On the trail of Pakistan's Taliban
The authorities in Pakistan have often seemed in cahoots with home-grown terrorists. Not any more. Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark report from Islamabad and the border badlands as a new intelligence unit gets serious about tackling the bombers
Adrian Levy, The Guardian, 10 January 2009
As the first reports of explosions at the Taj and Oberoi hotels in Mumbai reached Islamabad just after 9pm on November 26, Pakistan's counter-terrorism investigators twitched. Later that night, CCTV cameras inside Mumbai's Victoria railway station relayed footage of a blood-spattered concourse and the faces of some of the gunmen. The guests fleeing from the hotels told TV reporters that their assailants were speaking Urdu and were hunting down British and American passport holders. Almost immediately, over the border, the Pakistani investigators began pulling out files and photographs that accompanied the "Red Book" - their most-wanted list.
Pakistan's foreign minister condemned the attacks and expressed his sympathy to the families of the 173 killed. Even before India began making accusations - and despite subsequent Pakistani denials - detectives in Islamabad privately feared the outrage had Pakistani roots and might even have been rehearsed two months earlier, when the five-star Marriott Hotel in Islamabad had been obliterated. It all sounded grimly familiar: the methodology, the soft targets, the singling out of westerners.
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