Organized Crime, Intelligence and Terror: The D-Company's Role in the Mumbai Attacks

by Tom Burghardt

Global Research, December 13, 2008 author's website Antifascist Calling... What do you call a "devout Muslim" who exerts considerable control over South Asia's heroin, gambling, prostitution and smuggling rackets? Why an intelligence asset, of course! When Lashkar-e-Taiba ("Army of the Pure"--LET) militants slaughtered nearly 200 people in Mumbai during the November 26 siege in India's financial capital, one name stood out among a list of 20 fugitives the Indian government has demanded Pakistan extradite as a key suspect responsible for providing funds and logistical support to the Kashmir-based terrorist outfit. Enter Dawood Ibrahim, the enigmatic Mafia don of Mumbai's D-Company whose far-flung organized crime empire stretches from Dubai through Pakistan to India and beyond. If anyone knows where the proverbial "bodies are buried," that man may very well be Ibrahim. Wanted by Interpol and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Ibrahim commutes between palatial homes in Dubai and Karachi where he enjoys the protection afforded by "friends in high places." According to a report in Asia Times Online, "Ibrahim is...suspected of orchestrating the November 26 Mumbai terrorist strikes through a businessman in Saudi Arabia said to be his frontman." The Indian-born drug kingpin has been identified by journalists and investigators as a long-time asset of both the CIA and Pakistan's notorious Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI). Asia Times Online investigative journalist Raja Murthy was told by Lahore-based journalist Amir Mir that "Dawood's underworld connects and business ventures are extensive. And he sublets his name in Pakistan, Thailand, South Africa, Indonesia, Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates, among other countries, to franchises in the fields of drug trafficking and gambling dens." Karachi-based reporter Ghulam Hasnain described to Murthy why Ibrahim was amongst ISI's most valued assets: "Dawood is Pakistan's number one espionage operative. His men in Mumbai help him get whatever information he needs for Pakistan. Rumor has it that sometimes his men in Karachi accompany Pakistani intelligence agents to the airports to scan arriving passengers and identify RAW [Indian Research and Analysis Wing] agents." And what does this "number one espionage operative" get in return? According to Hasnain, "His home is a palatial house spread over 6,000 square yards, boasting a pool, tennis courts, snooker room and a private, hi-tech gym. He wears designer clothes, drives top-of-the-line Mercedes and luxurious four-wheel drives, sports a half-a-million rupee Patek Phillipe wristwatch, and showers money on starlets and prostitutes." Pakistan's shadowy military intelligence bureau, with organizational and operational linkages to the Taliban, al-Qaeda, the CIA and Britain's MI6 has long been suspected of funding planetary-wide terrorist operations and nuclear smuggling in part, through "black money" derived from the drugs trade and other rackets. Despite this sordid history, the ISI and their organized crime-linked assets have long been viewed by Washington as allies in America's so-called "war on terror." While American "counterterrorism officials" are now calling for the heads of Ibrahim, his associate Tiger Memon and former ISI Director, retired Lieutenant General Hamid Gul, described by the usual unnamed sources as--what else!--"rogue elements," the United States and their NATO partners have made liberal use of these jokers in a score of destabilization ops that span continents. Indeed, after the Afghanistan operation during the 1980s, the CIA and ISI worked together in a score of global hot spots. From Bosnia to Chechnya and beyond, wherever the dirty work needed doing, a wide pool of disposable intelligence assets under cover of "Islamic fundamentalism" were ready, willing an able to fill the breech. It should be noted that characters such as Dawood Ibrahim and others of his ilk have as much in common with Islam as former New York crime boss, the late, though unlamented, John Gotti did with Christianity. (read the rest)