Author: Matthew Rosenberg
Publication: The Wall Street Journal
Date: February 12, 2009
URL: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123444626418577381.html
There's a report on the Mumbai attacks that
has been making the rounds in Pakistan, e-mailed between friends in the last
few weeks and occasionally ending up on the desk of one official or another.
Its title pretty much sums up its content: "Mumbai: Dance of the Devil;
Hindu Zionists, Mumbai Attacks and the Indian Dossier against Pakistan."
The dossier referred to in the title is a
packet of evidence the Indians handed over to Pakistan in early January. They,
along with the U.S. and its allies say it provides clear evidence linking
a Pakistani Islamic militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, to the Mumbai attacks.
It's an accusation that few outside Pakistan dispute.
Inside Pakistan, it's a different story, as
the "Dance of the Devil" shows. If you're wondering why it has taken
Pakistan so long to acknowledge that its people were the key players in the
Mumbai attack - as India and the U.S. have been saying from the outset and
Pakistani Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik said Thursday - the report
offers the start of an answer.
The gist of the 101-page report, prepared
by a hawkish security think tank, is that Hindu extremists working with Israeli
Mossad agents plotted and carried out the attacks. Their aim: destroy Pakistan
by sparking a fourth India-Pakistan war that would force Islamabad to pull
its forces away from the fight against the Taliban and al Qaeda on the border
with Afghanistan. That, in turn, would give the Americans an excuse to send
their forces from Afghanistan into Pakistan, and eventually dismember it and
take away its nuclear weapons at the behest of the Hindu radicals and Israeli
conspirators.
The report relies on a mix of circumstantial
evidence and fringe Indian writings and is easily dismissed, even by many
in Pakistan.
But the paranoid worldview it represents isn't,
and for every Pakistani that dismisses it there are plenty of others who don't.
You hear it from Pakistani officials, like the one who pulled out the report
during an interview and told me: "You should read it. It makes an interesting
case."
You hear it from ordinary people, like Mohammed
Khan, a 43-year-old shopkeeper in Islamabad. He hadn't read "Dance of
the Devil" but when asked about the Mumbai attacks, he didn't miss a
beat: "How come they always blame Pakistan. What about the Hindus? What
about the Jews?"
You hear it from officers in the powerful
Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency, elements of which Indian officials
allege played some part in the Mumbai attack, a charge Islamabad denies. One
ISI officer, in a conversation before the report began circulating, conveyed
pretty much the same theory and said that it was making the rounds among Pakistani
military officers and intelligence agents. He said he didn't believe it, but
that many of his colleagues did. "It tells you how some of us see the
world," he said.
Again, it's not to say that everyone believes
such theories, But you do hear them from a lot of people in a lot of different
quarters.
Consider the massive September truck bombing
that gutted Islamabad's Marriott Hotel. The Pakistani government says it was
the work of Islamic militants. But a recent poll by Washington-based International
Republican Institute found that while 7% of Pakistanis believed it was the
work of the Taliban or "terrorists," 13% thought the government
was behind it and 20% believed it was the work of the Americans. Half of those
polled said they were unsure.
Those who disbelieve the conspiracy theories
explain their prevalence partly as a function of Pakistan's creation in the
bloody partition of Britain's Indian colony, forever destined to be smaller
- and weaker - than India. From that point on, many in Pakistan have assumed
that India, if given the chance, would destroy Pakistan. Watching the U.S.
and Israel grow closer to India over the past few years has only added another
wrinkle for those who already fear Indian domination.
Take the ISI officer. He may not believe that
the U.S. and Israel are actively working to destroy Pakistan. But he does
believe both countries would gladly deprive Pakistan of its nuclear weapons,
and that India remains a mortal threat.
"You convince us differently and that
will solve a lot of differences," he said.
-Mr. Rosenberg is The Wall Street Journal's Pakistan correspondent.
- Write to Matthew Rosenberg at matthew.rosenberg@wsj.com
