The Los Angeles Times in an early report repeated the insinuation: "Some of India’s 130 million Muslims are angry at perceived discrimination in housing and employment by the Hindu majority." The report quoted Sumit Ganguly, security advisor to the US government as saying: "It could be an entire range of organizations that have grievances against the Indian state and its growing closeness with the United States and the West.” John Bolton of the American Enterprise Institute, said very much the same: "Well, from the group that claims credit, it appears to be Islamic extremists, the Deccan Mujahideen, Deccan referring to the Deccan Plateau, the big triangle part of India that sticks out into the Indian Ocean. And they've clearly aimed this attack at the center of India's economic success, the financial capital. Many, many foreigner, investors and traders there designed, I think, to gain maximum international attention." Gareth Price of the prestigious think tank Chatham House, thought the perpetrators were indeed an Indian group: "By calling themselves the Deccan Mujahideen, the terrorists are clearly trying to stress their Indian-ness. The Deccan is the large plateau of Southern and Central India. They claim to be angry about the treatment of Muslims throughout India, and not just in Kashmir". He went on to add that the "attacks put the Indian government in a dilemma. It is clearly preferable for India to blame a foreign hand (implicitly or explicitly Pakistan) for such attacks than to accept that there are some Indian Muslims alienated enough to carry out such atrocities."

These voices were joined by some journalists, Indians included, who used the occasion to deplore the insecurity of the Indian Muslim community and suggested that the Mumbai outrage was the result of politico-religious discrimination. Well known commentator, Dilip Padgaonkar felt that the timings of the attack was significant coming as it did during a time when "Campaign rhetoric has polarized opinion along sharply antagonistic lines, essentially pitting the ruling Congress party, which swears by secularism, against the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party." He noted: "India's Muslims have begun to lose faith in the Indian state, its institutions and its instruments. This has led to the radicalization of Muslim youths. Religious extremism has pushed them onto the path of violence." In a guest column in The Washington Post, Shuja Nawaz, a Pakistani political analyst and the author of Crossed Swords: Pakistan, its Army, and the Wars Within, pontificated: "Indian Muslims have not been able to benefit from the development and explosive growth of India's economy in recent years. Economic and political deprivation may have spawned the Indian Mujahideen movement and its offshoot, the Students Islamic Movement of India." Such analyses were unfortunately neither appropriate nor relevant in the current context.

By the time, the protracted terrorist crisis was after 59 hours, whatever evidence existed pointed explicitly towards Pakistan, its military establishment and so-called non-state actors like the Lashkar-e-Taiba. So, why the haste in trying to absolve Pakistan and blame India for the carnage? The answer lies in regional geo-politics. The attacks strike at the core of US policy towards this region, which is focussed on the fight against the Taliban and al Qaida in Afghanistan. The aim of the foreign policy establishment in Washington is to bring about a rapproachment between India and Pakistan, to enable the latter to exclusively focus on eradicating Islamists along its Western borders. India had massed troops along the Line of Control (LoC) after the 2001 terrorist attack on Parliament and forced Pakistan to spend money, time and energy to keep up its military preparedness along its eastern borders.

The Indian government in recent years, however, had gone along with US plans and significantly improved relations with its neighbour through a series of Confidence Building Measures (CBMs), trade concessions and opening up of Kashmir's borders. This despite the knowledge that an influential section of the Pakistani military establishment continued to foster plans to de-stabilise India. The United States, in return for Indian support, had assured India that it would control the anti-Indian elements within Pakistan. But this does not seem to have worked.

The clearest enunciation of the problem was by India expert Ashley Tellis of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: "What the administration is trying to do now is to influence the Pakistanis to finally bring these guys under control, while working to convince the Indians that the commitment to working with the Pakistanis is credible." Tellis, who served as senior advsior at the US Embassy in New Delhi for some years, pointed out that the United States has "made a series of such commitments to India going back to 2001, and simply could not or would not deliver...The Indians are now asking why it is they should believe the administration when it says it's going to redouble those efforts." The latest outrage in Mumbai clearly threatens to wreck the US strategy for South Asia with the Indian establishment clearly pointing to Pakistani complicity.

Anxiety over future of the Indian commitment compelled US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, to travel to India immediately after the Mumbai carnage. In New Delhi she said "I have said that Pakistan needs to act with resolve and urgency and cooperate fully and transparently. That message has been delivered and will be delivered to Pakistan. But it is a time when cooperation between all peoples who suffer these terrorist attacks really is required and is necessary. I will shortly speak with a number of members of the Indian leadership. I am looking forward to those conversations to review whatever we can do in terms of cooperation, in terms of shared experience about how one deals with this kind of attack and what you can do going forward."Later, she said in an interview that "I think there's no doubt that Pakistani territory was used, by probably non-state actors", adding "I don't think that there is compelling evidence of involvement of Pakistani officials. But I do think that Pakistan has a responsibility to act, and it doesn't matter that they're non-state actors" she added. 

Though she denied having given Islamabad a 48-hour deadline within which to act, Rice must have delivered a tough ultimatum to Pakistan's military establishment. The message that went across was that the future of US-Pakistan relations was at stake. Islamabad had to show something to the Indians. Deliberate leaks by US intelligence officials to leading US newspapers, suggested that Washington was aware of the Pakistan military's complicity in the Mumbai terrorist attacks. The result was the raid on the PoK (Pakistan Occupied Kashmir) offices of the Lashkar-e-Taiba where Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, the Lashkar commander suspected of having masterminded the Mumbai attack, was alleged to have been apprehended along with  about 20 others. This raid on the Lashkar is a huge step by the Pakistani government. For, it would have demonstrated that the Pakistani military establishment is not capable of protecting its in-house jehadis. But this is probably the most Islamabad will and can do in the present circumstances.

Moreover, there are limits to the extent Washington will lean on Islamabad and its powerful military establishment. It is estimated that close to 100,000 Pakistani troops are involved in battling the Tehrik-e-Taliban, the al Qaida and other radical Islamist militant outfits in the FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) areas adjoining Afghanistan. Afghanistan has become a high stakes game for the US with more than 32,000 troops involved there. The Taliban's successes in Afghanistan have only been growing and could become an even bigger problem if the Pakistani military lets up. The Pakistani establishment is aware of the US dilemma and is likely to play Washington to the maximum extent possible.

President-elect Barack Obama too views the whole episode within the prism of US strategic interests. He said on 7 December that it was important to calm tensions between India and Pakistan because the United States needed Pakistan's help in fighting militants in neighbouring Afghanistan. "We can't solve Afghanistan without solving Pakistan. We are going to have to make sure that India and Pakistan are normalizing their relationship if we are going to be effective in some of other these areas," Obama told NBC. His advisers have also urged him to intervene in Kashmir in order to remove any Pakistani motive to continue supporting terrorists.

The Indian establishment is going to increasingly question Washington's ability to control Pakistan. While New Delhi has shown exemplary restraint in the face of domestic outrage, this might not be possible in the future. War might not be a reasonable option but there are other means to coerce Pakistan. Recently, for instance the IMF approved a US $ 7.6 billion loan for Pakistan. More money has been pledged. This eases financial pressure on the Pakistani military establishment, which continues to upgrade and maintain its forces. Washington cannot afford a Pakistani meltdown, at the same time it must curb the military establishment while simultaneously seeking its assistance along the Afghan borders. The Pakistanis clearly will bargain hard and so must New Delhi if it is to protect its vital interests.

[This article was written for the New Delhi based magazine Caravan]