Whenever New Delhi points a finger at Pakistan in the aftermath of a terrorist attack in India, a weary world seems to say, “Here we go again!” The old enmity between the two countries can tire spectators who often quickly dismiss Indian accusations of Pakistani malfeasance as little other than political recriminations. Yet, the latest terrorist assault in Bombay leaves no doubt about the authenticity of the Indian charge.

The West would do well to take notice that this bloodbath was not the work of homegrown militants aggrieved by India’s failure to integrate its Muslim minority but of the dangerous Pakistani terrorist group, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), whose wider goals threaten not only secular India but also the West and even Pakistan itself.

The early conclusion that the attack in Bombay was the work of disaffected domestic protesters was arguably consoling because, if true, the threat to the international community would indeed be minimal. Moreover, the contention that New Delhi’s terrorism problem is largely domestic marginalises the extent of foreign — primarily Pakistani — involvement in India’s “million mutinies” and accentuates the centrality of the unsettled dispute over Kashmir.

These inferences are false. All evidence points to LeT as the perpetrators of the killings in Bombay conducted under the nom de guerre “Deccan Mujahideen” and reflecting its classic modus operandi: suicidal attacks, but not suicide, involving small squads of highly-armed individuals, intent on inflicting the largest numbers of casualties at symbolic sites. Such violence is emphatically not directed at remedying the grievances of India’s Muslims or resolving the dispute over Kashmir. Although LeT has long operated in the disputed state of Kashmir, it’s not a Kashmiri organisation. Rather, it consists primarily of Pakistani Punjabis financed, trained, armed and abetted by the Pakistani intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

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