US expert blames Pak

A very senior visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has said that a Pakistani and not a Kashmiri militant group or groups was behind Tuesday’s serial bomb blasts in Mumbai that claimed the lives of nearly 200 persons and maimed over 700.

In an exclusive interview with ANI, Frederic Grare said the tragedy of the blasts notwithstanding, India and Pakistan must not allow the blasts to have an impact on the ongoing composite dialogue process aimed at normalising relations between the two countries.

“Very frankly, I very much doubt this is a Kashmiri group which has carried out that kind of operation. Because the Lashkar-e-Toiba is not a Kashmiri group. It’s a Pakistani group with international connections. It is not sure that this is them, and I don’t see any of the Kashmiri outfits so far being able to carry out that kind of an operation with that kind of degree of sophistication that we have observed,” said Grare.

Referring to a Washington Times editorial that opined that in all likelihood a Kashmiri Islamist terrorist organisation with ties to international terrorism, but with its own brand of militancy, was mimicking the Al Qaida in the timing and method of attack, Grare told ANI that establishing a link between the blasts and connecting it to the elections in Pakistan-administered Kashmir just made no sense.

“So, linking that to the election in Kashmir makes no sense, I don’t see the rationale, maybe someone else would, but I don’t. You can just as well link it to the anniversary one year ago of the London bombing. You can link it to whatever you want to, you can also link it to the Madrid bombing, so on and so forth, I mean, I don’t see any particular reason for this date,” Grare said.

“I think that it is very premature to say anything and the only conclusion that I would jump to is the one that has been followed by the Indian government, which has shown remarkable restraint so far, trying to navigate between two risks, one is to provoke the resumption of some kind of communal violence, the other one is to go into another escalation that could jeopardise the peace process. And I think that so far, the attitude has been just fine. Until we know more about it, I think it would be a mistake to point fingers at anybody,” he said.

While many have been stunned by the destruction and the death toll, and noted the coincidence of the date, he sees much more meaning in the size of the disaster.

“The size says something. The size says that this is a well organised outfit, with big means. The timing, as I said, doesn’t tell me anything, unless you want to link it to London, whatever. So more expert people than I am would perhaps give you another answer. But, size yes, it means it give this is definitely a big and well-organised organisation, with possibly international connections, including India, and I think we can perhaps forget a little too much the purely Indian dimension of that. But the timing, I think, it is not really relevant to the story so far,” he says.

Grare cautions that no one should rule out that this act of terrorism was homegrown.

“Just as we cannot exclude the possibility that an international group and a local group, they have acted in connection, for eventually different objectives, but this is a possibility that we cannot neglect.”

Grare is convinced that if Pakistan or a Pakistani-based group were to be blamed, the peace process over Kashmir could be affected.

“If Pakistan were behind it, yes then, there would be something to be done. I mean, you can’t continue to talk peace on one side and have a terrorist attack on your territory. I mean, this is unacceptable from every point of view, from a human point of view, from a credibility point of view on your own soil,” he said. — ANI