{"id":96003,"date":"2017-07-31T12:00:35","date_gmt":"2017-07-31T11:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=96003"},"modified":"2017-07-25T14:31:58","modified_gmt":"2017-07-25T13:31:58","slug":"the-betrayal-of-india-a-close-look-at-the-2008-mumbai-terror-attacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/07\/the-betrayal-of-india-a-close-look-at-the-2008-mumbai-terror-attacks\/","title":{"rendered":"The Betrayal of India: A Close Look at the 2008 Mumbai Terror Attacks"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Betrayal of India: Revisiting the 26\/11 Evidence, by Elias Davidsson<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

These days we rush from one media story to another, trying to keep up with the latest terrorist attack. Yesterday Paris; today London; tomorrow, who knows? These attacks are tragic enough when they are acts of violence by religious extremists who have outsmarted our police and intelligence agencies. But, of course, many of them are actually violent acts facilitated by our police and intelligence agencies, directly or indirectly. The tragedy in such cases lies not only in the immediate human suffering but in the way our civil society and elected representatives are betrayed, intimidated, disciplined and stripped of their power by our own security agencies. The War on Terror, which goes by different names in different countries but continues as a global framework for violent conflict, thrives on this fraud.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>But if the very agencies that should be investigating and preventing these attacks are involved in perpetrating them, what is civil society to do to protect itself? Who will step in to study the evidence and sort out what really happened? And who will investigate the official investigators? Over the years, civilians from different walks of life have stepped forward\u2013forming groups, sharing information and methods, creating a tradition of civilian investigation.<\/p>\n

One such investigator is Elias Davidsson. Some readers will be familiar with his meticulous book, Hijacking America\u2019s Mind on 9\/11 <\/em>or his more recent work, Psychologische Kriegsf\u00fchrung und gesellschaftliche Leugnung<\/em>. Davidsson has now produced a book on the 2008 attacks that occurred in Mumbai, India. The book is entitled,\u00a0The Betrayal of India: Revisiting the 26\/11 Evidence<\/em> (New Delhi: Pharos, 2017).<\/p>\n

To remind ourselves of these attacks\u2013that is, of the official story of these attacks as narrated by the Indian government\u2013we can do no better than to consult Wikipedia<\/em>, which seldom strays from government intelligence narratives:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 2008 Mumbai attacks were a series of attacks that took place in November 2008, when 10 members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, an Islamic militant organization based in Pakistan, carried out a series of 12 coordinated shooting and bombing attacks lasting four days across Mumbai. The attacks, which drew widespread global condemnation, began on Wednesday, 26 November and lasted until Saturday, 29 November 2008, killing 164 people and wounding at least 308.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This description, however faulty, serves to make clear why the events were widely portrayed as a huge crime\u2014India\u2019s 9\/11. When we bear in mind that both India and Pakistan are armed with nuclear weapons, and when we consider that these events were widely characterized in India as an act of war supported by Pakistan (Davidsson, 72-74; 511 ff.; 731 ff.), we will understand how dangerous the event was for over a billion and a half people in south Asia.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Elias Davidsson<\/p><\/div>\n

We will also understand how easy it was, on the basis of such a narrative, to get a bonanza of funds and equipment for the Mumbai police (735-736) and why it was possible, given the framing of the event as an act of war, for India\u2019s armed forces to get an immediate 21% hike in military spending with promises of continuing increases in subsequent years (739 ff.).<\/p>\n

Wikipedia\u2019s<\/em> paragraph tells a straightforward story, but the straightforwardness is the result of much snipping and smoothing. Both Pakistan and Lashkar-e-Taiba denied responsibility for the attacks (65; 513) and, Davidsson argues, they did so for good reason.<\/p>\n

In his Conclusions at the end of the book Davidsson encourages us to assess separately the actual attacks and the Indian state\u2019s investigation of the attacks (865 ff.) It is \u201chighly plausible,\u201d he says, \u201cthat major institutional actors in India, the United States and possibly Israel, were complicit in conceiving, planning, directing and executing the attacks of 26\/11\u201d (873); but the evidence of a deceptive investigation is even stronger:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first definite conclusion of this book is that India\u2019s major institutions, including the Central government, parliament, bureaucracy, armed forces, Mumbai police, intelligence services, judiciary and media, have deliberately suppressed the truth regarding 26\/11 and continue to do so. I could discover no hint of a desire among the aforementioned parties to establish the truth on these deadly events (865).\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This distinction is useful for civil society investigators. We will frequently find it easier to prove that an investigation is deceptive, and that it is obscuring rather than illuminating the path to the perpetrators, than to directly prove the event itself to have been fraudulent. And there are two good reasons to pay attention to evidence of a cover-up. First, to cover up a crime is itself a crime. Second, those covering up a crime implicate themselves in the original crime. If they were not directly involved in the commission of the crime, they are at least accessories after the fact. To begin by exposing the fraudulent investigation, therefore, will often be wise. When this has been done we shall often find that we can begin to discern the path to the attack itself.<\/p>\n

Davidsson gives a wealth of evidence about both the attacks and the investigation, but for this brief review I shall focus on the investigation.<\/p>\n

Here are three recurring themes in his study that may serve to illustrate the strength\u00a0 of the cover-up thesis.<\/p>\n

(1) Immediate fingering of the perpetrator<\/strong><\/p>\n

When officials claim to know the identity of a perpetrator (individual or group) prior to any serious investigation, this suggests that a false narrative is being initiated and that strenuous efforts will soon be made to implant it in the mind of a population. Thus, for example, Lee Harvey Oswald<\/strong> was identified by officials of the executive branch as the killer of President John F. Kennedy<\/strong>\u2013and as a lone wolf with no associates\u2013on the afternoon of the assassination day, long before an investigation and even before he had been charged with the crime. And we had major news media pointing with confidence, by the end of the day of September 11, 2001, to Osama bin Laden<\/strong> and his group\u2013in the absence of evidence.<\/p>\n

In the Mumbai case the Prime Minister of India implied, while the attack was still in progress<\/em>, that the perpetrators were from a terrorist group supported by, or at least tolerated by, Pakistan (65; 228; 478; 512; 731).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The Taj Mahal Hotel burning after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai (Source: Haunted India)<\/p><\/div>\n

Likewise, immediately after the attacks Henry Kissinger<\/strong> attempted to implicate Pakistan. Three days prior to the attack on the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Mumbai, one of the main attack sites, Kissinger had been staying in the hotel. He \u201csat with top executives from Goldman Sachs and India\u2019s Tata group in the Taj to \u2018chat about American politics’\u201d (331). Kissinger\u2019s presence on the scene with Indian elites (the Tata family is one of India\u2019s wealthiest, and the Tata Group owns the Taj) would be peculiar enough to cause raising of the eyebrows, but when combined with his immediate fingering of Pakistan it becomes extremely suspect. As Davidsson shows, what investigation there was came much later, and even today the case against Pakistan remains full of contradictions, unsupported allegations, and absurdities.<\/p>\n

(2) Grotesque failure by official investigators to follow proper procedures<\/strong><\/p>\n

Incompetence is a fact of life, but there are times when the incompetence theory is strained to the breaking point and it is more rational to posit deliberate deception. \u00a0In the case of the Mumbai investigation, Davidsson depicts its failures as going well beyond incompetence.<\/p>\n