by Firoze Hirjikaka

Created on: March 02, 2009   Last Updated: March 05, 2009

I am not normally a proponent of conspiracy theories, but something about the Mumbai terror attacks doesn't quite gel. Outwardly the facts of the case seem quite straightforward. LeT militants carried out a deadly attack against innocent civilians and prominent Mumbai institutions. Dastardly and inhuman as the attack was, there was nothing particularly unique about it except perhaps, in scale and method of execution. The LeT and other jihadi outfits have launched many attacks in the past. The purpose is to satisfy their warped ideology and to make a statement.

There is mounting evidence that the Mumbai attacks were actively coordinated by elements in the Pakistani army and their intelligence network, the ISI. If that be the case, what puzzles me is what their strategic objective was? The obvious intent was to spread terror and indiscriminately slaughter as many innocent civilians as possible, but that can be classified more as a tactical objective than a strategic one. All said and done, the Mumbai attacks did not achieve any tangible benefits for the Pakistanis, either in terms of inflicting significant damage to their old enemy, India, or in terms of gaining the approbation of Islamic allies. Not a single Muslim nation, including radical ones like Iran and Syria, has spoken out in support of the Pakistani attacks. Rather, 26/11 has become a major source of embarrassment for the Pakistani government and put it on the defensive.

From a strategic viewpoint, the terrorist operation was self-defeating, because it seemed to lack a well defined purpose. One theory holds that the Pakistani army hoped to provoke India into retaliating military, thereby giving them an excuse to withdraw many of their forces from the Afghan border where they never wanted to be in the first place and divert them to the border with India. But this was iffy, at best. A mature democracy like India does not rush to war impulsively.

If we discount the obvious as implausible, what are we left with? For example, the aim could not have been to aggravate communal tensions in India, because people of all religions, including fellow Muslims, were killed indiscriminately. Deadly as the attack was, the perpetrators and their handlers must have known that it would not cause and permanent damage to India's military or security capability; or to its economy.

On the contrary, the risks inherent in the operation far outweighed any transitory gains. Even assuming that the Pakistani army and the ISI had correctly

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