**Lt. Colonel Samsudeen Sarr (Rtd.)

I am afraid you’ll once more bear with me on the Mumbai tragedy unraveling fascinating discoveries everyday. The developments I hope will in the end help map out better guidelines on how President-Elect Barack Obama can best approach the South Asian region for eternal peace and prosperity.  Obama being on strict observation of protocol has made it clear that it is still President Bush who is in charge; until January 20, 2009. Therefore little should be expected from him on key issues such as what he would do about India and Pakistan. Nonetheless, he also has talked about being in constant consultation with President Bush over many things including this one. 

For a start, considering the urgency of the moment, one must credit Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice for promptly visiting the region, first to India and then to Pakistan with a positive message urging them to cooperate in the investigation, which I believe, helped tremendously in diffusing the initial tension.

The tragedy has claimed the lives of about 180 people mainly Indians plus a handful of foreigners of different nationalities among them, six Americans. It was an attack quite different from what the Indians had experienced before.  Internationalizing their targets in the way the attackers selectively searched for Americans, Britons among their hostages meant that this was not just another one of those Kashmir-related incidents; Kashmir of course, infamous for being the adjacent state to India and Pakistan has been a cause of dispute between them since 1947.  In the past six decades, they have fought three wars over the place yet nothing of significance gained, other than the large number of their own people killed in battlefields. And it was evident that it started with fewer individuals killed in similar terrorists attacks on soft targets followed by disproportional counter attacks, eventually escalating into full-blown wars.

If the Indians had immediately retaliated in kind as they used to do without giving chance to the kind of meticulous investigation the situation required they would have most likely been counting more dead people now than the number that triggered the conflict. I believe that is now a familiar tale in the realm of recent armed conflicts.  

I am sure India and Pakistan are fully aware of the serious danger involved in fighting a fourth war with the consignment of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) at their disposal. If they are to go to war, I believe they will break the Guinness Book of Record by being the first two countries in history with nuclear weapons fighting an all out war. How far that conflict could go and what its ramifications might turn out to be, remains a mystery I would always pray to remain just that; a mystery. 

Just last week, the United Nations took a noble course of passing a Resolution banning the use of cluster bombs, an extremely lethal weapon now classified as (WMD) with 100 nations signing the Treaty. Only those nations known to have the bombs refused to sign it, namely the USA, Russia, China, Israel, INDIA and PAKISTAN. If we add North Korea to the list, we can perhaps categorically conclude that these are the countries in the world insulated with the capability of one day destroying the human race.  It is also fair to say that these are the same countries manufacturing and distributing in the largest scale, medium and small assault weapons used by terrorists, drug lords, gangsters and psychopaths.

I have been reading about some of the most important things discovered about the Mumbai attack including among other things, the name and age of the sole survivor out of the 10 killers. The survival of the 21 year old Muhammad Ajimal Kasab reported to have come from a remote village in Pakistan has helped a lot in clearing certain grey areas. Had he died in the gun battle like his other nine co-conspirators did, the situation might not have been as orderly as it has been. Through Kasab, investigators were able to establish that the cell phones used by the gang were purchased in India with the help of two homegrown Indian militants Tauseef Rahman and Mukhtar Ahmed. Bangladeshi nationals were also found to be among the core planners. It is therefore, increasingly becoming clear by the profile of the attackers that they were not at all state sponsored-Pakistani militants as many had suspected and or predicted. As a matter of fact, the militant Muslim organization Lashka-e-Taiba said to have masterminded the operation was outlawed and disbanded by the Musharraf government in 2002 with most of their members permanently settled in India.

However, when cell phones and SIM cards were mentioned as critical evidence to the investigation, I thought it would have further helped if the AK47 assault rifles and grenades used were added as the deadliest exhibits. Obviously, the manufacturers and distributors will be from the same producers, China or Russia; but there is not a chance for them to be held culpable in the general scheme of the crime.

An unrelated subject worthy of mention is how the world cannot stop arming the Sudan government with guns and bullets used in the Darfur genocide. Activist who tried to sensitize the world over China’s role in arming the Janjaweed militia before the Beijing Olympics had their voices muzzled for fear of disrupting the games. After all, China will never see what is wrong with selling arms to anyone with the right money so long as they are in stiff competition with the USA and Russia in the same business. Ironically, the importance of how much money a superpower makes in the arms market has overridden that of any reasons they are used for to harm and destroy helpless people and the little they have. This insane mindset of the rich, treated, as perfectly normal, caused by greed for more money has to change if humanity seriously wishes to live in peace and prosperity. That same greed might one day drive another insane person into selling a dirty bomb to a mad killer with the right amount. It’s now feared that by 2013 a dirty bomb will be detonated in a major city in the world. I am afraid that will be the beginning of the end of our civilization if it has not begun already. 

