This is how the swimming pool area at Mumbai's Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel looked on Nov. 29, the day that Indian commandos finally declared the five-star hotel secure after it came under siege by terrorists on Nov. 26:

This is how the pool area looked Sunday, Dec. 21, when the hotel partially reopened just 22 days after the terrorist siege ended:

By 11 p.m. on Sunday, and amid security checks that included metal detectors and X-ray machines, people had checked into about 71 of the 268 rooms in the Taj's tower wing. The 297 rooms of the 105-year-old heritage wing, however, might not reopen until March 2010, a Mumbai-based Morgan Stanley analyst has said.

The Trident-Oberoi, the other posh hotel that was attacked, opened its Trident portion on the same day with similar security measures. One hundred of the Trident's 557 available rooms were reserved for Sunday night.

At both hotels, reopened restaurants were fully booked.

Photo: STR/AFP/Getty Images, SAJJAD HUSSAIN/AFP/Getty Images

So, that "exact" Taj Mahal replica that a Bangladeshi filmmaker is constructing near Dhaka turns out to be a more of a crappy carnival attraction. Here's video:

 

of Global Voices has more from the Bengali blogosphere.

A wealthy Bangladeshi filmmaker is spending about $60 million to build an exact replica of India's Taj Mahal 20 miles from Dhaka:

Construction work began five years ago, but Mr Moni says that he came up with the idea in 1980 when he first visited the real Taj in Agra, northern India.

He said that his homage had been built because most people living in Bangladesh - where nearly half of the population exist below the poverty line - cannot afford to travel to India to see the real thing.

“Everyone dreams about seeing the Taj Mahal but very few Bangladeshis can make the trip because it's too expensive for them,” he said.

Indian diplomats are not happy about the plan and are currently "investigating" the matter. Though one admits, “A copy is a form of flattery, I suppose.”

Bangladesh clearly has a taste for monumentally ambitious construction projects. Their stunning Louis Kahn-designed parliament building took two decades to construct and, I would think, would be more a source of pride than an exact copy of India's most famous building.

Photo: Munir UZ-ZAMAN/AFP/Getty Images

From The Telegraph:

An eye-catching swimming pool in Mumbai, India, has been built to raise awareness about the threat of sea level rises as a result of global warming.

It was constructed by attaching a giant aerial photograph of the New York City skyline to the floor of the pool.

The idea was conceived by advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather, who were commissioned by banking giant HSBC to promote its £50million project tackling climate change.

Photo: HSBC via Flickr 

Much has been said in recent days of Pakistan's involvement in the Mumbai bombings. But it's not the only neighbor to the north the India might need to worry about. Several reports yesterday indicated the Mumbai militants entered not just from Kashmir, but Nepal and Bangladesh, as well.

As in Pakistan, the Nepalese government struggles to control wide swathes of territory. The Tarai border region with India -- from which the attackers would have entered -- is of particular concern. The 1800 km of forested land is simply "not a controllable border," says Chalmers.

The problem runs deeper than geography. Nepal is still on unstable ground after a 2006 peace agreement brought an end to a long-time monarchy and a violent Maoist rebellion. Elections were held this summer, and to everyone's great surprise, the Maoists won the day. Now, the same army that once fought those Maoists is expected to be loyal to their civilian government. So far the 95,000-strong force has looked reluctant to shed its elite ties. And Maoist rebels have yet to be demobilized.

All this means that fragile Nepal is "as militarized as Pakistan," analyst Rhoddy Chalmers of the International Crisis Group told me. For now, the peace is holding, but as the Mumbai attacks make clear, the country is vulnerable to a host of groups looking to take advantage of chaos.

India, long a supporter of the peace process, might change its tone after the Mumbai attacks, particularly if 2009 elections bring to power a "securicrat" interested in closing the borders. For now, people and goods cross freely through check points, easily avoidable if one is willing to duck through a bit of forest.

Until now, "India doesn't tend to have policy towards Nepal--it has interests, pursued haphazardly," says Chalmers.

Maybe a grand strategy is needed.

