Mumbai massacre complicates Obama's plans for Pakistan in the fight against al Qaeda

The Washington Post reports the last gunman has been killed ending the Mumbai massacre:

Indian officials said they now believe that at least 15 gunmen carried out the operation after reaching Mumbai by sea. After an interrogation of one of the attackers, Indian intelligence officials said they suspected that a Pakistani Islamist group, Lashkar-i-Taiba, was responsible. An Indian intelligence document from 2006 obtained by The Washington Post said members of the group had been trained in maritime assault.

Authorities said that the death toll had risen to 195 as more bodies were discovered and that 295 people were wounded, the Associated Press reported, in attacks on the hotels, the Jewish center and several other sites in Mumbai.

The Associated Press provides the following video report:

CNN is more cautious reporting officials were not ready to declare the operation over until they finished their room-by-room search of the Taj Mahal Hotel.

The New York Times also reported evidence suggests Lashkar-e-Taiba, or possibly another Pakistani group, Jaish-e-Muhammad were responsible for the terror attack:

Lashkar-e-Taiba on Thursday denied any responsibility for the terrorist strikes. The group is thought by American intelligence agencies to have received some training and logistical support in the past from Pakistan’s powerful spy service, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, but American officials said Friday that there was no evidence that the Pakistani government had any role in the Mumbai attacks.

American and Indian officials for years have blamed Lashkar-e-Taiba for a campaign of violence against high-profile targets throughout India, including the December 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament building in New Delhi and an August 2007 strike at an amusement park in Hyderabad.

At times, Indian officials have also said that Jaish-e-Muhammad was responsible for the 2001 attack on the Parliament building.

Haaretz also reports the prime suspect is Lashkar-e-Taiba:

Pakistani intelligence founded, aided and cultivated this and other militant organizations as part of its battle against India in the contested region of Kashmir. It was only in 2003, after 9/11 and under heavy pressure from India and the United States, that the organization and similar ones were outlawed in Pakistan.

[. . .]

In the past, the group had strong links to Osama Bin Laden, and its members trained in Al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan. Abu Zubaydah, considered one of the most senior Al-Qaida officials being held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, was captured in March 2002 in a joint operation by United States and Pakistani intelligence forces at a Lashkar a-Tayeb safe house.

Pakistan must do more to fight terrorists and control its intelligence service. Pakistan has never been a reliable ally in the War Against Islamic Extremists. In fact the U.S. coerced  Pakistan to support the War.

The Mumbai massacre will at least slow the movement of India and Pakistan toward improved relations:

Reconciliation between India and Pakistan has emerged as a basic tenet in the approaches to foreign policy of President-elect Barack Obama, and the new leader of Central Command, Gen. David H. Petraeus. The point is to persuade Pakistan to focus less of its military effort on India, and more on the militants in its lawless tribal regions who are ripping at the soul of Pakistan.

Preventing better relations between the two hostile and nuclear-armed nations may be exactly the goal of the Mumbai terror attacks.

After the 2001 terrorists assault on the Indian Parliament, India said Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence had backed the operation. For the next year the countries teetered on the brink of a war that could have involved nuclear weapons.

Richard Fernandez sums it all up nicely. He writes that because the U.S. seeks Pakistan's help against al Qaeda and the Taliban from a position of weakness, Pakistan is strengthened at the expense of India:

Pakistan can continue to dangle the chimerical carrot in front of Obama. ‘Hold back India and we will help you with Bin Laden’ Then they’ll turn around and hit New Delhi in the face and there won’t be a thing India can do about it.