Mumbai attacks part of ‘blowback’ for CIA double-cross

The violence that is sweeping Mumbai’s tourist and business areas is the work of rival Hindu nationalist terrorists and Muslim gangs, according to WMR’s Asian intelligence sources.

Scores have been killed and hundreds injured in the violence that swept India’s financial capital. Although the “Indian Mujahedin” and “Al Qaeda in India” are the corporate media’s suspects in the violence, the attacks have more to do with score settling and a warning by a CIA asset and Muslim-Hindu gang violence.

The violence began with some crude “dud” bombs being planted around the city. However, these are seen as “false flag” attacks carried out by HIndu nationalist terrorists who support the Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which hopes to beat the ruling Congress Party in forthcoming elections. The Hindu nationalists often wave the “Muslim terrorist” shirt to win popular support.

In the past, Mumbai’s exiled Muslim “Mafia” boss, on-and-off again CIA asset Dawood Ibrahim, a veteran of the CIA’s mujahedin war in Afghanistan and who is now living in exile in Karachi, Pakistan, and is wanted by Indian authorities, has the street muscle in Mumbai to stop further violence. Ibrahim owns a construction company in Karachi, has financial interests in Dubai, and is, according to our intelligence sources, involved with the CIA in Kathmandu casinos and the drug trade in Nepal. The CIA has shown no inclination to apprehend Ibrahim and with the Hindu nationalists making a power play in Mumbai with attempted “false flag” attacks, Ibrahim has shown no desire to stop the violence.

Former Indian BJP Deputy Prime Minister L. K. Advani said that India was rebuffed by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice when he asked that Ibrahim be extradited from Pakistan to India over the December 2001 terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament in Delhi. India handed the Bush administration a list of “Top 20” most-wanted terrorists in exile in Pakistan but the request was rebuffed by Washington.

Ibrahim is likely behind a good deal of the anti-British and anti-American violence in Mumbai, according to our sources. Apparently, Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of slain former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, is a business rival of Ibrahim. Zardari allegedly leaned on the Bush administration to rescind America’s “protection” for Ibrahim and lift recognition of his U.S. and British passports.

Ibrahim is likely sending a message to Washington and London to lay off or he may go beyond chopping the fingers off a few American and British tourists and businessmen. What may come next with regard to Americans and Britons in India may be even worse if Ibrahim decides to up the ante if he suspects the CIA is involved in double-crossing him. Ibrahim also wants to send a message to the BJP and the Indian intelligence Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) that he has sizable gang muscle in Mumbai to carry out further attacks to paralyze India’s already-faltering economy.

Ibrahim has struck Mumbai before.

On October 14, 2008, WMR reported the following from Kathmandu, Nepal: “The CIA’s old Nepal proprietary airline, Fishtail Air, founded by a veteran of Camp Walker in Seoul, South Korea, still flies around Nepal. Nepal also served as a terror nexus between individuals connected to the CIA in Kathmandu and the Dawood Ibrahim criminal syndicate that carried out the March 12, 1993, bombings of the Bombay Stock Exchange, Bombay hotels, cinemas, and shopping centers that killed over 300 people. The bombings were a reprisal for the destruction of the Babri Mosque at Ayodhya by Hindu extremists. Over two thousands Muslims, including women and children, were massacred by rampaging Hindus after the mosque’s destruction. Ibrahim is now believed to be hiding in Pakistan.”

The United Nations maintains the following file on Dawood as an “associate” of “Al Qaeda”:

QI.K.135.03. *Name: 1: DAWOOD 2: IBRAHIM 3: KASKAR 4: na

Title: a) Sheikh b) Shaikh Designation: na DOB: 26 Dec. 1955 POB: a) Bombai b) Ratnagiri, India *Good quality a.k.a.: a) Dawood Ebrahim b) Sheikh Dawood Hassan c) Abdul Hamid Abdul Aziz d) Anis Ibrahim e) Aziz Dilip f) Daud Hasan Shaikh Ibrahim Kaskar g) Daud Ibrahim Memon Kaskar h) Dawood Hasan Ibrahim Kaskar i) Dawood Ibrahim Memon j) Dawood Sabri k) Kaskar Dawood Hasan1) Shaikh Mohd Ismail Abdul Rehman m) Dowood Hassan Shaikh Ibrahim Low quality a.k.a.: a) Ibrahim Shaikh Mohd Anis, b) Shaikh Ismail Abdul c) Hizrat *Nationality: Indian Passport no.: a) Indian passport number A-333602 issued on 4 Jun. 1985 in Bombay, India (passport subsequently revoked by the Government of India) b) Indian passport number M110522 issued on 13 Nov. 1978 in Bombay c) Indian passport number R841697 issued on 26 Nov. 1981 in Bombay d) Indian passport number F823692 (JEDDAH) issued by CGI in Jeddah on 2 Sep. 1989 e) Indian passport number A501801 (BOMBAY) issued on 26 Jul. 1985 f) Indian passport number K560098 (BOMBAY) issued on 30 Jul. 1975 g) passport number V57865 (BOMBAY) issued on 3 Oct. 1983 h) passport number P537849 (BOMBAY) issued on 30 Jul. 1979 i) passport number A717288 (MISUSE) issued on 18 Aug. 1985 in Dubai j) Pakistani passport number G866537 (MISUSE) issued on 12 Aug. 1991 in Rawalpindi National identification no.: na Address: a) Karachi / Pakistan, White House, Near Saudi Mosque, Clifton b) House Nu 37 - 30th Street - defence, Housing Authority Karachi Pakistan *Listed on: 3 Nov. 2003 (amended on 21 Mar. 2006, 25 Jul. 2006 and 2 Jul. 2007) *Other information: International arrest warrant issued by the Government of India.

