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India calls for action as world remembers anniversary of Mumbai terror attacks

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This week marks the 12th anniversary of a date forever etched on the minds of Indian people: the murderous 2008 attacks in Mumbai. The atrocity was likened to the 2001 terrorist attacks on the twin towers in New York and, while the scale was not quite the same, some 166 people were killed when gunmen went on a killing spree in India’s financial capital.

The attacks were carried out by 10 gunmen who were believed to be connected to Lashkar-e-Taiba, a  Pakistan based terrorist organization. Armed with automatic weapons and hand grenades, the terrorists targeted civilians at numerous sites in the southern part of Mumbai, including the Chhatrapati Shivaji railway station, the popular Leopold Café, two hospitals, and a theatre.

Pakistan has long been criticized for cultivating militant proxy groups and the country currently faces renewed pressure to act against terrorists. There is particular concern that despite some convictions, some of those responsible for the terrible attacks are still at liberty and thereby free to plot a similar atrocity.

With the anniversary of the Mumbai attacks falling today (26 November), international pressure is again pushing Pakistan to take more action against militant groups and their leaders.

Some argue there is still a lack of political will on the part of Pakistan to deal with the issue. As evidence, they point to the decision by a global “dirty money” watchdog to keep Pakistan on its “grey list” for failing to meet international anti-terrorism financing norms.

The independent Financial Action Task Force has urged Pakistan to meet these requirements by February 2021.

Pakistan was placed on the FATF’s “grey list” of countries with inadequate controls over terrorism financing in 2018 saying Pakistan “still needs to demonstrate that law enforcement agencies are identifying and investigating the widest range of terrorism financing activity.”

The watchdog also asked Islamabad to demonstrate that terrorism financing probes result in effective, proportionate and dissuasive sanctions and has called for Pakistan to prosecute those funding “terrorism”, as well as to enact laws to help track and stop “terror financing”.

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Xiangmin Liu, president of the FATF, warned: “Pakistan needs to do more and it needs to do it faster.”

Further comment comes from Denis MacShane, a former Europe minister in the UK under Tony Blair, who told this website, “It is hardly a secret that Pakistan's renowned Inter-Services Intelligence agency undertakes black operations rather like Mossad does for Israel as Pakistan have been locked in its cold, occasionally hot war with its much bigger neighbour India. A number of majority Muslim states have helped Islamist terrorist actions, most notably Saudi Arabia, whose Islamist citizens helped carry out the 9/11 attacks on Manhattan. Pakistan's nominally civilian government is helpless against the military and the ISI.”

There is still widespread concern about Islamist militant groups in Pakiston - especially Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and its welfare arms, Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and Falah-e-Insanyat - and on their sources of income.

There are also long-standing accusations that Pakistan has nurtured and supported Islamist militant groups for use as proxies to project power in the region, particularly towards its arch-rival India.

As recently as last year, a U.S. State Department country report on terrorism said Pakistan “continued to provide safe harbour to other top militant leaders.”

There is concern too at reports that a top Pakistan militant suspected to have planned the 2008 Mumbai attacks is still living freely in Pakistan.

India and the United States have both indicted Sajid Mir, of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba group, for the three-day attacks on hotels, a train station and a Jewish centre in which 166 people were killed including six Americans.

The immediate impact of the attacks was felt on the ongoing peace process between the two countries and India’s attempt at pressuring Pakistan to crack down on terrorists within its borders has been strongly supported by the international community.

At various times since the attacks, there have been concerns that tensions might escalate between the two nuclear-armed neighbours. India, however, has refrained from amassing troops at the Pakistan border as it had following the December 13, 2001, attack on India’s parliament. Instead, India has focused on building international public support through various diplomatic channels and the media.

India has long said there is evidence that “official agencies” were involved in plotting the attack – a charge Islamabad denies – and Islamabad is widely believed to use jihadist groups such as LeT as proxies against India. The U.S. is among those to allege that Pakistan is a safe haven for terrorists.

Fraser Cameron, a former senior European commission official and now director of the EU-Asia Centre in Brussels, said, “Indian claims that Pakistan continues to provide refuge to some of those involved in the 2008 attacks makes a Modi-Khan meeting almost impossible to arrange.”

The anniversary this week of the Mumbai attacks will evoke a strong national and international outcry against such violence and has sparked renewed calls to increase efforts to deal with the menace of terrorism.

The sense of outrage at Pakistan’s failure to fully hold to account those responsible for the attacks is summed up by Willy Fautre, the respected director of Brussels-based right NGO Human Rights Without Frontiers.

He told this site: “Ten years ago, from 26 to 29 November, over 160 people lost their lives in ten terrorist attacks perpetrated by ten Pakistanis in Mumbai. Nine of them were killed. Human Rights Without Frontiers deplores the fact that Pakistan waited until 2020 before convicting the mastermind of the Mumbai attack, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed. He was sentenced to five years and a half in prison.”

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EU Reporter publishes articles from a variety of outside sources which express a wide range of viewpoints. The positions taken in these articles are not necessarily those of EU Reporter.

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