Photo: PRADEEP SHRESTHA/AFP/Getty Images

This week, Muslims from Belarus to Indonesia are celebrating the holiday Eid al-Adha, in which an animal -- typically a cow, goat, or sheep -- is slaughtered to commemorate Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son for God. A portion of the meat is distributed to the poor.

In India this year, however, Eid is taking a largely quiet tone, the Washington Post reports, in respect for those victimized in late November's terrorist siege of Mumbai. Leaders of the All India Organization of Imams of Mosques requested the country's 140 million Muslims -- about 13 percent of the population -- to wear black bands on their shoulders to show solidarity. Muslim leaders have also requested that cows not be slaughtered in order to show sensitivity to Hindu beliefs against killing cows.

Indian Muslims -- some photographed praying Dec. 9 at the Jama Masjid mosque in Delhi, in the image above -- for the most part seek to distance themselves from the allegedly Islamist terrorists who attacked Mumbai, and they have drawn attention to the fact that about one third of the 171 victims killed were Muslims. Additionally, Muslim leaders have refused to permit the nine terrorists killed during the siege to be buried in Islamic cemeteries.

"It's not a happy Eid," Ahsaan Qureshi, a famous Indian comic, told the Post.

Photo: MANPREET ROMANA/AFP/Getty Images

This was probably inevitable:

An Indian Court has been called to ban Google Earth amid suggestions the online satellite imaging was used to help plan the terror attacks that killed more than 170 people in Mumbai last month.

A petition entered at the Bombay High Court alleges that the Google Earth service, "aids terrorists in plotting attacks." Advocate Amit Karkhanis has urged the court to direct Google to blur images of sensitive areas in the country until the case is decided[...]

Police in Mumbai have said the terrorists familiarised themselves with the streets of Mumbai's financial capital using satellite images, according to the sole gunman to be captured alive.

This isn't a new issue. The al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade also apparently used Google Earth to plan rocket attacks on Israel. But holding Google responsible for terrorists using its product makes about as much sense as blaming the Wright brothers for 9/11.

Just as the fact that terrorists take advantage of the laxer security regimes in democratic societies isn't a reason to unduly curb civil liberties, it would be a mistake to curtail the development of useful technologies because the bad guys have figured out how to use them too.

I don't mean to come across as some kind of libertarian tech-evangelist, and I think that some reasonable precautions--like not allowing Google to street-level map a military base--should be taken. But this is the price we pay for technological progress. As Tom Friedman might say, the world is flat for terrorists too.

It would also be a bit sketchy if India took any steps to restrict Google Earth at the same time they're developing a domestic competitor.

In 1986, I had the opportunity to dine at the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai (then Bombay). I was visiting extended family, and for some reason, someone decided that a once-in-a-lifetime splurge at the Taj would be worth it. At the time, I had no idea that a place of such opulence could exist in India. Stepping into it, I felt as if I were entering an oasis, an otherworldly bubble with First World conditions transplanted inside.

Mumbai’s air was oppressively hot, thick, and sticky. Inside the Taj, the air was air-conditioned, crisp, and breathable. On the streets of Mumbai, my ears were assaulted with the sounds of horns incessantly beeping and hawkers selling their wares. Inside the Taj, the atmosphere was quiet and serene. Outdoors, I smelled dung and smoke, and walked through overcrowded, filthy streets lined with shacks inhabited by barefoot children in muddy clothes. Inside the Taj, it was odor-free, and poverty-free. Strangely, I don’t remember exactly what I ate there, but whatever I ate, it didn’t make me sick.

Thus, I felt a tinge of nostalgia last month when I watched smoke billowing out of the mighty Taj.

To see images of the besieged Taj and other sites attacked in Mumbai, check out FP’s latest photo essay, “Mayhem in Mumbai.”

Photo: Uriel Sinai/Getty Images

Wow:

A hoax telephone call almost sparked another war between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan at the height of last month's terror attacks on Mumbai, officials and Western diplomats on both sides of the border said today.

