So who made fake phone call to Pakistan’s president?

The latest in post-Mumbai recriminations and fallout is the question of who made a fake phone call Nov. 28, allegedly by Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari saying India would attack Pakistan if it didn’t round up Lashkar-e-Taiba and other militant groups?

The Hindu claims Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence did the fakery.

The Guardian reports that Pakistan says the call came from a number inside Mukherjee’s office.

Maybe it did and his office has been infiltrated. If THAT’s the case, New Delhi has to be scared shitless.

I am interested indeed to find out more about this.

Meanwhile, John McCain, unable to bomb Iran now, told Zardari that New Delhi was ready to bomb his country.

Right, left hands incommunicado in Mumbai

Indian police have arrested two men for buying mobile phone cards used by the Mumbai terrorist attackers. One problem. One of the two is allegedly an undercover counterinsurgency cop.

His superiors claim he was on assignment and want his release.

Several problems here.

First, is the guy worth that much to publicly ask for his release? Haven’t you just blown his cover and his operation, even endangering other agents? Or, is that part of the plan>

Second, what if he has actually become a double agent? Or isn’t always sure where his lines are drawn?

That’s what happened in late Tsarist-era Russia. The state secret police, the Okhrana, sometimes not only had right and left hands ignorant of each other, but different fingers on the same hand operating differently.

Mumbai attacks reflect high planning level – Pakistan?

So says both Tata Group Chairman Ratan Tata, whose company owns the TaJ Mahal motel, and American-based global security analysts
Tata said his hotel had advance warning, and took precautions, but that they failed:

“They knew what they were doing, and they did not go through the front. All of our arrangements are in the front,’ he said. “They planned everything. I believe the first thing they did, they shot a sniffer dog and his handler. They went through the kitchen.”

Hmmm. Hindu business owners in Mumbai and elsewhere will probably tighten their screening of would-be Muslim employees.

If a group like Lashkar-i-Taiba, which means “Army of the Pious,” and Jaish-i-Muhammad, or “Soldiers of Muhammad,” is behind this, it could accomplish some of what the groups want.

“This is a new, horrific milestone in the global jihad,” said Bruce Riedel, a former South Asia analyst for the CIA and National Security Council and author of the book “The Search for Al Qaeda.” “No indigenous Indian group has this level of capability. The goal is to damage the symbol of India’s economic renaissance, undermine investor confidence and provoke an India-Pakistani crisis.”

And:

”What is striking about this is a fair amount of planning had to go into this type of attack,” said Roger W. Cressey, a former White House counterterrorism official in the Clinton and Bush administrations. “This is not a seat-of-the-pants operation. This group had to receive some training or support from professionals in the terrorism business.”

This alleged Deccan Muhajedeen, even if it exists, doesn’t sound like that group.

So, whether British, American or Pakistani officials like it – indeed, even if they try to tamp down such thoughts – the smartest thing for New Delhi to do, it seems, is look on the other side of the Indus River.