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Another 26/11-Style Attack in the Offing: US Think-Tank (Mumbai Atack)
The Times of India ^ | 19 Apr 2009
Posted on April 18, 2009 6:39:18 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Pakistan-based terrorists are likely to launch another deadly Mumbai-style attack on India in the near future, says a US intelligence think-tank, Stratfor.
Coming on the heels of the Tokyo donors’ meeting which gave Pakistan some $5 billion, Stratfor concludes that these aid packages would have little effect in changing Pakistan’s behaviour vis-a-vis India.
“Yet the gradual unravelling of command and control within the Pakistani military establishment has enabled many more of Islamabad’s Islamist militant proxies operating in Pakistan and India to team up with transnational jihadists to carry out deadlier and more strategically targeted attacks,” it said.
“Though the timing is uncertain, India is likely to witness another large-scale...attack on its soil that will once again escalate cross-border tensions,” Stratfor warned.
India had refrained from taking a more militaristic response against Pakistan after the Mumbai attacks, which Stratfor had criticized, saying that a lack of response was far more dangerous than the threat of escalation, that was the argument India had given then. “New Delhi’s restraint arose from fears of destabilizing Pakistan further and granting the militants’ wish for a cross-border conflict to divert the Pakistani military’s attention from the Afghan-Pakistani border region toward India,” it said.
Stratfor believes that the UPA government was too soft, but that if the BJP comes to power there was a greater expectation of a stronger response to Pakistan. “India is more likely to deliver a forceful response to future attacks should the BJP emerge victorious in these elections,” it said.
Stratfor said India was watching fearfully as the jihadist insurgency in neighbouring Pakistan has spread to India’s doorstep in Pakistan’s Punjab province.
These attacks, Stratfor said, have revealed a trend in which the Kashmiri Islamist militant proxies, formerly controlled by Pakistan’s ISI, are now moving into the jihadist orbit under al-Qaeda and the Taliban to carry out more complex and deadly attacks.
“Since these are the same militants who traditionally have had their sights on India, it is very likely that India will witness another large-scale attack,” Stratfor said.
In a separate report, Stratfor has dismissed comparisons between the Manawan police training academy terror strike and the November 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.
The think-tank’s analysis said the two incidents should not be compared as the Mumbai attacks were significantly different from the one in Manawan. The buildings of the two luxury hotels taken under siege by the terrorists in Mumbai were far more complex in design and occupied a larger area than the training academy’s building in Manawan, the report said.
The Mumbai incident was intricate because it involved foreign citizens taken hostage at three different locations situated far away from each other.
“Pakistani authorities did not have to worry about international sensibilities or killing a foreign citizen with friendly fire,” it said.
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http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=22064
“Another Mumbai type attack on the cards, says US official”
Monday, May 11, 2009
News Desk
SNIPPET: “WASHINGTON: A top Obama aide has warned of another “Mumbai-style” terror attack on India by the jihadist “Frankenstein monster”.
Bruce Riedel, an administration aide and retired CIA expert, who helped formulate Obama’s Af-Pak policy, believes there is “serious risk” of another Mumbai-type terrorist attack so as to ratchet up tension between India and Pakistan and give Pakistan Army an excuse to maintain its forces on the western border.”