Asif Ali Zardari, the Pakistani President, took a telephone call from a man pretending to be Pranab Mukherjee, India's Foreign Minister, on Friday, November 28, apparently without following the usual verification procedures, they said.

The hoax caller threatened to take military action against Pakistan in response to the then ongoing Mumbai attacks, which India has since blamed on the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), they said.

Mr Zardari responded by placing Pakistan's air force on high alert and telephoning Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, to ask her to intervene.

But when Dr Rice called Mr Mukherjee, he said that he had not spoken to Mr Zardari and that his last conversation with Shah Mahmood Qureishi, the Pakistani Foreign Minister, had been quite civil.

"It's unbelievable, but true," said a Western diplomat familiar with the frantic diplomatic exchanges that eventually resolved the misunderstanding.

"It was a little alarming, to say the least."

UPDATE: Sherry Rehman, the Pakistani information minister, says the call was "processed, verified and cross-checked under an established procedure":

Without naming [leading Pakistani newspaper] Dawn, which carried the story in its edition of Dec 6 titled ‘A hoax call that could have triggered war’, a statement quoted the federal minister as having said, while commenting on reports in a section of the press, that it was not possible for any call to come through to the president without multiple caller identity verifications.

The Nov 28 call by someone from New Delhi who posed himself as Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, she insisted, had also been processed, verified and cross-checked in accordance with an intricately laid down procedure.

“In fact the identity of this particular call, as evident from the caller line identification device, showed that the call was placed from a verified official phone number of the Indian ministry of external affairs”, Ms Rehman said.

The lone surviving terrorist from last week's devastating attacks in Mumbai has been in police custody since he was captured last week (his exact name is a matter of dispute, but let's call him Ajmal Amir Kasab for now). He's given up some information, according to press accounts, but the Times of London now reports that Indian interrogators are prepared to take a drastic step to get more answers -- giving him truth serum.

While it sounds like something that only exists in bad spy flicks, or in the pages of a Harry Potter volume, administrating truth serum, or narcoanalysis, is an actual technique used by Western intelligence agencies during the Cold War. The interviewee is typically drugged with barbiturates and then undergoes a form of psychotherapy by interrogators. It's a questionable tactic given that the drugs can cause hallucinations and psychotic episodes.

According to Mumbai's joint commissioner of police, much of the information Kasab gave has been accurate (it was Kasab who told where to find the boat the terrorists hijacked). Questions about his background and nationality remain, however. On Tuesday, Mumbai Police Chief Hasan Gafoor told reporters that Kasab admitted he is a Pakistani and comes from a village in the Punjab province.

But some journalists, like the BBC's Syed Shoaib Hasan, who are following up on these details by visiting Faridkot, the terrorist's alleged hometown, find the information conflicting.

Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari told CNN that he "very much" doubts that Kasab is Pakistani, but pressure is building in India to prove that he is and unravel his links to Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant organization U.S. and Indian investigators believe is behind in the attacks.

Hence, truth serum. Though it may be effective in getting Kasab to spill the beans, I'd rather that drugs and psychotherapy not become a substitute for good, old-fashioned intelligence.   

Good story in the Wall Street Journal about Yusuf Muzammil, the Lashkar-e-Taiba leader who India believes is a key figure in the Mumbai attacks:

Just two days before hitting the city, the group of 10 terrorists who ravaged India's financial capital communicated with Yusuf Muzammil and four other Lashkar leaders via a satellite phone that they left behind on a fishing trawler they hijacked to get to Mumbai, a senior Mumbai police official told The Wall Street Journal. The entire group also underwent rigorous training in a Lashkar-e-Taiba camp in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, the official said.

This much has already been widely reported, with some minor discrepancies about where the satellite phone was found. But here's a new wrinkle:

Mr. Muzammil had earlier been in touch with an Indian Muslim extremist who scoped out Mumbai locations for possible attack before he was arrested early this year, said another senior Indian police official. The Indian man, Faheem Ahmed Ansari, had in his possession layouts drawn up for the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel and Mumbai's main railway station, both prime targets of last week's attack, the police official said.

