The testimony in a Chicago court of David Coleman Headley, the former Dawood Gilani, against Tahawwur Rana, his co-accused in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, provides us with rich details of the links between the Inter-Services Intelligence, the spy branch of the Pakistani military, and the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba terrorist outfit in planning and executing 26/11.
Headley played the advance scout for this mission, and used his schoolfriend Rana’s immigration business as a cover to visit Mumbai often. When he was pulled in by the American security agencies, he turned approver in return for a lighter sentence, and is now providing evidence in the trial against Rana, once his roommate at a well-known Pakistani military residential school. The other object of note in Headley’s testimony — which ended after two days on Tuesday — is the plan he has revealed to assassinate Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray. Fortunately that did not materialise or the Mumbai region might have been turned into a tinderbox with Hindu-Muslim communalism touching fever pitch. That would have delighted both the LeT and its ISI patrons.
Headley’s evidence is compelling. Email exchanges between him and ISI and LeT operatives have been presented to the court. But it is early days yet, and in the end it is up to the jury. But by offering Headley as the star witness in the Rana trial, the prosecution (US government) is indicating that it reposes faith in Headley’s story. However, given the complexities of America’s relationship with Pakistan, it is doubtful if Washington will publicly accuse the ISI’s decision-making levels of colluding with LeT in attacking Mumbai. Even on the question of shielding Osama bin Laden for over five years at Abbottabad (where he was killed by US special forces earlier this month), let us remember that the US is officially fighting shy of pointing fingers at the ISI’s top hierarchy, although this is strongly hinted at in observations by several senior US officials. What is clear, however, is that beating about the bush on the involvement of Pakistan’s security services in the Mumbai attacks plays to the advantage of the ISI as well as the LeT, whose terrorist plans are now no longer confined to India.
In India we never had any doubts about the deep involvement of Pakistan’s military establishment and its spy agencies in targeting this country’s population centres. The grisly Mumbai episode was just one instance in a long chain of many attacks against civilians in India. When we accuse Pakistan, Islamabad wants mathematical proof. But when the evidence is provided, it seeks to brazen it out by saying that it doesn’t add up. (Or it throws the red-herring of the so-called Indian involvement in supporting separatists in Balochistan. According to one Pakistani theory, even the Pakistani Taliban have been set up by India!) We should therefore be quite clear that even if Rana is convicted on the basis of Headley testifying against him, the Pakistani establishment would have us believe that these are mere individuals, and the link suggested with the ISI is less than tenuous.
Pakistan is also known to take shelter behind its court procedures. Perhaps this is the time for Pakistani courts to do a video-conference with Headley with the help of the Americans. That might bring a lot of material on record that is not emanating from India. But let’s be realistic. This would never happen. Even so, after Bin Laden was discovered hiding for years in a Pakistani garrison town near Islamabad, the world no longer believes Pakistan on the question of terrorism. Frankly, nor do ordinary Pakistanis. They are like ordinary people anywhere. They keep quiet out of fear in a militarised state. The revelations made so far owe not a little to India keeping up the pressure.