The Geopolitical Significance of Mumbai Blasts and Response of the International Community

Politically speaking, if the 26 November 2008 attacks in Mumbai were carried out by militants as it appears, the Indian government had little choice, but to blame them on Pakistan. We can also see quite clearly that this was a carefully planned, well-executed attack. Given this, the Indian governemnt had two choices:

• It would have said that the perpetrators were a domestic group and tried to carry out covert action against Pakistan. In that case, it would have been held accountable for a failure of enormous proportions in security and law enforcement. It would have been charged with being unable to protect the public.
• It could link the attack to an outside power: Pakistan. In that case it can hold a nation-state fully responsible for the attack or has declared it unable to control its jihadists etc. Then use the crisis atmosphere to strengthen the government’s internal position by invoking nationalism. Politically this was a much preferable outcome for the Indian government, and so it was the most likely course of action.

Given the above analysis, without any doubt, India was left with no option but to start up with the blame game and through that gain sympathies of the international community. By doing so, india not only planned to get away with this huge failure of its internal security and democracy but also got another opportunity to malign the name of Pakistan. But fortunately or unfortunately, everything didn’t go that well as planned by India and the response of international community instead of going in favor of India, was more favorable for Pakistan. If we talk about the super power, America realizes and acknowledges Pakistan’s effort in eliminating terrorism. The Muslim world has always been a back bone of Pakistan and they took all measures to convince the world that Pakistan is not involved in Mumbai blasts. China, the time tested friend of Pakistan played its due role and put pressure on India to maintain peace in the region. Above all, as India has failed to come up with any solid evidence against Pakistan, it becomes clear to the whole world that the manner in which the Indians jumped to the gun and began firing on all cylinders to drag Pakistan into the mess was clearly motivated by the desire to capitalize on the Mumbai tragedy and derive political mileage from it. Moreover, India thought that by cashing the incident of Mumbai blast they can play down the Kashmir issue and call every Kashmiri, a terrorist. But all their hopes shattered, when the foreign secretary of UK, David Miliband in New Delhi opposed the Indian stand on Jan.13 and instead put pressure on India to resolve the Kashmir issue. Lastly with the unmasking of the invovlement of Col. Parasad Purohit behind the Samjhota Express tragedy, the real aim and agenda of India has also been unmasked before the world community.