Public anger in India is growing in the aftermath of last week's terrorist attacks on Mumbai. Top officials are resigning and tensions with Pakistan are on the rise. German commentators warn that the last thing the world needs is a new crisis in South Asia.
The initial grief and shock at the terrible events in Mumbai last week is giving way to anger. Indians are beginning to ask why their politicians and security forces were incapable of protecting them from the terror
Heads are beginning to roll in the Indian political establishment as the recriminations mount. At the same time tensions are rising between the government in New Delhi and Pakistan, particularly as the interrogation of the only surviving gunman indicates that the militants who laid siege to Mumbai for three days had come from Pakistan.
On Monday investigators said that the captured man, Ajmal Qasab, had told them that he undertook training in Pakistan at a camp run by Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant group with links to Kashmir. He was among at least 10 men who paralyzed the city of Mumbai beginning last Wednesday, attacking targets that were known to be frequented by foreign tourists, including two luxury hotels. The terrorist attack left at least 172 dead and 239 wounded and revealed the weakness of India's security apparatus.
India's Home Affairs Minister Shivraj Patil stepped down on Sunday as Indians took to the streets to protest against the government. On Monday the top official in the state of Maharashtra, Vilasrao Deshmukh, offered to resign. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has promised to beef up maritime and air security and is to hold cross-party talks on the establishment of a new federal investigative agency.
Meanwhile the specter of relations further deteriorating between Pakistan and India has the international community worried. Although New Delhi has held back from accusing the government in Islamabad of being directly responsible, analysts say the involvement of Pakistan's military intelligence agency ISI cannot be ruled out, particularly if Lashkar-e-Taiba proves to be behind the events. The group is regarded as a creation of the ISI, set up to help fight India in disputed Kashmir. The group was blamed for the attack on the Indian parliament in 2001, an incident that brought the two nuclear-armed states to the brink of war.
The attacks in Mumbai.
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The attacks in Mumbai.
Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari has appealed to India not to punish his country for the attacks. "Even if the militants are linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba, who do you think we are fighting?" he said in an interview with the Financial Times published on Monday. Officials in Islamabad have warned that any worsening of relations with India could force Pakistan to move troops to the Indian border and away from the volatile Afghan border, where it is engaged in the US-led campaign against Islamist militants.
On Monday the United States said that it expected Pakistan to cooperate fully in any investigation into the terrorist rampage. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is to travel to India later this week, said: "I don’t want to jump to any conclusions myself on this, but I do think that this is a time for complete, absolute, total transparency and cooperation and that's what we expect."
German commentators voiced their concern on Monday about the prospects of an escalation in tensions between India and Pakistan and many are scathing of India's weak security regime.
The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:
"Perhaps the attackers were sent from (Pakistan) to Mumbai. However, it is well known that the government in Islamabad does not have any control over parts of the country. And is also well known that the army and, in particular, the ISI intelligence agency operates partly on its own account. President Zardari and the government in Islamabad have no understandable reason to want to jeopardize relations with India, just as efforts to calm the tensions in Kashmir are finally showing some success. The economically languishing Pakistan, on the contrary, has an interest in improving its relations with India, in order to profit from that country's growth."
"A new crisis between India and Pakistan would also be a disaster for the West. Both states are needed to regain control over the situation in Afghanistan. And the government in New Delhi cannot afford a crisis, even if a dispute with archenemy Pakistan is part of the usual election campaign arsenal. The consequences of the global financial and economic crisis have also reached India."
The conservative Die Welt writes:
"This year … India became the most important target of the international jihad. Terrorists learn quickly, they are flexible in their choice of victims. If the West arms itself better, then they look for softer targets. And where can they cause more mayhem than in a country with 150 million Muslims and a festering problem with its minorities, that is still in conflict with nuclear-armed Pakistan?"
"The country has now received its wake-up call and has to improve its security. The federally organized state needs a centralized anti-terror institution with clear responsibilities and an intelligence information pool that local authorities can also access. This attack has shown yet again that once the terrorists are in a hotel, a train station -- or here in our Christmas markets -- then it is already far too late. Survival depends on good early detection by intelligence agencies."
The business daily Handelsblatt reports:
"Delhi's political establishment has to resist the temptation to use the scapegoat of Pakistan to deflect from its own failures. One thing is right: India's neighbor is home to the control center of the global jihad and has to take tougher measures against Islamists and their sympathizers."
"However, India like the West has to realize that the fight against cross-border terrorism can only be won with Pakistan. … (President Zardari) has promised to help fight the common threat posed by terrorism. Delhi should take him at his word. If the leadership buries the promising peace process then the terrorists' calculations will have borne fruit: Pakistan would be deflected from the fight against the Taliban and al-Qaida and in the upsurge of nationalism the extremists could easily mutate from criminals into heroes."
The Financial Times Deutschland writes:
"The Pakistani government has made it clear that, unlike in the past, it wants to reduce militant Islamists' room for maneuver in the country."
"As great as the fear is that there will be new escalation in South Asia, in fact India and Pakistan have common interests in the fight against terrorism. It is important, not only for Delhi, but also for Pakistan, that those behind the attack on Mumbai are identified quickly, particularly if the Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist group, which operates from Pakistan and has close ties to the ISI, really played a role."
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"The governments in both states will want to do everything to stop the calls for revenge growing louder on the streets, something that could lead to the simmering Kashmir conflict developing its own dangerous dynamic. Neither India nor Pakistan can have any interest in seeing Kashmir develop into another battlefield on the map of the global jihad."
The left-leaning Die Tageszeitung writes:
"Although (India) has repeatedly been the target of terror attacks, its political class has continued to sun itself in the glow of the impressive economic growth, while nourishing ambitions of superpower status. They ignored the fact that more influence in the world does not come without more responsibility and greater risks. And India's security apparatus has completely failed. India has to finally reform itself politically and take measures against terrorism -- and its causes. That includes getting politicians and the justice system to investigate and severely punish acts of violence committed by Hindus. The politicians who foment hate between uneducated voters are playing right into the hands of terrorists."
"If India does not act with a cool head now it will not only endanger its identity as a multi-ethnic and multi-religious state. It risks becoming dragged into the vortex of Islamism. This is not only threatening the existence of Pakistan, but peace in whole of South Asia."
-- Siobhán Dowling, 1:30 p.m. CET
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