Opinion | As Tahawwur Rana Talks, Pakistan Had Better Lend An Ear

One can hardly say that "the eagle has landed" in the manner of spy thrillers. Intel coding for movement to India of a despised terrorist would be more like, "the carrion crow has been shackled". For, Tahawwur Rana was not even a terrorist who risked his life to commit violence. He stayed in the shadows, pushing and guiding others, from his comfortable home in Chicago. But make no mistake. He's critical for a clear understanding of what happened not just before the Mumbai attacks, but after it. He was, after all, arrested only a year later, and he and David Headley began to operate together in 1997. That's nearly 12 years of information. The Intel guys are going to have fun.

Let's take Tahawwur Rana apart - apart from the usual banalities. That he was from an elite family, and was able to study in the Pakistan army's Hassan Abdal cadet college is clear. He also went for trips with fellow student Daud Gilani, or David Headley, to the tribal areas, where the latter at least was involved in moving drugs, besides being a heroin addict himself. But Rana's military ID proved useful. In 1997, Rana migrated to Canada, but Headley's statement that he was a deserter seemed to be taken for granted. It is highly unlikely that the ISI would trust a deserter with details of one of the most sensational attacks in terrorism history. In terms of facts, what we do know from court documents is that he set up an Immigration Agency in Chicago and was conniving with Headley even after he was arrested by the Drug Enforcement Agency, and then made their 'source', which he was well aware of.

Headley notes, "I told Dr Rana the entire plan of the LeT and lSI, and he readily agreed to provide (help)." Rana then arranged for all documentation for Headley to travel to India, and set up an Immigration 'office' using falsified documents, even securing a five-year visa. All that is punishable under Indian law. But, more importantly, when Headley told him about the Lashkar-e-Taiba's plans for the Mumbai attack, "He smiled and laughed". Well, he's not laughing now.

Rana As Confidant And Enabler

Worse was to follow. Just a month before the Mumbai attacks, Headley was approached by a person who still remains mysterious. This was a Sajid Mir, certainly part of the ISI inner circle of agents, and who was far more operationally secretive than the others. He was a critical link in getting Headley to plan an attack in Denmark against the Jyllands-Posten newspaper, which had published a series of cartoons on the Prophet that led to huge protests in Pakistan. In that attack, the plans were gory in the extreme. The idea was to chop the targets' heads off and throw them in the street. Clearly, violence came very easily to Rana. Throughout the five or more visits of Headley to India, and his 'unofficial' visits to meet his new wife in Dubai, Rana remained in the picture. Headley did not choose to tell his handlers about any of this. 

Clearly, therefore, Rana was extremely close to Headley. Presumably, he also told him about his various reconnaissance plans, including of the National Defence College, the Shiv Sena Bhawan, and the Pune army installations that Headley says he has "forgotten" about. And then, the most interesting of all: about a week before the Mumbai attack, Rana arrived in Mumbai, travelling also to Ahmedabad, Delhi, Kochi, Agra, Hapur with his wife. One now expects that he will be taken to all these places and questioned closely not just about who he met, but also about whom he spoke to, and who facilitated him. All that is evidence.

Getting Convictions

Now to his extradition and what he is likely to be convicted for. Rana was arrested in 2009, nearly seven years after he first began his association with Headley and Lashkar. Headley was arrested earlier on his way to Pakistan, together with some 13 surveillance videos at Chicago airport in 2009. In other words, while it seems the preparation for the Mumbai attack that was going on for years remained unknown, the short span of planning for Denmark was found out. Rana was sentenced to 168 months, which were further reduced after a plea. It was somewhere during this time that India asked for extradition, and, in 2020, a California judge finally issued a provisional warrant for this. Further rounds of pleas citing "double jeopardy" were rejected by court after court, and for five years, Rana did every possible thing to avoid extradition, citing danger to himself, illness, etc. 

However, the important thing to note throughout this is that while his connection with the Lashkar-e-Taiba and others in Pakistan - including one 'Major Iqbal' - has been cited by Headley, he himself seems to have kept silent on his ISI connections throughout the trial period. That means he's tough as nails. Unless India has its own, or access to intercepts showing his specific involvement with the terrorist act itself, the charges of assistance to terrorists are going to be difficult to prove. There is, however, one bright spot. The whole investigation involves not just India but also all those countries whose nationals were killed or injured in the Mumbai attack. That includes Britain, Israel and Australia, and, of course, Americans, all of whom were deliberately picked out by terrorists on the instructions of Sajid Mir. These states have expressed their support for India, and it can be expected that there will be considerable intelligence-sharing to secure the conviction of Rana.

In the final analysis, this is about incredibly intricate planning by Pakistan. Remember, Headley himself was never implicated in any buying of explosives, weapons, or in any violent activity. In other words, the Pakistanis evaded interception by "outsourcing" critical enabling activity to foreign passport holders, and then left the actual killing to an entirely different bunch of illiterate goons. Even more notably, almost the entire lot, including Headley, Rana and persons like Abdur Rehman, were all formerly with the Pakistan army. Rehman, for instance, was from the Pakistan Military Academy, while the other two were from the elite Hassan Abdal Cadet school. Ilyas Kashmiri, a key member of the group also involved in the Danish attack plans, was possibly from the ultra-elite Special Services Group (SSG). All this is apart from the regularly serving ISI officers, including one Brigadier. In other words, it's only likely that the jihadi-army complex is deeply interlinked. Even with the best of intentions - and this is rare on the ground - it's going to be difficult to separate these. And this constitutes, in fact, the greatest threat to the present Army Chief, Gen. Asim Munir. It was this group that had plans to assassinate General Musharraf, though they were quashed by the annoyed Lashkar chief Zaki ur Rehman Lakhvi. 

In sum, Pakistan should be the most interested in the details that Tahawwur Rana will reveal. It just might be to their advantage.

(Tara Kartha is a former director of the National Security Council Secretariat)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author