example of mis-communication

In a show of miscommunication if not outright discord between Washington and New Delhi, an Indian intelligence team
returned home on Tuesday after being denied access to question two Pakistani expatriates accused of plotting terrorist attacks in India.

The Indian team had rushed to the US after the FBI last month apprehended Dave Headley alias Daood Gilani and Rana Tawassur in hopes of questioning them about their links to Pakistani terrorist organizations outlined in the FBI affidavit, and the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. But after cooling their heels in Washington DC for nearly a week while US authorities processed their request, the Indian side was told the two suspects could not be questioned by outside agencies under US laws. The team did not even go to Chicago, whether the two accused are in detention.

New Delhi is furious at the snub, but put on a smiley face, ascribing the setback to "procedural" and "bureaucratic" delays. While acknowledging that US authorities did share a "fair amount of information" on the case while the team was in Washington DC, sources said the US attitude contrasted sharply with the kind of cooperation India offered to the US investigators in the 26/11 Mumbai case.

The FBI was allowed to question Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, the lone survivor of the jihadi squad that killed 172 people, for nine hours last December. Subsequently, an FBI agent also testified in the trial court via videolink.

It appears that the Indian team was not accorded the same courtesies, attesting to a long history of spotty cooperation going back to the Mumbai bomb blasts of 1993. Asked why the Indian intel team was rushed to the US without first ascertaining if there will be full access, sources said events were moving very fast and New Delhi did not want to waste any time in getting people in place to get as much information as possible.

But Washington had legal issues in terms of proving access to the accused, something which the FBI liaison at the US Embassy in New Delhi does not appear to have foreseen. The FBI had not returned calls seeking the US version of the snafu at the time of writing and the Indian Embassy declined to comment on the matter.

There is also suspicion in the intelligence analysts' community that Washington is trying to protect its lines of cooperation with Islamabad at the expense of India, in the process obfuscating Pakistan's complicity in terrorism. In the FBI affidavit, US investigators have named Ilyas Kashmiri, one of the Pakistani contacts of the accused Headley and Rana, but left two other contacts unnamed, describing them merely as LeT Member A and Individual A. Suspicion in spook circles is Individual A belongs to the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI and the US is trying not to embarrass Pakistan, whose cooperation it needs to carry forward its war on al-Qaida, Taliban and allied extremists.

Such kid glove treatment of Pakistan at the expense of Indian blood has been criticized by two scholars in a recent paper. "Too often US officials have sought to downplay instances when Pakistan has failed to cooperate with US counterterrorism efforts in order to protect other channels of cooperation," Lisa Curtis and Ted Bromund of the Heritage Foundation said in a paper released Monday. "The US and the UK need to convince Pakistan that cases against terrorists who attack India should be treated no differently than cases against terrorists who act in other parts of the world."

Seeking "consistent policies toward Pakistan that hold the country's officials accountable for stopping all support to terrorists," their paper said "connections among al-Qaeda, the Kashmir-focused terrorist groups, and the Pakistani security establishment are troubling and pose a direct security threat to Britain, the US, and other Western democracies. The US and Britain should continue to pressure the Pakistan government to shut down Pakistan-based terrorist groups, such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, which increasingly threaten Pakistan's own stability."

"The US and the UK also need to address forthrightly Pakistani noncooperation against terrorist targets. Both Washington and London seek counterterrorism partnerships with Pakistan, but they need to be willing to tell their publics when efforts to cooperate with Pakistan fail," they said.