite the reaction of the Pakistani government, no matter what the boy in custody says – which, of course, we’ll never actually be privy to.

That said, Paul Cornish, the Chairman of Chatham House’s International Security Programme, has written an interesting article on the BBC’s website entitled The age of ‘celebrity terrorism’, in which he makes some interesting points. An excerpt…

“But, for all the horror of the Mumbai attack, there might have been much less to it than first met the eye, and a hasty and exaggerated response might have played more of a part, and given more meaning to the attack than it should.

Nobody appears to have heard of the Deccan Mujahideen - perhaps because they have never existed.

Perhaps it was not so difficult after all to plan and execute this attack: small arms and hand grenades are not hard to find, boats are scarcely specialised equipment, and Mumbai is a vast, open city with more than enough soft targets.

Perhaps we do not know enough about where the perpetrators are from, because they could have come from almost anywhere?

The terrorists were willing to show their faces on CCTV. Was this suicide for martyrdom - as in New York and Washington in 2001, and London in 2005 - or suicide for celebrity, as in Columbine in 1999 and Virginia Tech in 2007?

And perhaps so little is known of the terrorists’ cause, because they simply did not feel the need to have one.

The attack in Mumbai was obviously planned - but “military-style planning” (whatever that means) is probably not necessary for the mass murder of unarmed and unsuspecting civilians going about their business in crowded railway stations and restaurants.

This could also have been a plan which had a large gap where mission, cause or vision statement ought to have been.

But no matter. The terrorists might have assumed, quite correctly as it happens, that the world’s media and the terrorism analysis industry would very quickly fill in any gaps for them.”

The headline reads Pakistan Fires On Nato Aircraft. Of course, that’s a bit of a stretch. The helicopters that were engaged by Pakistani forces today were American, and it’s not as if the United States hasn’t made its intentions clear with regards to conducting cross-border military incursions despite repeated warnings by the Pakistanis.

The incident occurred along what is known as the Durand line, a stretch of disputed territory that both Pakistan and Afghanistan claim as their own. Of course, that doesn’t alter the fact that the helicopters flew over a Pakistani military position – and given what has occurred over the last few weeks one has to seriously wonder why that was done?

The first word that pops into my head is ‘provocation’, and that’s precisely what this incident looks to be – an orchestrated attempt at provoking the Pakistanis in an area where the border is disputed. While the Pakistani military has claimed that warning shots were fired at the helicopters, President Asif Ali Zardari contradicted the statement, claiming that only flares were fired. The latter, in my opinion, is a political attempt to downplay the severity of the incident.

It should not be forgotten that the United States has denied that the Predator Drone that went down in South Waziristan yesterday was, in fact, a Predator Drone. Of course, the wreckage of the drone has been recovered and there’s no questioning what it is. US military officials did, however, claim that they had ‘lost’ a drone due to a malfunction, but that it was immediately recovered by the US military in Paktika Province and that it was nowhere near the Pakistani border.

This whole game of cat and mouse is becoming quite serious, and it looks as though American intentions are to goad the Pakistanis into helping create an international incident in which US lives are lost. Of course, the fact that Pakistan’s sovereignty will have been violated will be of little consequence by then. Were such an incident to occur, US domestic support for incursions into the region would gain traction, not to mention support for the 11th hour policy that Bush Administration has manufactured.

It’s happened twice in recent days – two US incursions into the Pakistani Province of Waziristan, both denied by the United States. The first involved two US helicopters that were, according to Pakistani sources, fired upon, and which returned to Afghan airspace without returning fire. The second incident involved a US drone that reportedly crashed in Southern Waziristan yesterday according to the Pakistani media.

Despite the recent attack on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, the Pakistani government’s position regarding the sanctity of its sovereignty remains unaltered – Pakistani forces will use force to repel operations by foreign militaries emanating from Afghanistan. While the attentions of many in the United States, and elsewhere, are focused on the current economic crisis, the potentially catastrophic game that is being played by the Bush Administration has been flying under the radar.

