Jundal case hints at Pak patronage, say US analysts

WASHINGTON: Influential American intelligence analysts are concluding that Pakistan is not budging from its use of terror as part of its statecraft going by the country's reluctance to act against perpetrators of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks.
Endorsing the Indian charge, further confirmed after captured LeT trainer Abu Jundal's disclosures., that the attack had Pakistan's official sanction, the analysts point to Islamabad's continued patronage of LeT chief Hafiz Mohammed Saeed as one sign that Islamabad has embraced terrorism as official policy.
"Pakistani officials argue that they don't have the capacity to deal with these groups in a comprehensive and consistent way. But this argument rings hollow when Sayeed roams the country freely making speeches and raising funding for his LeT front organization," Heritage Foundation scholar and former CIA analyst Lisa Curtis wrote amid growing disquiet in Washington over Pakistan's rampant use of terrorism in the region.
Her former CIA colleague Bruce Riedel, who worked on the Obama administration's Af-Pak policy, said Jundals's revelations that two members of the ISI, both allegedly majors in the Pakistani army , were also in the Karachi control room overseeing the Mumbai carnage "confirms the longstanding accusation that the 2008 plot was orchestrated with the assistance of the ISI."
Riedel also pointed out that David Headley said the same thing, as did Ajmal Kasab, the only survivor of the group captured Indian cops. In an op-ed in the Daily Beast, Riedel said because Abu Jindal was actually in the control room in Karachi "his accusation is even more powerful" and if these are confirmed "then the ISI was involved directly in the decision to murder Americans" .
Some experts, including India's B Raman, a former intelligence official, have suggested this is one of the reasons Washington leaned on Saudi Arabia to extradite Jundal to India. Riedel and Raman say the Saudi role in capturing Abu Jindal is significant given that Riyadh is Islamabad's closest ally and the ISI has very strong links with its Saudi counterparts.