India keeps doubts to itself on Kabul attack

With the intention of reviving peace talks with Pakistan, India is being extremely cautious about jumping to conclusions before investigations into the terrorist strike in Kabul last week are
completed.

But senior Indian officials indicated that prime minister Manmohan Singh's hopes of reviving bilateral engagement with Pakistan will be abandoned if there is decisive evidence of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) involvement.

In fact, while Singh spoke in Riyadh about walking the extra mile to mend fences with Pakistan, he had the rider that Islamabad had to act on terror.

Despite the best of intentions, Singh cannot ignore domestic public opinion.

Preliminary indications suggest that the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which was responsible for last year’s car bomb crash on the perimeter of the Indian embassy compound, or the Haqqani network, which carried out the July 2008 embassy bombings, are responsible for the attack on Indians at the guesthouse on Friday.
Both are close to the Pakistani army establishment, mainly the ISI. Yet, New Delhi has kept its doubts to itself, waiting for the final report.

The United States, which has been pushing India and Pakistan to begin engagement, hopes that the final Kabul terror investigation does not point to the ISI.

US special envoy for Af-Pak Richard Holbrooke, keeping in mind his country’s interests, refused to accept that the Kabul attack was aimed at Indians. This despite the fact that the terrorists went to a guesthouse frequented by Indians working on projects in Afghanistan, and also that they went from room to room to make sure they got their targets.

“They were foreigners, non-Indian foreigners hurt. It was a soft target. Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Holbrooke told reporters in Washington.

“I understand why everyone in Pakistan and India always focuses on the other. But please, let’s not draw a conclusion for which there’s no proof,” Holbrooke said. However, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s intelligence service was quoted as saying that his agency had evidence that Pakistanis, specifically the LeT, were involved in the February 26 attacks.

Holbrooke stressed that India and Pakistan have legitimate security interests in the region. Holbrooke said, “If one country says the other has no interest, it’s hard to have a dialogue. That’s why (US) president (Barack) Obama has said we encourage any sort of dialogue between the two countries, and Afghanistan is not the core of the issue, but is a part of the issue.”

This is an obvious reference to India and Pakistan’s clash of interest in Afghanistan. The Pakistani military is insisting that Indian presence in Afghanistan is distracting its attention from fighting al-Qaeda and the Taliban. India, it says, is involved in destabilising Pakistan from its consulates in Herat, Kandahar, Mazar-e-Sharif and Jalalabad. Its aim is to get India to roll back its consulates from these places.

Holbrooke also spoke of the Indus water and differences between the countries on water-sharing.