The Seoul Times

Terror and Mumbai have become as inseparable as Siamese twins, at least since 1993, when 250 people died in bomb attacks carried out as a revenge for the demolition of the ancient Babri Mosque by Hindu fanatics. In 2006, more than 180 people died when bombs planted in seven suburban railway stations and several trains went off. Between 1993 and 2006, there were many explosions, but the latest carnage on November 26 was planned and executed with terrific precision. Over 200 people – including some top and able police officers — lost their lives and many hundreds were wounded.

There are two important aspects here that are extremely worrying. The Mumbai atrocity will have serious implications for not just India but also the entire world in their fight against terror.

Despite the fact that the Pakistani media has began a virulent campaign against what it terms the Indian media's premature conclusion about the neighboring nation's hand in the Mumbai bloodshed, it is quite clear now that this is the case. The lone Muslim ultra who was taken alive in Mumbai, Ajmal Amir Kasab (barely 21), has confessed that he and 23 others were trained by the Lashkar-e-Toiba in Pakistan. The plot was hatched in Karachi, and some 10 or 12 from the group took the sea route via Porbunder (where the apostle of peace and non-violence, Mahatma Gandhi, was born) to Mumbai, India's financial capital.

What could have been the motive of this attack? According to one strong theory, the mayhem was intended to drive a wedge between the two nuclear neighbors, India and Pakistan, who have been of late trying to work out a solution for peaceful coexistence. Pakistan's new civilian President, Asif Zardari, has been displeasing his Army and the Inter Services Intelligence (whose 100 percent subsidiary is the Lashkar) by courting New Delhi. He angered his own mullahs and jehadis by terming Kashmiri militants terrorists.

However, Zardari appears to have lost the battle, at least for the time being. The ISI's political arm was disbanded some days ago, and the organization's chief cancelled his trip to India, despite Prime Minister Manmohan Singh requesting him to aid the investigations. Instead, a junior functionary of the ISI was sent, and this was decided after a midnight meeting between Zardari and Pakistan's Army Chief, Pervez Kiyani, a former ISI top man himself. This affirms how weak Pakistan's civilian government really is.

So, round one went to Lashkar, which now hopes that the rest of its plan would fall in place. Islamabad told Washington last Saturday that it would move 100,000 of its soldiers from its Afghan border if India makes provocative moves. Such shift, if it happens, would grossly undermine the US-NATO war in Afghanistan against the Al-Qaeda and Taliban, the kingpins of global terror. It is quite plausible that the Mumbai explosions were aimed at precisely this: getting rid of Pakistani pressure on the Afghan border by diverting Islamabad's attention toward New Delhi. Once, Pakistan returns to its "hostile posture" vis-à-vis India, it leaves the field clear for the Al-Qaeda and Taliban to pursue their agenda.

A second aspect of the Mumbai disaster is the kind of renewed hatred it has evoked in India. The existing rift between the country's majority Hindus and the Minority Muslims has only get deeper. Kashmir is a wound that still festers, and last year 800 people were killed there in a State that is claimed by both neighbors as their own. Tension is high in Kashmir after a recent election which those fighting for independent Kashmir wanted to boycott.

Elsewhere, Indian Muslims are not as well off as the Hindus or Christians. The Muslims fare poorly in education, jobs and income, and have been routinely subjected to slaughter. In 2002, 2000 Muslims died in a State orchestrated genocide in Gujarat; the number is said to have been actually closer to 10,000! The guilty are yet to be punished. That killings followed allegations that a Muslim mob had been responsible for the deaths of Hindu activists travelling by train. The Mumbai incident can well lead to another round of tit-for-tat reaction.

A far bigger threat comes from the premise that Mumbai blasts could well be a turning point for the Al-Qaeda, which has been losing ground in Indonesia (certainly after the 2002 Bali explosions the terrorists have been in retreat) and Iraq where killing of Muslims by Muslims extremists led to Sunni awakening. Murdering fellow Muslims was a major blunder of the Al-Qaeda. But in places such as India. where Muslims feel alienated, the group can succeed by feeding on the Islamic sentiment. This worked in the U.K., but if it does in India, the implications can be frightening.

Gautaman Bhaskaran is a veteran film critic and writer who has covered Cannes and other major international festivals, like Venice, Berlin, Montreal, Melbourne, and Fukuoka over the past two decades. He has been to Cannes alone for 15 years. He has worked in two of India’s leading English newspapers, The Hindu and The Statesman, and is now completing an authorized biography of India’s auteur-director, Adoor Gopalakrishnan. Penguin International will publish the book, whose research was funded by Ford Foundation.