Mr. Ansari, who also made sketches and maps of locations in southern Mumbai that weren't attacked, had met Mr. Muzammil and trained at the same Lashkar camp as the terrorists in last week's attack, an official said.

As the world continues to mourn those killed in last week's terrorist attacks in Mumbai, U.S. news agencies reported yesterday that the United States had passed intelligence to the Indian government warning of possible attacks, not once but twice.

U.S. officials are saying that they delivered intelligence reports to Indian government officials in mid-October that specifically detailed the threat of an attack "from the sea against hotels and business centers in Mumbai" and named the Taj Mahal hotel.

The Indian Navy is now shifting blame around while it sorts out where the "systematic failure" of security and intelligence actually occurred. On Sunday, the Mumbai fishermen's union claimed it reported suspicions that "explosives were being smuggled in by boat" to police.

But the Indian government (which believes the militant group thought responsible, Lashkar-e-Taiba, has ties to the Pakistani government), insists these warnings were minded. Alerts were raised and precautions were taken 10 days before the attack occurred and the measures, officials believe, did postpone the attacks, even if only for a few days.

Ratan Tata, owner of the Taj Mahal hotel, has said in interviews that while they beefed up security in the days before the attacks, even the information they had was not enough to "have stopped what took place."

He's one of the most fascinating figures in the world of international terrorism, a criminal mastermind linked to everyone from al Qaeda to Bollywood starlets to East African drug cartels. Few in the West have heard of him, though he is practically a household name in South Asia.

And now, India is connecting him to last week's attacks in Mumbai.

The Indian government has asked Pakistan to extradite exiled Indian gangster Dawood Ibrahim, who has long been accused of arranging the 1993 bombing attacks in Mumbai. The extradition request is not a new one, and Pakistan has always denied harboring Ibrahim. But now is probably as good a time as any for Indian officials to give it another try -- whether he was involved in the latest carnage in Mumbai or not.

There is precious little reliable information in the public domain on Ibrahim. Some of what we do know comes from the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which designated him a "global terrorist" in 2003.

He was born in India -- ironically, as the son of a police constable. His early history is sketchy, but what is known is that he worked his way up to become a top figure in the Mumbai underworld. Indian officals say he fled his homeland for Dubai, fearing prosecution, though different accounts give different dates for this change of address.

OFAC describes Ibrahim in its listing as "an Indian crime lord" who "has found common cause with Al Qaida, sharing his smuggling routes with the terror syndicate and funding attacks by Islamic extremists aimed at destabilizing the Indian government." He is "known to have financed the activities" of Lashkar-e-Taiba, according to the listing.

That all seems fairly solid. For sheer entertainment value, though, it's hard to beat this 2001 profile by Pakistani journalist Ghulam Hasnain. The lurid details of the story seem too vivid to possibly be true:

Ibrahim lives like a king. Home is a palatial house spread over 6,000 square yds, 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. He bought Lahore model, Saba, with whom he reportedly had a passionate involvement, a house and a car. Nor does he shirk his obligations: Mandakini, of Ram Teri Ganga Maili fame, former Bollywood actress with whom he had a child is reportedly still being supported by him.

His daily regimen is also rather kingly. He wakes in the afternoon. After a swim and shower, he has breakfast. In the late afternoon, he gives his employees an audience where he briefs them on their assignments and they give him daily reports of his myriad businesses.

If in the mood, he engages in a game of cricket or snooker with friends. And as the sun sets, Dawood and his party set off for any one of his 'safe houses' in Karachi for an evening of revelry – usually comprising drinks (Black Label is his preference), mujras and gambling. The long-married Dawood’s passion for women has made him a favoured client for local pimps. His current liaison notwithstanding, he whets his allegedly large sexual appetite with a variety of women.

"He prefers virgins, preferably young girls. And he is a good paymaster. If the market rate for a woman is 10,000 rupees, Dawood pays 100,000 rupees. He is thus always surrounded by Pakistan’s top call girls," discloses one of his family friends.

