Author: Celia W. Dugger
Publication: New York Times
Date: September 24, 2001
Victims of '93 Bombay Terror Wary
of U.S. Motives
BOMBAY, This city, the financial
capital of the world's most populous democracy, knows the sudden horror
of a terrorist attack that seems to come from nowhere.
If any place should rejoice in America's
declaration of war on terrorism, it would seem to be Bombay, a city that
has suffered its effects firsthand and where many people have deep ties
to the United States.
Yet there is also wariness here
of America's motives in announcing that every country must either stand
with or against the United States as it goes after terrorists and the states
that harbor them.
India has accused Pakistani intelligence
agents of sponsoring the bombings in Bombay in 1993, a contention Pakistan
has always denied. But to get at America's No. 1 suspect, Osama bin Laden,
the United States is working with Pakistan, which many Indians regard as
the principal incubator of terrorism directed against them.
Some Indians think that despite
its righteous call to arms, the world's sole superpower is mainly interested
in fighting the terrorists who struck it, not the ones who hit them.
"What happened to the United States
is deadly and sad," said Gaurav Sanghvi, who was a 22-year- old broker
in the stock exchange building on the day of the blasts in 1993. "They
keep talking about a war on terrorism, but they keep asking Pakistan to
help, and Pakistan supports terrorism."
Now, when relations between India
and America have been improving, the United States faces a delicate diplomatic
challenge to sustain Pakistan's support for American military strikes into
neighboring Afghanistan while not alienating India.
The Indian government says it supports
America in its hour of need, but the strains of America's cooperation with
Pakistan are showing. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said in an interview
with The Times of India on Thursday that Washington had not yet shown that
"it was in a mood to focus on India's bitter experience of terrorism on
its own soil."
India would eventually like the
United States to put pressure on Pakistan to return those accused of carrying
out the Bombay blasts. Muslim gangsters from Bombay's underworld who India
says now live in Karachi.
And to crack down on the Islamic
religious schools and training camps in Pakistan that India believes breed
terrorists. But none of that is happening, at least not now. Indian officials
say no such request has been made to the United States at this point.
India wakes with numbing regularity
to headlines that announce the latest slaughter of innocents in the Indian-controlled
part of Kashmir, most recently of beheaded Hindu priests and murdered shepherds.
India blames the killings on Islamic fundamentalist groups in the territory
that it says are supported by Pakistan. Pakistan denies it.
The Indian authorities have built
a detailed circumstantial case laid out in yellowing confidential documents
that they say prove that Pakistan was behind the Bombay attacks.
When Pakistan's military ruler,
Gen. Pervez Musharraf, visited India in July, India's home minister, L.
K. Advani, raised the issue and the need for an extradition treaty so that
the accused, Dawood Ibrahim, could be returned to India to face justice.
The general denied that Mr. Ibrahim
was in Pakistan, but earlier this month Newsline, a reputable Pakistani
magazine, reported that the main suspects charged in the Bombay blasts
were living in Karachi "under fake names and ID's, and provided protection
by government agencies."
"It's only when the police commissioner's
house is robbed that strict action is taken," said Rakesh Jhun jhunwala,
an investor who was on the trading floor when the bomb exploded on March
12, 1993.
American State Department reports
annually chastise India for human rights abuses in Kashmir, but leading
American politicians are now demanding that the C.I.A. again be empowered
to hire shady operatives with violent pasts and to assassinate evildoers.
"Generally the feeling here is that
whenever there's a bomb blast, India is asked, `Where is the proof Pakistan
is involved?' " said Deena Mehta, a stockbroker. "Now that it's happened
in America's own backyard, they're not asking for proof. They're just announcing
that the finger points at Afghanistan and planning to attack."
