NY Times: Victims of '93 Bombay Terror Wary of U.S. Motives

[Harshal Chhaya <>]

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This article looks at the current US-Pak-Afghan situation through the
eyes of people who experienced the 1993 Bombay blasts. The last sentence
is very telling.

- 'shal




http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/24/international/asia/24BOMB.html

Victims of '93 Bombay Terror Wary of U.S. Motives
By CELIA W. DUGGER
 
BOMBAY, Sept. 21 — This city, the financial capital of the world's most
populous democracy, knows the sudden horror of a terrorist attack that
seems to come from nowhere.

Eight years ago, as hundreds of brokers hustled to the manic rhythms of the
trading ring in the 28- story Bombay Stock Exchange, someone drove a car
into the basement and detonated a powerful bomb.

The blast sent a hailstorm of glass flying into the lanes around the
building. Shards sliced through the bodies of pushcart vendors. Then,
before anyone had time to assimilate the carnage, more bombs exploded in
swift succession across the city, killing more than 260 people and wounding
more than 700.

If any place should rejoice in America's declaration of war on terrorism,
it would seem to be Bombay, a city that has suffered its effects firsthand
and where many people have deep ties to the United States. 

Yet there is also a wariness here of America's motives in announcing that
every country must either stand with or against the United States as it
goes after terrorists and the states that harbor them.

India has accused Pakistani intelligence agents of sponsoring the bombings
in Bombay in 1993, a contention Pakistan has always denied. But to get at
America's No. 1 suspect, Osama bin Laden, the United States is working with
Pakistan, which many Indians regard as the principal incubator of terrorism
directed against them.

Some Indians think that despite its righteous call to arms, the world's
sole superpower is mainly interested in fighting the terrorists who struck
it, not the ones who hit them.

"What happened to the United States is deadly and sad," said Gaurav
Sanghvi, who was a 22-year- old broker in the stock exchange building on
the day of the blasts in 1993. "They keep talking about a war on terrorism,
but they keep asking Pakistan to help, and Pakistan supports terrorism."

The Bush administration's seemingly straightforward goal of defeating
global terrorism has inevitably enmeshed it in the tricky, complicated
realities of South Asia. "This is the world's fight," President Bush
declared. "This is civilization's fight."

But for India and Pakistan, the terms of the struggle are not that simple.
For years each of them has accused the other of sponsoring terrorism in
their battle for Kashmir, the Himalayan territory that both claim.

Now, when relations between India and America have been improving, the
United States faces a delicate diplomatic challenge to sustain Pakistan's
support for American military strikes into neighboring Afghanistan while
not alienating India.

The Indian government says it supports America in its hour of need, but the
strains of America's cooperation with Pakistan are showing. Prime Minister
Atal Behari Vajpayee said in an interview with The Times of India on
Thursday that Washington had not yet shown that "it was in a mood to focus
on India's bitter experience of terrorism on its own soil."

India would eventually like the United States to put pressure on Pakistan
to return those accused of carrying out the Bombay blasts — Muslim
gangsters from Bombay's underworld who India says now live in Karachi — and
to crack down on the Islamic religious schools and training camps in
Pakistan that India believes breed terrorists. But none of that is
happening, at least not now. Indian officials say no such request has been
made to the United States at this point. 

India wakes with numbing regularity to headlines that announce the latest
slaughter of innocents in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir, most
recently of beheaded Hindu priests and murdered shepherds. India blames the
killings on Islamic fundamentalist groups in the territory that it says are
supported by Pakistan. Pakistan denies it.

The Indian authorities have built a detailed circumstantial case laid out
in yellowing confidential documents that they say prove that Pakistan was
behind the Bombay attacks.

When Pakistan's military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, visited India in
July, India's home minister, L. K. Advani, raised the issue and the need
for an extradition treaty so that the accused, Dawood Ibrahim, could be
returned to India to face justice.

The general denied that Mr. Ibrahim was in Pakistan, but earlier this month
Newsline, a reputable Pakistani magazine, reported that the main suspects
charged in the Bombay blasts were living in Karachi "under fake names and
ID's, and provided protection by government agencies."

This city and the stock traders who were at the Bombay Stock Exchange when
the bomb exploded eight years ago seem to savor the ironies of the current
situation.

A banner draped on Marine Drive, a broad thoroughfare that sweeps along the
Arabian Sea, says, "Terrorist Attack Expensive Wake-Up Call for U.S.,"
capturing the sense here that the United States is finally enduring in one
ghastly, overwhelming incident what India has suffered in countless cruel
cuts for more than a decade.

"It's only when the police commissioner's house is robbed that strict
action is taken," said Rakesh Jhun jhunwala, an investor who was on the
trading floor when the bomb exploded on March 12, 1993.

American State Department reports annually chastise India for human rights
abuses in Kashmir, but leading American politicians are now demanding that
the C.I.A. again be empowered to hire shady operatives with violent pasts
and to assassinate evildoers.

"Generally the feeling here is that whenever there's a bomb blast, India is
asked, `Where is the proof Pakistan is involved?' " said Deena Mehta, a
stockbroker. "Now that it's happened in America's own backyard, they're not
asking for proof. They're just announcing that the finger points at
Afghanistan and planning to attack."

Still, there is a strong conviction among the peddlers and the brokers who
work in and around the stock exchange that India should help America.
Partly, it grows out of self- interest. The Afghan training camps that
America is likely to strike produce holy warriors battling India in
Kashmir, they say.

But there is another more personal undercurrent in the desire to help that
goes beyond politics. Many of the brokers interviewed had studied in the
United States or had friends or family there.

The number of people of Indian descent living in the United States has
doubled in the last decade to 1.7 million. They are linked to their Indian
friends and relatives by e-mail, Internet chat rooms and telephone. Scores
of those missing in the collapse of the World Trade Center are of Indian
origin, officials here say. 

"On the street level there are deep roots with America," said Ramesh
Damani, who studied and worked in California for a dozen years before
moving back to Bombay to run his own small brokerage firm. "The country of
aspiration is America. Everyone wants to go to America."

Sanat Dalal, dapper in a brilliant white safari suit, epitomizes the
contradictory tugs of feeling toward the United States. An autographed
portrait of Bill Clinton hangs on the wall of his sleek 12th-floor trading
office at the stock exchange. 

He unabashedly admires America's capitalist, individualistic ethos. His
son, who got his master's in business administration at the University of
Hartford, lives and works in Connecticut.

But like many Indians, Mr. Dalal seems baffled that the United States, the
second-largest democracy in the world, has turned to Pakistan, run by a
military government since a coup in 1999, rather than democratic,
pluralistic India. "Americans talk of democracy," he said, "but side with
dictators." 



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