The most incendiary claim in the article? Hasnain says Dawood is "Pakistan’s number one espionage operative." Indian officials may believe that, but I have yet to see solid, independent evidence. Some have speculated that the piece caused Hasnain's four-day abduction, after which he returned "a broken man" and recanted the article.

He chose his words very carefully, but U.S. President-elect Barack Obama nonetheless made big news in India with this exchange from today's press conference:

[Question:] During the campaign, you said that you thought the U.S. had a right to attack high-value terrorist targets in Pakistan if given actionable intelligence with or without the Pakistani government's permission. Two questions on that.

One, do you think India has that same right?

And, two [...] some people up there on the stage took issue with your saying that. They have strong opinions about issues ranging from Pakistan to the surge. And while they're all committed to have a successful United States, what private assurances have they given you that they will be able to carry out your vision even when they strongly disagree with that vision as some of them have been able to do in the past? [...]

OBAMA: I think that sovereign nations, obviously, have a right to protect themselves. Beyond that, I don't want to comment on the specific situation that's taking place in South Asia right now. I think it is important for us to let the investigators do their jobs and make a determination in terms of who was responsible for carrying out these heinous acts.

I can tell you that my administration will remain steadfast in support of India's efforts to catch the perpetrators of this terrible act and bring them to justice. And I expect that the world community will feel the same way.

I don't think this is what Obama intended to communicate, but here's how the Times of India is reporting it -- as if the president-elect had issued a "tacit endorsement" of India "bombing terrorist camps in Pakistan" under certain circumstances:

Sovereign nations have the right to protect themselves, US President-elect Barack Obama said on Monday, when asked if India could follow the same policy he advocated during his election campaign — of bombing terrorist camps in Pakistan if there was actionable evidence and Islamabad refused to act on it.

Although Obama said he did not want to comment on the specific situation involving India and Pakistan, his tacit endorsement of New Delhi adopting the same policy was circumscribed by two caveats: first, let the investigators reach definite conclusions about the Mumbai carnage, and second, see if Pakistan will follow through with its commitment to eliminate terrorism.

That's a bit of a stretch. Now, for the good news: Despite the palpable anger in India and word that India's security status has reached a "war level," no troops are moving to the border with Pakistan as they did after the attacks on the Indian Parliament in late 2001.

Pop quiz: What's the name of the lone surviving attacker from Mumbai?

It's a bit of a trick question. Reports in the Indian press and elsewhere have ascribed various names to the terrorist captured along the Mumbai waterfront, who seems to be the same fellow captured in this chilling photo:

Here's my count of the names in use:

• Ajmal Mohammed Amir Kasab
• Amjad Amir Kamaal
• Ajmal Amir Kamal
• Ajmal Qasab
• Ajmal Amin Kamal
• Ajmal Amir Kasab
• Mohammad Ajmal Qasam
• Azam Amir Kasav
• Mohammed Ajmal Mohammed Amir Kasav

Some of these are just differences in transliteration (Kasab vs. Qasab, for instance), but the rest would seem to be the product of a sloppy media culture and bad press management by Indian officials.

All the reports I've found, however, agree that he is from Faridkot, Pakistan, he is 21 years old, he admitted being a member of Lashkar-e-Taiba, and he has only a fourth-grade education.

It's amazing how quickly India appears to be falling into the terrorists' trap.

It seems obvious that Pakistan's civilian government, led by President Asif Ali Zardari, has no interest in stirring up trouble between the two nuclear-armed neighbors. And it seems equally obvious that any elements of the ISI, Pakistan's notorious intelligence service, who might have been in some way involved in the attacks in Mumbai would have done so in order to undermine rapprochement between Islamabad and New Delhi.

As for Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Kashmir-focused militant group has made clear that it aims to provoke conflict between India and Pakistan and stir up a pro-Islamist backlash among Muslims in India.

