Defusing the Mumbai Situation

The security situation in Mumbai remains tenuous at best as a bomb was discovered and defused at a Mumbai rail station today among the baggage left following the terror attacks last week. That can't be good news for Mumbai law enforcement, which is already reeling from their inability to contain the massive terror attacks over the weekend that exposed serious flaws in the emergency response.

Thankfully, they managed to discover and defuse the bombs today.

Police in Mumbai found explosives Wednesday hidden in a bag left behind last week at the city's train station at the start of a three-day rampage by Islamist militants.

While searching 150 bags at the station, police found one that looked suspicious and called the bomb squad. They found two bombs of 8.8 pounds each inside and defused them, said Assistant Commissioner of Police Bapu Domre.

The report came after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in India as part of an effort to defuse escalating regional tensions in the wake of last week's three-day terrorist attack that killed 171 people in India's financial capital.

Why did it take so long for emergency crews to check through all those bags left behind? You would think that the first thing that law enforcement should have done is sweep the entire area for additional bombs and weapons to prevent them from potentially going off while the investigation proceeded.

Sec. State Rice is trying to walk a delicate line between India and Pakistan, cajoling and pushing Pakistan to release more information on the attackers and to keep the situation under control. India wants Pakistan to hand over 20 terrorists and persons of interest, but Pakistan is saying that they want to prosecute these people if they're involved:

The Indian government, already facing accusations of security and intelligence failures, has demanded that Pakistan take action against those responsible and asked that 20 suspected terrorists believed living in the country be handed over.

However, Pakistani President Asif Zardari said any of the 20 suspects wanted by India would be tried in Pakistan if there is evidence of wrongdoing.

Zardari said he would "look into all the possibility of any proof" about the suspects sought by India and insisted they would be dealt with under Pakistani law.

"At the moment, these are just names of individuals — no proof and no investigation," he said Tuesday in an interview with CNN's Larry King. "If we had the proof, we would try them in our courts and we would try them in our land and we would sentence them."

That's even as Pakistan and NATO face an ongoing threat from the Islamists and Taliban that continue harassing NATO convoys to Afghanistan. Pakistan is between a rock and a hard place as they've spend years placating and playing to the Islamists and the Islamists have had free reign in the frontier provinces and have set up a parallel existence whereby they openly train young men to be jihadis at madrassas throughout the country. Any attempt to crack down on the Islamists and the terrorists who carried out the Mumbai attacks will necessarily affect the ability of the government to govern, and Zardari will fall into the same trap that Pervez Musharraf did before him - alternating between appeasement and crackdown to remain in power. Zardari will do just enough to muddle along, but it means that the terrorists will continue to find Pakistan an inviting safe haven to train and plot future attacks.

UPDATE:
The Indian government has also announced who they believe was behind the attacks.

A terrorist chieftain in Pakistan masterminded the Mumbai massacre and kept in touch with the 10 attackers by satellite phone, Indian police believe.

They said Yusuf Muzammil, head of anti-Indian terror operations for the notorious Lashkar-e-Taibe, or LeT group, was identified by the only one of the 10 Mumbai attackers to survive, The Wall Street Journal reported.

His claim was backed up by a satellite phone left behind by the attackers in the fishing trawler they hijacked to reach Mumbai.

The phone's records showed calls were made to Muzammil and four other LeT henchmen in the two days before the slaughter.

India is demanding that Pakistan hand over Muzammil and 19 others suspected of plotting the slaughter that killed 171 people in India's financial capital last week.

But Pakistan has not responded to the demand, which threatens to escalate the powderkeg standoff.

UPDATE:
The Times of India notes that the US warns that if Pakistan doesn't go after terrorists and their training camps, not only will the US continue its practice of carrying out airstrikes against terrorists, but that it would back India should it contemplate actions of its own:

The United States has set the stage for punitive internationally-backed strikes by India against terrorist camps in Pakistan if Islamabad does not act first to dismantle them by rejecting President Zardari’s alibi that non-state actors were responsible for the last week’s carnage in Mumbai.

The game-changer, outlined by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, among others, robs Islamabad of the fig leaf that Zardari used in his interview on Larry King Live that ''stateless actors'' are holding the whole world hostage and Pakistan was not to blame. Rice said in effect that the excuse does not absolve Pakistan responsibility for terrorist acts that originate from its territory,“ Rice said.

Although US officials have not outright approved immediate punitive Indian strikes against terrorist targets in Pakistan, it is clear Rice has bought time for Islamabad to prove its bonafides. Pakistan has a ''special responsibility'' and needs to act ''urgently'' she said, even as India has indicated it will wait for a Pakistani response to its demands before any punitive action.

In Washington, experts pressed the administration to expand the scope of punitive strikes to an international level to avoid making it an India-Pakistan issue, particularly since the death toll included citizens of ten countries.