[Reader-list] India has become the " Sponge " that protects West against Terrorism

[Pawan Durani]

QUOTE:
India has become the "sponge" that was protecting the United States
and the West from the terror campaign of Lashkar-e-Tayiba and is
absorbing most of the blows unleashed by terrorist groups in
Pakistan.

LeT, which has been blamed for the Mumbai attacks, remains a
terrorist organisation of genuinely global reach and represents a
threat to regional and global security, second only to Osama bin
Laden's al Qaeda.

Tellis, a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, made these remarks while testifying before the
Senate committee on homeland security and governmental affairs on
Wednesday on the November 26 terrorist attacks in Mumbai and their
consequences for the US.

"India has unfortunately become the sponge that protects us all.
India's very proximity to Pakistan, which has developed into the
epicenter of global terrorism during the last 30 years, has resulted
in New Delhi absorbing most of the blows unleashed by those terrorist
groups that treat it as a common enemy along with Israel, the United
States, and the West more generally," he said.

Tellis said the Barack Obama administration should keep Pakistan's
feet to the fire and ensure that Islamabad makes good on its promises
to take on terrorist groups.

Washington should also demand more of Islamabad precisely because the
LeT threatens to become a significant global terrorist threat, he
said, adding, the US should insist that Islamabad roll up and
eliminate the entire LeT infrastructure of terrorism that currently
exists inside of Pakistan.

Tellis also termed India's response to the Mumbai attack as
inadequate and suggested that New Delhi should set up a body on the
lines of America's national counter-terrorism centre and take US
help.

Tellis said since the launch of the global war on terror post 9/11,
Inter-Services Intelligence's assistance to LeT has become more
recessed but it has by no means ended, even though the organisation
was formally banned by then Pakistans president Pervez Musharraf on
January 12, 2002.

Throwing light on LeT's links with Pakistan's Inter Services
Intelligence, Tellis said the terror group has received strong
financial, material, and operational support from Pakistan's powerful
spy agency -- including from its field stations in Nepal, Sri Lanka,
and Bangladesh -- because of the growing conviction within the
Pakistan military that the war against India could never be won if
the hostilities were to be confined only to Jammu and Kashmir issue .

While India has occupied the lion's share of LeT attention in recent
years, he said the organisation has not by any means restricted
itself to keeping only India in its sights.

LeT was from the very beginning a preferred ward of the ISI, enjoying
all the protection offered by the Pakistani state, he added. Even
when Pakistan, under considerable US pressure, formally banned LeT as
a terrorist organization in 2002, the LeT leadership remained
impregnable and impervious to all international political pressure.

Tellis said it would be a gross error to treat the terrorism facing
India, including the terrible recent atrocities as simply a problem
for New Delhi alone.

In a very real sense, the outrage in Mumbai was fundamentally a
species of global terrorism not merely because the assailants
happened to believe in an obscurantist brand of Islam but, more
importantly, because killing Indians turned out to be simply
interchangeable with killing citizens of some 15 different
nationalities for no apparent reason whatsoever.
UNQUOTE.
(http://www.rediff.com/news/2009/jan/29mumterror-nia-will-not-be-able-
to-prevent-terror-attacks-says-expert.htm).

To watch and listen to the hearings. please click:
http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?
Fuseaction=Hearings.Detail&HearingID=4bad8b13-1ed8-4ea4-8ed7-
0c020c6205f4

(It takes some time for the video to start).

For the text of Ashley Tellis's prepared testimony. please click:
http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/_files/012809Tellis.pdf

Ram Narayanan
US-India Friendship
http://usindiafriendship.net/