17 YEARS AFTER 26/11, THE PATTERN OF PAK-BACKED TERROR CONTINUES

PAK HASN'T CHANGED

- ASHISH SINGH

On the night of 26 November 2008, Mumbai was held hostage for nearly 60 hours. Ten Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives landed on Indian shores after months of preparation, coordinated from Pakistan, guided in real time by handlers in Karachi. Their attack on hotels of national importance, a railway terminus of national importance, cafés and a Jewish centre killed 166 people and left many more wounded. The siege was not only a moment of national grief but also a clearest

demonstration of a system that India had warned the world about. Terror directed from Pakistani soil, supported by its networks, and executed with military-style precision.

17 years have passed since that night. The weapons have changed, the targets have shifted, and the groups have rotated recruits, but the skeletal structure that enabled 26/11 has continued to operate. Each major attack that has followed reflects the same pattern. Planning in Pakistan. Training in Pakistan. Infiltration across the Line of Control or through mari-

time routes. Execution by groups that function as arms of Pakistan's strategic doctrine.

In the years after Mumbai, India faced a series of major attacks that carried the same signature. The 2010 Pune German Bakery blast was linked to networks with operational bases in Pakistan. The 2013 attack on a CRPF camp in Bemina was conducted by men trained across the border. In July 2015, gunmen attacked a police station in Gurdaspur. In January 2016, the attack on the Pathankot Air Force base involved infiltrators guid ed by handlers in Pakistan. These were not isolated bursts of violence. They were fragments of a continuous flow.