More Mumbai-like, ISI-backed attacks inevitable: US report

A report by Washington-based think tank on 26/11 Mumbai attacks had predicted that the Indo-Pakistan crisis was both unresolved and unfinished, and “further attacks by Pakistan-based, Inter-Services Intelligence-trained terrorists were inevitable”.
A major report titled ‘The Unfinished Crisis: US Crisis Management after the 2008 Mumbai Attacks’, which is the first detailed account of how American diplomats, intelligence officers and law enforcement professionals reacted to the terror strikes on November 26, 2008, has predicted that the India-Pakistan crisis remains both unresolved and unfinished, and further attacks by Pakistan-based terrorists were inevitable, particularly since there is once again an emerging rapprochement between New Delhi and Islamabad.
The case study, published by The Stimson Center, the only Washington DC think-tank, which has an exclusive programme on confidence building measures in South Asia, said, “Indian grievances remain unresolved, while Pakistani policies remain dangerously subject to miscalculation.”
The study includes interviews with the then secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, erstwhile National Security adviser Stephen Hadley, former ambassadors to India and Pakistan David Mulford and Anne Patterson respectively, and several other senior United States officials, who were involved in US crisis management in the aftermath of the 26/11 attacks.
Another related report said that senior officials in the outgoing George Bush administration had prior experience in crisis management on the subcontinent and they executed a crisis management plan — Plan A included familiar elements: top-level diplomacy, high-level official visits, playing for time, and close cooperation with British officials. But it said, “There was no Plan B.”
The report said that in the words of a former senior official, Plan A was “first, to show support for India. The Bush administration was very popular with the government of India, had plenty of capital in the bank. We went as a friend. In Pakistan, the message was to convey the seriousness of the situation, that Pakistan needed to ‘own up’ to the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba.”
The report said apparently the reason there was no Plan B was because according to one senior official, “We didn’t think we needed one,” and there was a kind of hubris that Plan A just couldn’t fail and that Washington could “keep a lid on the India-Pakistan situation.”
The report said that despite the spectacular nature of the 26/11 attacks and the considerable loss of life, “most US officials saw this crisis as less dangerous than the 1999 Kargil and the 2001-2002 ‘Twin-Peak’s crises’,” which was the term used in the study to describe two periods of high tension sparked by terrorist attacks.
“The Mumbai crisis carried risks of escalation, but the challenges facing US crisis managers were smaller in scope and duration,” it said.