26/11 The unseen facts

The history of the Indian sub-continent has always been filled with a deep animosity between two of its largest neighbors; India and Pakistan. But the night of 26th Nov 2008 wrote a new chapter in the history of the sub-continent. A new low had been reached in the chapters of humanity and a new high had been reached in the levels of tolerance for extremism. The asymmetric warfare that had been going on between the two neighbors reached new heights. While India struggled to contain as much as it could, the terrorist who unleashed the terror on its soils, power mongers hurried around the corridors of power to make sense of this new battle zone between the two neighbors.

Many people have gone to lengths debating the role of Pakistan’s notorious ISI in the said event, some argued that the military precision by which the attack happened, could not have been done without significant state co-operation. Yet while debating all these issues, one fails to realize, under what circumstances this heinous crime had been committed. For that we need to go back a few years in time. Ever since Sept 11 2001, and the starting of the War on Terror, Pakistan has been involved as the key ally of the so called coalition of the willing, its troops had been amassed in large numbers on its western borders to fight the so called Islamic extremist, the ones lead by the famous “Taliban”. But over the period of the war, having sustained huge losses in terms of not just operating expenses but also human resources, the average Pakistani and his comrade in the Army have begun to ask questions. Why were they killing their own people? Their fellow Muslims, people with whom they had no differences in faith and belief. Especially after the fact that the Pakistan Army over the years have been groomed to fight the one and only The “Saffron Bandits” to their East, the overwhelming loss and death of fellow Muslims on its Western borders did not quite go down well with its people as well as the Army. Having seen India gradually grow its influence in Afghanistan, a country which Pakistan regarded as its “Strategic Depth”, it was quite natural for the Pakistani general to grow insecure. For them, while their own forces were killing and getting killed by fellow Muslims, the Indians were continuously growing more and more influence in their strategic depth. Moreover the coming of the new establishment in Washington D.C further complicated matters, with a vocal US President increasingly aware of the safe heavens of the Islamic Insurgents, and his vow to finish them all. The time had come for Pakistan to finally act, to relieve the pressures off its back, and re-focus the world attention on the great ball game that it had been playing ever since its birth.

The 26/11 attack on Mumbai, was instrumental in relieving the pressure off Pakistan, as now, it got to play its favorite plank. The big bad Indians were about to attack Pakistan with surgical strikes, and Pakistan as a country had to do everything possible to protect its national integrity. No sooner had the last terrorist in Mumbai been killed, Pakistan and not India was now the victim. It finally got the justification to remove its non – performing military formations from the Al-Qaeda infested Western Borders, and bring it back to the eastern borders against India where it was always meant to be. The world went back to hectic diplomacy between Delhi and Islamabad to cool off the Nuclear conflagration between the two neighbors, and the people and Army of Pakistan went back to their favorite time pass, India bashing. As for the innocent people who died in the Mumbai tragedy, well they lived in a country with more than a billion people, as each day passes by the memories of that fateful night and the people it took with it will forever go down into history of the dusty South Asian subcontinent. Just as everybody else before them.