Sweden joined the growing list of world nations directly accusing Pakistan of complicity in the Mumbai terror attacks of 26/11, through a statement by Foreign Minister Carl Bildt shortly after his meeting with his Pakistani counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi in Islamabad. In this connection, read British expert on South Asian affairs Linda S Heard in Online Journal, who writes of a growing international front against Pakistan.

That there was widespread dissatisfaction with the media, especially the visual media, in the aftermath of 26/11 was a given. This new Newswatch survey quantifies just how deep that dissatisfaction is — and throws up some surprises [52 per cent of all those surveyed believe Shobhaa De had no business being a TV talking head on the terror attacks, for example].

In that connection, also read former Beeb journalist Deepak Tripathi, who is caustic on the topic of India’s ‘neoliberal elite’.

A new poll by Gallup shows across the board support in Pakistan for tough moves against the terrorists in their midst. Significantly, in the NWFP that is seen as largely sympathetic to the jihadist ideology, 46 per cent of those polled said they favored tough actions by the Pakistan government, while only six percent was not in favor [48 percent fell in the don't know/can't say category]. From the report:

"Rising violence and the government's perceived ineffectiveness to
quell it may be the impetus behind the erosion in Pakistanis' general
feelings of personal security. The percentage of Pakistanis saying they
feel safe walking alone at night in the areas where they live has
dropped measurably within the past year, from 50 percent in June 2007
to 41 percent in October 2008.

Pakistanis' confidence in their local
police has also dropped precipitously. Now at 31 percent, Pakistanis'
confidence in their police has dropped 11 percentage points from 42
percent in 2007 and is the lowest Gallup has measured to date.

President Asif Ali Zardari, in a related development, says force is the only option Pakistan has against ‘power hungry militants’ seeking to impose their agenda on the masses.

The Hindu has Home Minister P Chidambaram explaining the rationale behind the proposed National Intelligence Agency. The money quote:

Though the agency would be set up under the Centre, it was laid down
clearly that law and order was primarily the domain of the State. The
Centre would make use of its power only under "extraordinary"
circumstances and depending on the gravity of the situation, he said.

“The agency will also have the powers to return the investigations
to the State, if it so thinks. We have struck a balance between the
right of the States and duties of the Centre to investigate."

When a State sent information to the Union government, the Centre
would decide within 15 days, having regard to the gravity of the
offence, whether it was fit to be taken up by the NIA.

Wait a minute, this is a law designed to deal with terrorist offences, correct? And terrorist offences are almost immediately identifiable as such, also correct? One common point that emerged out of 26/11 is that the government machinery responded with excruciating slowness, still correct?

So now we have a remedy: When something happens, the local cop shop files a report; it is then bumped up to the state government level; the state government in turn decides whether the NIA needs to be involved; if yes, the state government tells the Center; the Center then takes 15 days to decide whether to send the NIA…?

By the time the national investigative agency even arrives on the scene, under this procedure, the crime scene would have returned to normal, all traces of forensic evidence would have been lost or compromised — it is ironic that the government responds to the need for speed by slowing down the machinery even more.

Anyway, that is what we are going to get. The Lok Sabha passed the bill in record time [as always happens when a bill is rushed through in the aftermath of an emergency -- remember the Patriot Act, post 9/11?] — that is to say, it cleared a bill it had blocked earlier this year.

Investigations shift focus to the Indian end of 26/11 — specifically, to those who aided and abetted the terrorists with safe houses and other logistical support.

Pakistani officials say Zarar Shah, the communications chief of the LeT, is in its custody. However, they also contradict earlier reports that Masood Azhar of the Jaish-e-Mohammad has been placed under house arrest.

A series of attacks this month, culminating in the attack on a NATO supply convoy earlier this week, highlights the elephant in the living room of the Global War on Terror — the Taliban is steadily gaining ground, and its strategy is to hit at the NATO forces, cutting off supply lines and making its operations untenable. Bruce Riedel of the think tank Brookings examines the impact of 26/11 on the Afghanistan part of the GWOT.

Conventional wisdom says 26/11 showed all the hallmarks of prolonged planning, and such quality training that the terrorists were able to improvise on the fly, right from hijacking Kuber to selecting targets and strategies on the fly. In DNA, R Jagannathan says the reverse — the terrorists of 26/11 were a bunch of bumblers. So far so good, but the article then posits a sinister alternative.

An off shoot of the 26/11 attacks is the number of people wanting to do something, anything, to help. One preferred method appears to be starting blogs that work as an information resource — here is one such, that rounds up stories from the mainstream media on the attacks and after.

Early on in the wake of 26/11, an analyst made the point that such attacks are “corporate performances”, staged to trigger a fresh spurt of donations from sympathizers. On that note, this LA Times piece makes the point that the Lashkar has through this and other attacks emerged ahead of al Qaeda in terms of legitimacy within Pakistan and its corollary, societal support.