Once again, I would like to revisit the special role played by the USA in the Mumbai tragedy reiterating my commendation to Secretary of State Rice’s timely response and effect to the initial confusion; however, what was not too impressive was America’s hasty announcement about India being forewarned of the attack six weeks earlier. It was as to expose the Indian government’s incompetent for not acting on a “credible American intelligence tip” which already cost some key Indian officials their jobs.  With India about to have their national elections, the opposition is now using that as an effective campaign gimmick

They have even called their government to commit Indian troops into teaching the Pakistanis a lesson, a statement I found grossly irresponsible.

Anyway, the US intelligence only revealed that the commercial center of Mumbai, specifically, the luxury hotels and public facilities were the primary targets in a sea borne operation by Pakistani Islamic radicals. With that vague piece of information, the Indians I believe had plausible reasons for not acting conspicuously. Intelligence gathering is non-scientific and in this case, the facts appear rather extrapolative. Secondly, America’s ability to gather conclusive intelligence was badly discredited by what happened in the case of the pre-war Iraq argument. Everybody remembers seven years ago when Collin Powell as Secretary of State for the Bush administration with George Tenet, CIA Director at the time behind him, briefing the UN General Assembly about Saddam Hussein’s WMD and the need to disarm him by force because of that intelligence. Being the first of its kind in style and content before that giant screen at the UN showing the whole world those so-called mobile biological weapon laboratories that many believed actually made the case for the war, is still remembered by all nations including India. Few Americans and non-Americans alike doubted the information or the person delivering it except perhaps the few Obama’s who never believed it. Collin Powel has since been trying to repair his image from the embarrassing revelation of that narrative. His endorsement of Obama’s candidature may have helped him a great deal. I think the Obama administration could have used his service for a new world peace initiative, which I think he can do better that most people with absolute sincerity.

The 9/11 attacks was another classic event, which later proved cardinal flaws in American intelligence gathering. The bureaucratic firewall between the CIA and the FBI disallowing them to share critical information before the attack was mainly blame for the hijackers’ ability to beat the system. There were in fact several reports of Bin Laden scheming an attack to the city of New York with little or nothing done on preventive measures.  Since 9/11 therefore even the common person in the USA usually expresses his or her doubt over the dependability of America’s intelligence tip; it may have been the same with the Indians.

On the very day of the Mumbai attack, New Yorkers that morning woke up to an unusual heightened security in the subways. Nothing beyond a press release stating a possible but unsubstantiated threat by radicals to attack the New York subways was shared with the people. I don’t think it was mere coincidence that the date for the subway attack threat November 27, 2008 was the same as the Mumbai tragedy day. It is possible that the Americans got the intelligence threat of the subway and Mumbai attacks from the same source with one happening and the other not; confirming once again how unscientific the process is.

The police deployment in New York that morning left no doubt in anyone’s mind that the security forces were ready for a big thing despite their brilliant measures to trivialize it in the eyes of the public. Certainly the last thing the city needed at the moment was a public scare over “Jihadists” intending to blast our railway lines.  That could have finally killed the financial market at Wall Street on life support.

The Indians may have probably said - there goes America with credible intelligence again; so by avoiding panic in their financial city they also applied the same principle of leaving matters to chance but keeping it quiet. Unfortunately the Americans were dead right this time. With the Indian economy still rated among the few in the world unaffected by the global financial crunch, they may have felt that anything to jeopardize that steady growth even by the slightest security boost in Mumbai to stop an expected attack was untenable.

But what about if the Americans had from a broader perspective taken it up with the Pakistanis as well and gave them the same intelligence information they gave to the Indians?  I am saying to let the Pakistanis know that militants from their country were planning an attack in India in a sea borne commando style. That’s how I expect an Obama administration to handle such cases in the future affecting governments living in the same regions. Adding the Russians and Chinese in such matters I believe is the duty of every peace-loving leader in pursuit of world peace.

So I’ll once more call on President-Elect Barack Obama to look into the possibility of bringing together all those countries in South East Asia: India, Pakistan and Afghanistan with America, Russia and China joining hands in helping the people of the region to have peace. The pervasive poverty has to be tackled head on. The billions of dollars spent in the region on arms and ammunition has to be diverted to help those who live under one dollar a day.

But above all, weapon producers and distributors must wake up to the fact that the arms and ammunitions bringing them the huge amount of money they love so dearly could one day turn to be man’s worst nightmare in the way it has already been in many parts of the world. ** Lt. Colonel Samsudeen Sarr is a US trained military officer and former Commander of  The Gambia National Army. He is author of  Meet Me In Conakry (A Novel) and  Coup D'etat By The Gambia National Army.