Post-Mumbai Pakistan under siege from militants

As he watched elite Pakistani troops go through their paces on the border, Fateh Ali insisted he wants peace with Pakistan's giant neighbour, a year since India's worst terror outrage.

But as he pondered New Delhi's demands for a crackdown on anti-India militants while Pakistan faces its own battle for survival against the Taliban, Ali's sympathy began to fade.

Mumbai Taj Hotel in blaze. Courtesy: Internet

"There is a lot of terrorism in Pakistan, each and every day there are fatal attacks," said the 30-year-old insurance surveyor at a parade of immaculately dressed soldiers cheered on by people shouting patriotic slogans.

"We have more terrorism than India."

It is a year since the Mumbai attackers sailed in boats from Pakistan, an impoverished nuclear-armed Muslim country which has had fraught relations with India for decades.

New Delhi said all 10 gunmen were Pakistanis, blamed the country's banned militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and accused state agencies of involvement.

Since last November's attacks in Mumbai that killed 166 people, more than 1,000 people have died in bombings across Pakistan, leaving Islamabad neither willing nor able to crack down on anti-India militants.

In the last year, hardline Taliban fighters have made territorial gains in the northwest. Increasingly brazen Taliban attacks have embarrassed the powerful military and killed scores of soldiers as troops wage battle on multiple fronts.

Pakistan's security establishment and the civilian government, elected nine months before black-clad Islamist commandos went on the rampage in Mumbai, have never felt more vulnerable.

"One thing that India must understand is that non-state actors have become very strong and the writ of the state has almost withered away," said Tahir Kamran, head of history at Lahore's Government College University.

Under immense pressure from the United States, which is fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, Islamabad has started to get tough on Pakistani Taliban, leaving little time and inclination to crackdown on anti-India groups.

"At the moment its priority is the Taliban, they are number one," said retired army general and political analyst Talat Masood.

But Pakistan still regards India as the far greater threat to its existence and analysts in Pakistan argue that tensions on the eastern border destabilise the country further.

Pakistan was angered that US regional pointman Richard Holbrooke was given the title special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and not India - which in Pakistan is seen as the root of so many of the nation's problems.

A crackdown on anti-India militant groups would require "some very major decisions and change (in) previous policies", Masood told AFP.

"This is creating a difficult situation in Afghanistan, it is creating a difficult situation with India, and Pakistan gets the feeling of being under siege," he added.

During the Cold War and with US funding, Pakistan's military Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) trained Jihadi groups to fight the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation of neighbouring Afghanistan.

When the Russians were ousted, Pakistan kept many groups on its payroll to fight Indian forces in disputed Kashmir and Western officials still charge that elements in ISI continue to support militants.

Indian officials demanded Pakistan hand over 20 people they said were behind the attacks, including LeT founder Hafiz Saeed, who heads Islamic charity Jamaat-ud-Dawa, widely seen as a front for the militant group.

But it took Islamabad nearly a month and a half to even acknowledge the sole surviving Mumbai gunman - Mohammed Ajmal Kasab - was Pakistani.

Islamabad refused to hand anyone over, instead launching a showy crackdown on Jamaat-ud-Dawa last December. Reports say it is still operating.

Saeed - who says he quit LeT in 2002 and denies any links to terrorism - was placed under house arrest, but released in June.

Pakistan has put seven men on trial including the alleged Mumbai mastermind Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi and key LeT operative Zarar Shah, but the hearings are going on behind closed doors, and India is not satisfied.

"It is certainly not doing enough," said retired Indian major general Afsir Karim. "Pakistan should have dismantled the LeT camps - instead we see the LeT working under different names.

"The civilian government does not seem strong enough to do so. There are multiple power centres there - that makes things that much more difficult."

AFP