Citizen G'kar: Musings on Earth: Jihadi confession rocks India, Pakistan

July 21, 2009

Jihadi confession rocks India, Pakistan

Just hours after the visiting United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had praised the "sincerity" of Islamabad's anti-terrorism policies, a Pakistani dramatically confessed to taking part in one of the worst terror attacks in India, that in Mumbai last November.
Mohammad Ajmal Amir "Kasab", the lone surviving gunman of the 10 that killed 166 people in a three-day rampage across the city, on Monday after 65 days on trial for among other things murder and waging war against India suddenly reversed his not-guilty plea with the words, "Mujhe gunha kabool hai." (I admit to the crime). "I want to confess," the 21-year-old said to a stunned courtroom.
The Mumbai attack, which from the outset India blamed on Pakistanis, severely strained relations between the two countries, especially as Islamabad initially refused to acknowledge any Pakistan connection. Delhi froze peace talks that were at the time underway between the fractious, nuclear-armed neighbors.
However, last week the Pakistan government handed over a dossier to India providing evidence of the role in the attack played by the banned militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, and also named Kasab as a participant.
Kasab said on Monday he had decided to change his plea - even his lawyers did not know he was going to - as a result of this development, "Please accept my confession, close the case and give the sentence," he said, clearly feeling betrayed by his country.
The strange twist in the case will certainly ease tension between Delhi and Islamabad. The former will feel vindicated in its early finger-pointing, while the latter can use its cooperation as an example of what Clinton described as Pakistan's "commitment to fighting terrorism that permeates the entire government".
Judge M L Tahilyani adjourned the case to allow prosecutors time to study the confession. The charges carry the death sentence.
Following the confession, in a chilling account, Kasab told of his part in the attack that targeted two luxury hotels, a Jewish center, a restaurant popular with tourists, a hospital and the main railway terminal. The men carried automatic guns, grenades and explosives.
Kasab and a partner (Abu Ismail) had been assigned to kill people in and around the railway station. "I was firing and Abu was hurling hand grenades ... I fired at a policeman after which there was no firing from the police side," Kasab said.
From the railway station, where they killed more than 50 people, the two went to Cama Hospital, killing more. They then went to Chowpatty beach, where Abu was killed and Kasab was captured after a shootout with police.
Kasab also named four members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba whom he said saw off the gunmen from the Pakistani port city of Karachi. Among them was Zaki ur-Rehman Lakhvi, chief of operations for Lashkar-e-Taiba. Lakhvi had been identified by India as the attack's chief plotter.
Kasab said it was his desire to get rich quickly as a trained robber that took him down the path of terrorism as he was introduced to jihadis in his quest to receive "specialist" training.
No sooner had Kasab confessed than the media and pundits were abuzz with theories about his sudden decision. According to one theory, the admission was the result of a hush-hush meeting with a senior Maharashtra state minister who told him that it was futile to fight the case as Pakistan had disowned him and his family. According to this theory, when the minister asked Kasab why he had become a terrorist, he stated, "Our leaders in Pakistan kept telling us that Indians were responsible for the blasts in our country, and so we had to take revenge."
According to another theory, Kasab preferred death in India as he was shocked by Pakistan's decision to prosecute five alleged accomplices.
Public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam reacted by calling Kasab's confession a "ploy" because, according to him, at this late stage - eight months after the attack and 65 days into the trial - the gunman has forfeited his right to plead guilty.
Questions will also be asked over any possible coercion. Soon after being captured, he admitted to the attacks, then he changed his mind, saying he had been pressured.
Pakistan's Defense Minister Chaudhary A Mukhtar told an Indian TV channel, "The statements are one-sided and they were made by a person who is under the custody of Indian jail authorities. If he has stood up and given this statement, I don't know under what pressure he was."
Despite these reservations, the acrimony between Pakistan and India caused by the case may be laid to rest and the trial can come to a speedy conclusion, leaving the door open for the countries to move forward and get back to the peace talks that were so sensationally disrupted last November.
Neeta Lal is a widely published writer/commentator who contributes to many reputed national and international print and Internet publications.
(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

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"'Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.' Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’"
- Matthew 25:34-40 (New King James Version)

"A free society cherishes nonconformity. It knows that from the non-conformist, from the eccentric, have come many of the great ideas of freedom. Free society must fertilize the soil in which non-conformity and dissent and individualism can grow."
- Henry Commager

"I came to understand that I am not the light or the source of light. But light -- truth, understanding, knowledge -- is there, and it will only shine in many dark places if I reflect it."

- Alexander Papaderosby

"Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. ...but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
- Herman Goering
Hitler's Reichsmarschall

"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist." - Dom Helder Camara

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
John F. Kennedy

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Too often we... enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
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War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.
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The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings.
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We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.
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I look forward to a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose.
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Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
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A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
-Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.

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A little rebellion now and then ... is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government....

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."
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"The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society"
- Thomas Jefferson

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
- C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)

"The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience."
- Albert Camus (1913-1960)

"He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself."
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The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, 1963.

This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls 'enemy,' for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence, 04-06-67

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam [Iraq]. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor in America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam [Iraq]. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience, 1967.

Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Stockholm, Sweden, December 11, 1964.

Man was born into barbarism when killing his fellow man was a normal condition of existence. He became endowed with a conscience. And he has now reached the day when violence toward another human being must become as abhorrent as eating another's flesh.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can't Wait, 1963.

The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.

Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes [minorities] in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., speech, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, August 16, 1967.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction....The chain reaction of evil--hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars--must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength To Love, 1963

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength To Love, 1963.

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, 1963.

The bombs in Vietnam [Iraq} explode at home; they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.

We must combine the toughness of the serpent and the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, 1963.

Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.

The Negroes of America had taken the President, the press and the pulpit at their word when they spoke in broad terms of freedom and justice. But the absence of brutality and unregenerate evil is not the presence of justice. To stay murder is not the same thing as to ordain brotherhood.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.

Many of the ugly pages of American history have been obscured and forgotten....America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay. If it loses the will to finish or slackens in its determination, history will recall its crimes and the country that would be great will lack the most indispensable element of greatness--justice.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.

We must combine the toughness of the serpent and the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, 1963.

Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.

The Negroes of America had taken the President, the press and the pulpit at their word when they spoke in broad terms of freedom and justice. But the absence of brutality and unregenerate evil is not the presence of justice. To stay murder is not the same thing as to ordain brotherhood.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.

Many of the ugly pages of American history have been obscured and forgotten....America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay. If it loses the will to finish or slackens in its determination, history will recall its crimes and the country that would be great will lack the most indispensable element of greatness--justice.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.

Man is man because he is free to operate within the framework of his destiny. He is free to deliberate, to make decisions, and to choose between alternatives. He is distinguished from animals by his freedom to do evil or to do good and to walk the high road of beauty or tread the low road of ugly degeneracy.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., The Measures of Man, 1959.

Nonviolent action, the Negro saw, was the way to supplement, not replace, the progress of change. It was the way to divest himself of passivity without arraying himself in vindictive force.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can't Wait, 1964.
ished from animals by his freedom to do evil or to do good and to walk the high road of beauty or tread the low road of ugly degeneracy.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., The Measures of Man, 1959.

Nonviolent action, the Negro saw, was the way to supplement, not replace, the progress of change. It was the way to divest himself of passivity without arraying himself in vindictive force.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can't Wait, 1964.