As Robert Baer, a former CIA field officer, pointed out in a recently article for Time…

“As Wall Street collapsed with a bang, almost no one noticed that we’re on the brink of war with Pakistan. And, unfortunately, that’s not too much of an exaggeration. On Tuesday, the Pakistan’s military ordered its forces along the Afghan border to repulse all future American military incursions into Pakistan. The story has been subsequently downplayed, and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mike Mullen, flew to Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, to try to ease tensions. But the fact remains that American forces have and are violating Pakistani sovereignty.

You have to wonder whether the Bush administration understands what it is getting into. In case anyone has forgotten, Pakistan has a hundred plus nuclear weapons. It’s a country on the edge of civil war. Its political leadership is bitterly divided. In other words, it’s the perfect recipe for a catastrophe.”

[…]

“U.S. forces have been entering Pakistan for the last six years. But it was always very quietly, usually no more than a hundred yards in, and usually to meet a friendly tribal chieftain. Pakistan knew about these crossings, but it turned a blind eye because it was never splashed across the front page of the country’s newspapers. This has all changed in the last month, as the Administration stepped up Predator missile attacks. And then, after the New York Times ran an article that U.S. forces were officially given the go-ahead to enter Pakistan without prior Pakistani permission, Pakistan had no choice but to react.

On another level the Bush Administration’s decision to step up attacks in Pakistan is fatally reckless, because the cross-border operations’ chances of capturing or killing al Qaeda’s leadership are slim. American intelligence isn’t good enough for precision raids like this. Pakistan’s tribal regions are a black hole that even Pakistani operatives can’t enter and come back alive. Overhead surveillance and intercepts do little good in tracking down people in a backward, rural part of the world like this.

On top of it, is al-Qaeda worth the candle? Yes, some deadender in New York or London could blow himself up in the subway and leave behind a video claiming the attack in the name of al-Qaeda. But our going into Pakistan, risking a full-fledged war with a nuclear power, isn’t going to stop him.”

What has shocked me more than anything is the fact that reports of a three-phase plan, approved at the highest level of government, have gone completely overlooked. According to an article published by NPR on the 13th of this month, President Bush himself gave the green light to the plan, which includes the use of Predator Drones and US Special Operations Forces to strike targets within Pakistan. One of the first actions taken under this new strategy was a raid by US Navy Seals in which civilians were killed. Further, it has been reported that CIA personnel from various parts of the world are being deployed along the Afghan-Pakistan frontier in an attempt to produce an ‘intelligence surge’ to aid in the selection of cross-border targets.

In the end, the reality, as Baer pointed out, is that the United States is willfully ignoring the sovereignty of Pakistan. Given that, it is empowering both the Pakistani military and local militants to support an aligned cause – the repulsion of foreign military incursions.

Given that President Bush has mere months left in office, the risk of sparking something disastrous is only bolstered by his administration’s repeatedly proven track record of outright stupidity. And while the condemnation of Iran continues to attract more international attention, the fact that the United States is goading a nuclear power is certainly something that should not be excused as Republican political necessity with regards to making an 11th hour attempt to kill or capture high level al-Qaeda figures to feebly justify the administration’s mistakes.

Wanting to get some accurate information about the possible motivation behind the recent bombing in Islamabad, I contacted Shaan Akbar, author of The Insider Brief. Shaan’s taken a bit of a sabbatical from blogging, but he did offer some insights via email, which are below…

“- It’s very difficult to get through the security cordon that covers that enclave in Islamabad. Each car is checked, including its underbody. I doubt there would be a “security lapse” involving a truck; passenger car, maybe, but not a truck. It was let through.

- I’m under the impression that once you get through the security cordon, it’s relatively easy to move around and security arrangements at important buildings is equal. If the attack was perpetrated by terrorists, there were far higher value targets in the surrounding vicinity (e.g. the Prime Minister’s residence, the Chief Justice’s residence, Parliament, etc.). I’m working on getting the particulars of security arrangements to validate my reasoning.

- From what my sources tell me, President Asif Zardari had an ongoing dispute with the owner of the Marriott over a business deal gone awry in Houston. Zardari is widely believed to have been the one who coordinated the murders of Bhutto’s brothers (at her behest) and allegations persist that he was behind his wife’s death. I wouldn’t put it past him to use the Intelligence Bureau (under the Interior Ministry) to handle feuds.