Yet one can already see public anger in India leading political developments in a direction the terrorists wanted. Some Indian politicians have been less than careful in saying the terrorists were sent by Pakistan, the state, rather than that they came from Pakistan, the country (which hasn't even been confirmed yet, anyway). India is considering halting talks over Kashmir and ending the five-year cease-fire along the Line of Control. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has vowed to "go after" those responsible for the attacks, which could box him into the dangerous step of taking action against Lashkar-e-Taiba within Pakistan-held territory.

Meanwhile, Pakistan's hackles are up, its military leaders raising the alert levels of their forces and threatening to divert troops from the Afghan border to the eastern border with India. Zardari's about-face on sending ISI chief Ahmad Shuja Pasha to New Delhi is clearly a response to domestic pressure after Indian newspapers said Pasha was being "summoned." Similarly, the more vocally India calls on Zardari and Army Chief of Staff Ashfaq Kayani to crack down on militancy, the tougher politically it will be for them to do so lest they be seen as doing New Delhi's bidding.

In India, the same sort of perverse dynamics are at work. Already, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is making political hay out of the terror in Mumbai. The party has been running newspaper ads saying, "Fight Terror. Vote B.J.P." Instead of rallying behind Singh's government, the BJP has instead called for its resignation and accused Singh of being soft on terror. These tactics may well backfire, but based on the BJP's history of populist, anti-Muslim rhetoric, we should be concerned about its return to power.

Cranking up the pressure on Pakistan may fit the public mood in India -- and it may be smart politics for Singh and his ruling Congress Party -- but it is folly as policy.

Who benefits in Pakistan when tensions with India rise? Precisely the anti-democratic hardliners in the military and intelligence services, and the Islamic hardliners who are their sometime allies, that India should want to see marginalized. As one South Asia analyst told Reuters, "The forces that are threatening the West, the forces that are threatening the civilian democracy in Pakistan and the forces who are acting against India are all interlinked to each other."

We should pray that Singh has the wisdom and the political acumen to navigate this minefield more skillfully than he has thus far.

A few more supposed details from the interrogation of Ajmal Kamal, the militant who was captured, are trickling out in the Indian press. It seems pretty clear from all of the reports that 10-12 bad guys entered the city by inflatable boat. (The New York Times has some good color on their arrival at the Mumbai docks.) Beyond that, accounts differ widely.

Some stories say that there were eight terrorists already waiting in the Taj Mahal and Oberoi Hotels. The Times of India claims that all of the terrorists were Pakistani citizens, and that they had expected to make it back on the fishing trawler they hijacked. This was not a suicide mission.

To give you an idea of how disparate the accounts can be, the Times names the skipper of this purloined vessel as Amarjit Singh, while The Hindu says his name was Balwant Tandel. Rediff says there were two fishing boats. The Times says the terrorists left from "an isolated creek near Karachi," while Rediff reports that "Intelligence Bureau officials are trying to verify if the terrorists came in through the Persian Gulf." Rediff also mentions that its information comes from the interrogation of "Abu Ismail," while according to the Times a terrorist named "Ismail" was killed at Girgaum Chowpaty, a local beach.

All of the Indian press accounts I've read, however, point explicitly to Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani militant group. NDTV even claims that one of the terrorist's phones was "used to call Lashkar commander Yusuf Muzamil in Muzaffarabad," the group's headquarters in Pakistan.

UPDATE: The Washington Post clears up some of the mystery:

On the basis of preliminary inquiry, we know that there were a total of 10 terrorists. Nine have been eliminated, one is caught," said Vilasrao Deshmukh, the chief minister of the state of Maharashtra, of which Mumbai is the capital. "They split into teams of two for action, and there were four at the Taj."

Indian television station NDTV reported earlier that, according to the chief minister of Mumbai, at least two of the militants arrested are British citizens.

"[I]t is too early to say whether or not any of them are British," British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told Sky News in response to the story.

It's an interesting potential wrinkle, but the usual caveats apply. Many of the reports coming out of the Indian press have proven unfounded or contradictory.

UPDATE: BBC News reports that there is "no evidence" as of yet that any of the attackers were British.

... perhaps stories like this explain the rumors?

