Pak Army Masterminded the Mumbai Attacks ..?

One week since the Mumbai attacks - the Indian government knows the killers, knows where they were trained, who the trainers were, their links with sections of the ISI, and much more. Yet it doesn't know what to do next.

The government feels the attack was meticulously planned, with the help of top intelligence inputs and professional support. It thinks that it's unlikely the Indian fishing trawler Kuber was hijacked. A well-planned attack mission like this would not depend on the off-chance of hijacking a boat for its success. Rather, the INDIAN CREW of the boat were probably mixed up in smuggling and got sucked into this deadly game. And paid with their lives.

The government knows the attack originated from Pakistan. In fact, the Pakistan government doesn't deny this. Even now when Asif Ali Zardari is telling Larry King that the attackers are "stateless people", he isn't saying they are not Pakistanis. Earlier, foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, who was in India when the attack took place, told the media he was willing to send the ISI chief for a joint probe, signaling that he believed the attackers were Pakistanis.

When Manmohan Singh called up Zardari and Pakistan PM Gilani, both said the ISI director general Shuja Pasha would be sent to India to help out with the investigations. But by evening, the picture had changed. An ISI spokesman sounded very iffy about Pasha's visit. "Let the government tell us and we'll see," he said.

In short, the ISI was telling the civilian government to get off. Meanwhile, the Pakistan army sounded a warning about an Indian military build-up along the border. Newspapers close to the army, like Pakistan Observer and Frontier Post, and TV channel Geo, played up this alleged build-up. Suddenly, the popular mood was turning — from a sense of outrage at the Mumbai killings to alarm about a possible Indian attack.

Why did the Pakistan army do this? First, to deflect attention from the Mumbai attack into which the ISI was being dragged (ISI and the army are very close after Pakistan army chief Kayani hand-picked Lt Gen Pasha as the ISI boss). Second, it was signaling to the world that the civilian government didn't matter; what mattered was the army.

The third reason is that it saw in the situation an opportunity to recoup the morale of its soldiers. The US-pressed "war on terror" on Pakistan's western front is believed to have badly sapped the army's morale. Many of the soldiers don't believe in it -- there were as many as 900 desertions last year.

Fourthly, it reckons that by playing the India card, it could win back some of its lost credibility and authority among the people. Musharraf's last months had badly dented the army's standing in Pakistani society and the "war on terror" has eroded its popularity. With Zardari & Co seen as soft on India, the army was now sensing an opportunity of staging a comeback.

In fact, one estimate in New Delhi is that the Mumbai carnage, and the expected backlash from India, is aimed at a larger goal to set the scene for an army coup. Top officials, however, discount the possibility -- at least for now, although they don't discount that the army is pushing to carve out its independent space and a bigger stake.

That's where India's dilemma comes in. If it were to flex its muscle, mass its soldiers along the border and tell Islamabad that it means business — as many people, incensed with the repeated terrorist attacks, would like the government to do -- it could be playing into the Pakistan army's hand.

New Delhi knows that the Americans have more levers on Pakistan than it has. But it doesn't know how much pressure the US was willing to exert on Islamabad. While there is an overlap of interest with India now (six American were, after all, killed in the attack), US's bigger interest is in forcing Pakistan's hand in the fight against al Qaida and the Taliban.

So, when Condoleezza Rice came over on Wednesday, she said all the right words but, in concrete terms, promised to press Pakistan on one thing — to ask for a ban on Lashkar-e-Taiba's political wing, Jamaat-ud-Dawa. The Dawa is not an underground organization like Lashkar, although it recruits people for terror, as it did with captured Mumbai attacker, Ajmal Amir Kasav.

India is also uncertain of the implication of getting the US and others involved in the standoff. It fears that could lead to the internationalizing of the Kashmir dispute. Everyone loves a good crisis, and all of them were looking to get something out for themselves from it if they could get their finger in the pie. That's India's second dilemma — it knows only the US can deliver but it doesn't know if it's a good idea to press it for help beyond a point.

Ask any top government official and he or she will say, "We want outcome, not statements." But they don't really know how to secure that outcome. So, India waits staring at the various non-options, waiting for a bright idea to strike it.