- We haven’t seen attacks of this scale in Lahore, Rawalpindi (Army GHQ), Quetta, Peshawar, or even Karachi (barring when Benazir Bhutto returned after 8 years of exile). The dearth of attacks in Lahore is especially telling for me. Lahore is Pakistan’s second most populous city with far less security. If terrorists are looking for high body counts and softer targets, they can go to Lahore — but they don’t. Coincidentally, the stretch between Lahore / Rawalpindi is home to Pakistan’s ruling elite (military/bureaucratic).

- The blast was massive — 1,100 lbs of explosive! How do you acquire such a large amount of ordinance and get it into Islamabad without some serious assistance?

- I can tell you that family members of senior generals were in the Marriott at the time of the bombing. The military or ISI (staffed by rotating Army officers) or Military Intelligence (MI) would not be behind this.

I won’t rule out foreign hands in the attack either. The Indians could have been retaliating for what they may perceive as Pakistani involvement in the recent Delhi bombings. The US also could have used the bombing as a means of galvanizing Pakistan’s leadership into action against terrorists.

I’ll keep you posted if anything comes up. Hope this helps.”

Shaan Akbar is a financial analyst based in New York. He is joined on his website by contributing authors Lt. Gen. Shahid Aziz, a retired general of the Pakistan Army and former Chairman of the National Accountability Bureau, and Ali Madison.

Forty people have been killed, and some one hundred wounded, after a truck exploded in front of the Marriott Hotel in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. The power of the blast was significant, producing a 20ft crater and destroying the front of the hotel, the remaining section of which authorities fear could collapse. The significance of the Marriott as a target should not be overlooked. It is the most prestigious hotel in the capital and regularly frequently by foreigners.

Given what is occurring along the Waziristan frontier with regards to cross-border US military operations, the bombing of the Marriott could very well constitute blowback. Of course, many don’t like events of this nature being framed as such. It’s much easier to view them simply as the acts of madmen – and of course there is truth to that. But the timing, given the mounting tensions between the Pakistani military and the United States, should not be discounted.

Though we will probably never know, one has to wonder who was in the hotel at the time that may have represented a target.

Today is the 15th of September, which means two things. First, it’s my little brother’s 36th birthday. Second, George Walker Bush has 126 days left in office to wreak as much havoc as possible.

The White House’s primary focus will be on the Waziristan region of Pakistan, where US Special Forces and the US Air Force have been given a green light to unilaterally strike targets of opportunity in a three stage operation that also involves pulling CIA assets from around the world into the region…

“NPR has learned that the raid by helicopter-borne U.S. Special Operations forces in Pakistan last week was not an isolated incident but part of a three-phase plan, approved by President Bush, to strike at Osama bin Laden and top al-Qaida leadership.

The plan calls for a much more aggressive military campaign, said one source, familiar with the presidential order, which gives the green light for the military to take part in the operations. The plan represents an 11th-hour effort to hammer al-Qaida until the Bush administration leaves office, two government officials told NPR.

“Definitely, the gloves have come off,” said a source who has been briefed on the plan. “This was only Phase 1 of three phases.”

Pentagon and White House officials have declined to discuss the new plan.

The intelligence community already had approval from the president to carry out operations inside Pakistan, which included attacks by Predator drones, which can carry 100-pound Hellfire missiles.

Additional authority came from the president just recently that allowed incursions by U.S. Special Operations forces, the source said.”

The government of Pakistan, along with its military leadership, has warned the United States that it will employ force against US forces that enter the country to conduct military operations. This morning there have been unconfirmed reports that US helicopters were fired on by elements of the Pakistani military and armed tribesmen near Angor Adda.

There seems to be little doubt that the United States is going to ignore Pakistani sovereignty and conduct cross-border military operations on militants in Waziristan despite warnings from the US intelligence community. In response, NATO leadership in Afghanistan has released a statement reiterating that its mandate ends at the Afghan border and that NATO forces in Afghanistan will not participate in US-led ground or air incursions across the border.

