Pakistan finally blinks

Faced with unrelenting international pressure and incontrovertible evidence put together by India and the US’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Pakistan on Thursday—79 days after the Mumbai attacks—was forced to acknowledge not just that the heinous strikes were plotted from its soil, but also that some of the perpetrators were from the Laskhar-e-Taiba (LeT), the jihadi outfit aligned with the ISI. The confession surprised many because it came close on the heels of a series of red herrings suggesting that Islamabad, rather than accepting any blame, would point fingers at terrorist organisations not active on its soil. It also surpassed India’s expectations, with Delhi later saying it was a positive development. “Some part of it was planned in Pakistan,’’ Pakistan’s interior minister Rehman Malik said, as he went on to disclose that Islamabad had so far arrested six men for the crime. The FIR registered at the SIT police station in Islamabad has named eight people, but Malik disclosed only six names, arguing that revealing the identities of the remaining two might hamper investigations. Significantly, Malik did not elaborate on the role of either Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi or Zarar Shah, the two LeT commanders identified as masterminds not just by India but also the US, leading many in Delhi to wonder if Pakistan was trying to sell a dummy to the world. Lakhvi was named as the chief plotter by Ajmal Amir Kasab, the arrested terrorist. Likewise, the email sent by the Deccan Mujahideen—the fictitious outfit created by the LeT to erase Pakistan’s fingerprints—to own up to the massacre was traced to Shah’s computer. The two are not among the eight named in the FIR. Malik conceded that Lakhvi could have imparted training to the perpetrators. But although he said the two Lashkar bigwigs were in police custody, he added that action against them was subject to further investigations.