Wayne Madsen
Online Journal

Did Criminal Mastermind Stage Mumbai Nightmare?

As in the case of America’s Afghan war protégé Osama bin Laden, the blowback to U.S. covert policy came suddenly, this time with spectacular effects in Mumbai. The assault on the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel will probably go down as the first lethal blow to the incoming Obama administration. The assailants, who spoke Punjabi and not the Deccan dialect, went to a lot of trouble to torch the prestigious hotel, which is owned by the Tata Group. This industrial giant is the largest business supporter of the U.S.-India nuclear cooperation agreement, and Tata is now planning to become a nuclear power supplier. The Clintons, as emissaries of Enron, were the first to suggest the nuclear deal with New Delhi, so Obama inherits the Mumbai catastrophe even before he takes office.

The coordinated nighttime assault against seven major targets in Mumbai is reminiscent of the 1993 bombings that devastated the Bombay Stock Exchange. The recent attack bears the fingerprints of the same criminal mastermind – meticulous preparation, ruthless execution and the absence of claims or demands.

The eerie silence that accompanied the blasts are the very signature of Ibrahim Dawood, now a multi-millionaire owner of a construction company in Karachi, Pakistan. His is hardly a household name around the world like Osama bin Laden. Across South Asia, however, Dawood is held in awe and, in a twist on morals, admired for his belated conversion from crime boss to self-styled avenger.

His rise to the highest rungs of India's underworld began from the most unlikely position as the diligent son of a police constable in the populous commercial capital then known as Bombay.

His childhood familiarity with police routine and inner workings of the justice system gave the ambitious teenager an unmatched ability to outwit the authorities with evermore clever criminal designs. Among the unschooled ranks of Bombay gangland, Ibrahim emerged as the coherent leader of a multi-religious mafia, not just due to his ability to organize extortion campaigns and meet payrolls, but also because of his merciless extermination of rivals.

Dawood, always the professional problem-solver, gained the friendship of aspiring officers in India's intelligence service known as Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). He soon attracted the attention of American secret agents, then supporting the Islamic mujahideen in their battle against the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan. Dawood personally assisted many a U.S. deep-cover operation funneling money to Afghan rebels via American-operated casinos in Kathmandu, Nepal.

Eager to please all comers, Dawood occasionally got his wires crossed, providing travel documents and other amenities to Islamist airplane hijackers. In response, Washington spymasters tried to unofficially "impound" his investment in the Nepalese casinos. Dawood's fury is legendary among locals. An honorable businessman, he held to the strict belief that a deal is a deal and there can be no reneging for any reason.

As Bombay moved into the league of Asia's premier cities – hotel rates and apartment rentals are the highest in the region – Dawood could have led a comfortable life as top dog. Instead he suffered a spasm of conscience, a newfound moral outrage, when rightwing Hindu nationalists destroyed a mosque in northern India in 1992, slaying 2000 Muslim worshippers, mostly women and children.

One a day in the following May, his henchmen set off bombs across Bombay, killing more than 300 people. His personal convictions had – uncharacteristically - overcome his dispassionate business ethics. Reeling in shock, his top lieutenant, a Hindu, attempted to assassinate Dawood. A bloody intra-gang war followed, but as always Dawood triumphed, even while away in exile in Dubai and Karachi.

In the ensuing decade, at the height of violence in Kashmir, Dawood sent his heavily armed young trainees by boat from Karachi on covert landings onto Indian beaches. This same method was used in the Mumbai assault with more boats, seven craft according to initial navy reports.

Why the timing of this raid, on the dawn of Thanksgiving in America? The leader of India's opposition and former deputy Prime Minister L. K. Advani had long sought Dawood's extradition from Pakistan, a move opposed by the then military government in Islamabad. With the restoration of civilian rule, the new Pakistani prime minister (Gillani) consented to New Delhi's deportation request.

Washington and London both agreed with the India's legal claim and removed the longstanding "official protection" accorded for his past services to Western intelligence agencies. U.S. diplomats, however, could never allow Dawood's return. He simply knows too much about America's darker secrets in South Asia and the Gulf, disclosure of which could scuttle U.S.-India relations. Dawood was whisked away in late June to a safe house in Quetta, near the tribal area of Waziristan, and then he disappeared, probably back to the Middle East.

As in the case of America's Afghan war protégé Osama bin Laden, the blowback to U.S. covert policy came suddenly, this time with spectacular effects in Mumbai. The assault on the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel will probably go down as the first lethal blow to the incoming Obama administration. The assailants, who spoke Punjabi and not the Deccan dialect, went to a lot of trouble to torch the prestigious hotel, which is owned by the Tata Group. This industrial giant is the largest business supporter of the U.S.-India nuclear cooperation agreement, and Tata is now planning to become a nuclear power supplier. The Clintons, as emissaries of Enron, were the first to suggest the nuclear deal with New Delhi, so Obama inherits the Mumbai catastrophe even before he takes office.

Dawood, ranks fourth on Forbes' list of the world's 10 most wanted fugitives from the law. After the new round of attacks that killed more than 100 people and laid waste top five-star hotels, Dawood can now contend for the No.1 spot in the coming months and years. In contrast to the fanatic and often ineffective bin Laden, Dawood is professional on all counts and therefore a far more formidable adversary. Yet some in Pakistan's military intelligence agency say that Dawood is dead, killed in July. This version of events is much the same as a variation of the bin Laden story. If true, then his underlings are carrying on the mission of an outlaw transfigured into a legend.

By Yoichi Shimatsu, New America Media.

Yoichi Shimatsu. Former editor of The Japan Times in Tokyo and journalism lecturer at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Shimatsu has covered the Kashmir crisis and Afghan War.

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