Meanwhile, in response to unauthorized foreign military incursions into Pakistan, the Pakistani military has been ordered to retaliate against any action taken by foreign forces inside the country, a directive issued directly from Pakistan’s top military echelon.

There is little question that US cross-border operations are being undertaken primarily for domestic political purposes. Given the stagnant state of affairs in Afghanistan, a show of US military ‘progress’ is vital this election season, which has most likely prompted the White House to authorize an increase in cross-border operations without the consent of the Pakistani government. The question now becomes whether Pakistani forces will find themselves engaging US forces that have crossed the frontier before November 4th and the ramifications that such an incident would have.

As it stands now, Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff, General Kayani, has announced that foreign military incursions into Pakistan will not be tolerated, a position that is currently being supported by Prime Minister Raza Gilani.

For the sake of political gravitas at home, the United States is playing a very dangerous game that could very well result in alienating the Pakistanis completely.

There is absolutely no questioning the fact that Waziristan is a region rife with support networks and training grounds for guerrillas that ultimately operate against foreign forces along the Afghan frontier. It is also certainly not a stretch to say that elements within the Pakistani military infrastructure don’t merely ‘tolerate’ them but aid them. The ISI, for example, has a significant history of aiding the Taliban.

That said; the BBC has learned that President Bush has, within the last two months, personally authorized US military incursions into Pakistan to confront guerrillas without first obtaining the approval of the Pakistani government. While the attacks have been primarily carried out by air, ten days ago US troops crossed the Pakistani frontier to carry out a ground assault in violation of Pakistani sovereignty.

While some might cheer such bravado, Bush’s failure to obtain the approval of Islamabad was, in truth, a mistake. The US ambassador to Pakistan may have been summoned after news of the ground assault reached the capital and politically admonished for it, but the reality remains that the Pakistani government isn’t actually in control of the country, and that is something that Washington is aware of.

Unfortunately, to believe Pakistan’s ‘ghost government’ stupid enough not to realize that the US has worked diligently to split their attentions by stirring things up in Kashmir and aiding in India’s nuclear development, is a stretch. Such actions are precisely why the likes of the ISI continue to allow militants in Waziristan to operate freely, because they represent both a deterrent against their own destabilization and a proxy force used to ensure Pakistani influence in the region. In fact, even the now sainted Benazir Bhutto used the Taliban for the latter.

As Dexter Filkins wrote not too long ago in New York Times Magazine…

“So here was Namdar — Taliban chieftain, enforcer of Islamic law, usurper of the Pakistani government and trainer and facilitator of suicide bombers in Afghanistan — sitting at home, not three miles from Peshawar, untouched by the Pakistani military operation that was supposedly unfolding around us.

What’s going on? I asked the warlord. Why aren’t they coming for you?

“I cannot lie to you,” Namdar said, smiling at last. “The army comes in, and they fire at empty buildings. It is a drama — it is just to entertain.”

Entertain whom? I asked.

“America,” he said.”

Pakistan is not Iraq. Not only is it a nuclear power, but a nation with considerable covert and overt military experience. That said, it is important to remember that Mr. Bush will be leaving office this winter. Therefore, the likely blowback that the provocation of the Pakistani military establishment will produce will not be his problem, and that is a very dangerous reality given the fact that he still has over three months left in White House.

Musharaff’s resignation is being hailed as victory for Pakistani democracy, with many relieved that there will not be a protracted impeachment battle.

Despite Musharaff’s attempts at appearing to support democratic reform of late, the reality is that he is a man that seized power in 1999 when Pakistan’s military establishment deposed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in a coup. That being the case, and given the power of that military establishment, I am not at all surprised that he has resigned without incident. In fact, I’ll go one better and dare to suggest that pressure to do so came from the military establishment itself.

Musharaff was a figurehead for the military establishment, one that can no longer afford the attentions garnered by having a direct connection to a political leader. Thus, sacrificing him provides them more room to maneuver, even though the outward appearance of democratic progress is being portrayed. As far as their silent grip on the nation is concerned, Musharraf’s resignation only stands to maintain it.

In the end he will most likely leave the country for Saudi Arabia. More on that later.