It has become increasingly clear that many of the terrorists involved in last week's Mumbai attacks came from Pakistan and belonged to the Kashmir-focused terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). While it seems unlikely that there was any official knowledge or connection between the Pakistani government and these specific attacks, Pakistan does bear significant responsibility. LeT is a group that was created and sponsored by Pakistan's intelligence services to challenge Indian control in Kashmir; similar groups have mounted many terrorist attacks against India over the last few decades. But Pakistan's democratically-elected civilian government seems to lack the means to compel its military and security services to get serious about combating all forms of terrorism and extremism. For the last eight years the Bush Administration, distracted by Iraq, pursue a Musharraf policy instead of a Pakistan policy, offering the country's former president a blank check on military and regional affairs in exchange for promises of support against Al Qaeda.  This policy failed. Not only has Al Qaeda found a safe haven in northwest Pakistan, but the Taliban has reemerged to threaten both Afghanistan and Pakistan, and there are serious questions concerning the government's control over the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI). While Pakistan is a source of terrorism plaguing Afghanistan, India, and the west, Pakistan is now a country also besieged by terrorism. It has experienced an increasing number of vicious attacks, such as the bombing of the Marriot hotel and the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. We need a new approach that both pressures the Pakistanis to do more and seeks to strengthen Pakistan's democratically elected government, in the long run helping citizens shift the balance of power from military to civilian institutions. 

Investigation into Mumbai attacks shifts focus to Pakistan. The New York Times reports that "fresh evidence unearthed by investigators in India indicated that the Mumbai attacks were stage-managed from at least two Pakistani cities by top leaders of the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba." The New York Times continues, "Indian and American intelligence officials have already identified a Lashkar operative, who goes by the name Yusuf Muzammil, as a mastermind of the attacks. On Thursday, Indian investigators named one of the most well-known senior figures in Lashkar, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi." The LA Times explains that "successive Pakistani governments have tolerated and even abetted Lashkar-e-Taiba, which for much of its two-decade history was used by Pakistan's intelligence service as a proxy for fighting Indian rule in the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir." While Pakistan's government vehemently denies involvement in the Mumbai attacks, and "U.S. officials say no formal links between the attackers and Pakistani officialdom have been found," the LA Times reports that "Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Pakistani officials... that the evidence gathered so far by Indian and Western investigators against Pakistan-based militants was compelling enough that Islamabad should be acting on it." However, the revelation that "four Indian Muslims" were involved in the attacks highlights the regional nature of a terrorist threat that has grown beyond any one country's ability to address. [NY Times, 11/05/08.  LA Times, 11/05/08. The Times of London, 12/05/08. AP, 12/05/08]

Terrorism is a plague that affects the entire region.  The recent attacks in Mumbai are part of a larger pattern of regional terrorism.  In 2006 there were  "more than 180 people killed in seven bomb explosions at railway stations and on trains in Mumbai," and later in the year another "32 people killed in a series of explosions, including one near a mosque in Malegaon town, 260km northeast of Mumbai." Pakistan itself has also suffered an upswing in terrorism.  In September, "A huge truck bomb exploded at the entrance to the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad... killing at least 53 people and wounding at least 266."  The Marriott attack occurred nine months after "Benazir Bhutto, the Pakistani opposition leader and twice-serving prime minister, was assassinated... as she left a political rally here, a scene of fiery carnage that plunged Pakistan deeper into political turmoil and ignited widespread violence by her enraged supporters." Afghanistan has also been hit extremely hard by terrorism in recent years. "There was an attempted assassination on President Karzai, which, the Afghan government publicly accused the Pakistani intelligence service... of organizing the failed plot to assassinate." Attacks in Afghanistan have also been directed against India, such as when "a car bomb [that] went off on a crowded street... near the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan, killing at least 41 people and wounding more than 100." [NY Times, 9/21/08  NY Times 12/28/07. Washington Post, 11/28/08. NY Times, 7/26/08. CNN 7/7/08]

Fallout from Mumbai attacks serves as reminder of the tragic consequences of the lack of a comprehensive U.S. strategy for Pakistan.  Seven years since al-Qaeda and the Taliban fled across the mountains of Tora Bora into Pakistan, the U.S. still lacks a comprehensive strategy for reducing the terrorist and extremist threats that have reconstituted along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.  According to an April GAO report,"the United States has not met its national security goals to destroy the terrorist threat and close the safe haven in Pakistan's FATA region," and "no comprehensive plan for meeting U.S. national security goals in the FATA has been developed."  Instead, "the Bush Administration based its policy entirely around an unelected military leader" former President Pervez Musharraf and "has relied principally on the Pakistani military to address its national security goals." But from 2001 to 2008, while the Musharraf military government conducted counterterrorism operations against al-Qaeda, it continued Pakistan's longstanding policy of tacitly supporting other extremist groups.  Brookings' expert Steven P. Cohen observed: "I think the first puzzle is the Pakistan military's reluctance to give up its support even if tacit, even if looking the other way, of groups like the Afghan Taliban, for which they've been criticized regularly by the U.S. Government or the Lashkar e-Tayyiba, and perhaps other groups... they see these groups, which they help to found a number of years ago, as instruments of Pakistani foreign policy against India."  India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and also the U.S. are now all experiencing the consequences of the inattention paid to this emerging threat. [GAO, 4/17/08. NSN, 8/18/08. Steven P. Cohen , 12/03/08]