Indian Politics & Policy Volume 1, Number 2, Fall 2018 | Page 19

Indian Politics & Policy
Armed with AK-56 automatic assault
rifles, pistols, hand grenades, and improvised
explosive devices (IEDs), and
supplied with satellite phones and GPS
sets, 104 they murdered 166 people 105 and
wounded more than 300 in a 60-hour
rampage. They departed from Karachi
by boat, hijacked an Indian vessel at
sea, arrived in Mumbai under cover of
darkness, split into four teams, and systematically
carried out their assaults at
multiple locations, including the luxury
Oberoi-Trident and Taj Mahal Palace
hotels; a major railroad station, the Chhatrapati
Shivaji Terminus; a high-end
restaurant popular with tourists, the
Leopold Cafe; and a hostel run by the
Jewish Chabad-Lubavich movement. 106
The terrorists were directed during the
attacks in real time by LeT handlers in
Pakistan, and live television coverage
added to the shock value of the assaults.
Similar to the way Americans remember
“9/11,” Indians recall the Mumbai carnage
simply as “26/11.” The attacks did
not ignite a full-blown crisis like Twin
Peaks; nor did they set off an Indo-Pakistani
military conflict like Kargil. However,
“there was a sense of crisis, even if
less severe than in previous confrontations.”
107 A subsequent U.S. Ambassador
to India, Timothy Roemer, said of 26/11:
“[the terrorists] almost started a war
between Pakistan and India that might
have resulted in some kind of a nuclear
war.” 108 At a minimum, the massacre
generated extreme pressure on the government
of Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh to retaliate against Pakistan with
military force, which in turn stoked escalating
Indo-Pakistani tensions. 109 The
U.S. ambassador to India at the time of
the attacks, David Mulford, characterized
the prevailing atmosphere in New
Delhi as “war fever.” 110
The aura of looming confrontation
was intensified by a bizarre incident
on November 28, while the attacks
were ongoing. A person claiming to be
Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab
Mukherjee made a telephone call
to Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari,
in which the caller threatened war. 111
Then-U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice recalls being told by a National
Security Council (NSC) staffer the next
day that “the Pakistanis say the Indians
have warned them that they’ve decided
to go to war.” Rice was surprised to
hear this, as Indian officials had been
emphasizing “their desire to defuse the
situation.” When she finally reached
Mukherjee by telephone, he was away
from New Delhi campaigning in his
constituency. He said to her: “Would I
be outside New Delhi if we were about
to launch a war?” 112 For U.S. officials,
the mysterious telephone call “conjured
the specter of Pakistani military action
to preempt a feared Indian attack.” One
NSC official recollected that “the fake
phone call recounted by Pak officials
changed everything—risked having all
spin out of control. The key was that we
were confident that India did not say
this [that India was preparing to attack
Pakistan], but they [Pakistani officials]
were all ramped up. Our job was to
bring them down.” 113
Discussions between Indian leaders
focused on India’s “options, the likely
Pakistani response, and the escalation
that could occur.” 114 Senior national-se-
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