Actor Joey Jeetun, 31, from London, told how he survived the terrorist assault on the Leopold cafe, next to the Taj Mahal hotel, because he was covered in other victims' blood and the gunmen thought he was dead.

Mr Jeetun said: "I just curled myself in the smallest ball I could and closed my eyes. After about five minutes it stopped and I opened my eyes. There were dead people next to me who had been shot in the head."

Mr Jeetun has an Asian appearance and once played the role of July 7 suicide bomber Shehzad Tanweer in a Channel 5 documentary 7/7: Attack on London.

After police arrived at the cafe an officer pointed a gun at his head and he was detained as a possible terrorist suspect.

He said: "I was held in a police cell for 13 hours with a group of Arab looking men. They thought I was a suspect even though I said I was a British tourist."

The Hindu reports on the latest from Mumbai:

Maharashtra Police investigators say they have evidence that operatives of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba carried out the fidayeen-squad [suicide-squad] attacks in Mumbai — a charge which, if proven, could have far-reaching consequences for India-Pakistan relations.

Police sources said an injured terrorist captured during the fighting at the Taj Mahal hotel was tentatively identified as Ajmal Amir Kamal, a resident of Faridkot, near Multan, in Pakistan’s Punjab province.

Highly-placed police sources said two other Pakistani nationals had also been held in the course of intense fighting on Thursday.

All three, the sources said, identified themselves as members of a Lashkar fidayeen squad.

Based on the interrogation of the suspects, the investigators believe that one or more groups of Lashkar operatives left Karachi in a merchant ship early on Wednesday. Late that night, an estimated 12 fidayeen left the ship in a small boat and rowed some 10 nautical miles to Mumbai’s Gateway of India area.

The investigators say the fidayeen unit of which Mr. Kamal was a part then split up into at least six groups, each focussing on a separate target: Mumbai’s Nariman House, which is home to a large number of Israeli families and a Jewish prayer house; the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus rail station; the Cama hospital; the Girgaum seafront; and the Taj and Trident Oberoi hotels.

As usual, treat such early, anonymous reports with caution.

An interesting article by Alan Cowell and Mark McDonald in today's New York Times reveals an inconvenient truth about analysts who study terrorism: they often have wildly divergent views about the same events.

Christine Fair, senior political scientist and a South Asia expert at the RAND Corporation, was careful to say that the identity of the terrorists could not yet be known. But she insisted the style of the attacks and the targets in Mumbai suggested the militants were likely to be Indian Muslims and not linked to Al Qaeda or Lashkar-e-Taiba, another violent South Asian terrorist group.

There’s absolutely nothing Al Qaeda-like about it,” she said of the attack. "Did you see any suicide bombers? And there are no fingerprints of Lashkar. They don’t do hostage-taking and they don’t do grenades." By contrast, Mr. Gohel in London said "the fingerprints point to an Islamic Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group."

Fair goes on to make the point that India has a lot of angry Muslims of its own, and has a history of telling the world, "Our Muslims have not been radicalized."

I would point out that the two main competing theories -- a domestic group and outside involvement -- are not mutually exclusive. Extremist groups have been known to share logistical networks (for safehouses, weapons procurement, etc.), and there aren't always bright lines between them. So, it could be that domestic perpetrators of the attack conceived and executed the idea, but operatives turned to Lashkar-e-Taiba or some other group for logistical help and expertise.

UPDATE: Here's a pretty strong clue that points to Kashmir:

A militant holed up at the center phoned an Indian television channel to offer talks with the government for the release of hostages, but also to complain about abuses in Kashmir, over which India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars.

"Ask the government to talk to us and we will release the hostages," the man, identified by the India TV channel as Imran, said, speaking in Urdu in what sounded like a Kashmiri accent.

"Are you aware how many people have been killed in Kashmir? Are you aware how your army has killed Muslims. Are you aware how many of them have been killed in Kashmir this week?"

On the other hand, a senior Indian military official seems pretty confident the militants are from Faridkot, Pakistan. One captured terrorist had a Punjabi accent.