The Making of a Mumbai Terrorist

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Rana, the expert on militancy, has seen an accompanying rise in extremist activity. He estimates that 60% of all terrorist attacks in Pakistan since 2002 have originated in the Punjab. "What the militant groups are doing now," says political analyst and academic Ayesha Siddiqa, "is recruiting people and sending them to fight elsewhere." Some are going to Kashmir, she says, but many more are fighting in Bajaur and Swat, in the North-West Frontier Province, where government forces are waging a losing war to contain militancy. Groups like LeT have always been open about their goals for an Islamic state, and few doubt that they would resort to violence to achieve it. Says Siddiqa: "At a later stage, they will bring the jihad home." It may already be happening. In the provincial capital of Lahore on March 3, a dozen gunmen attacked a convoy of Sri Lankan cricketers on their way to a match. Six policemen and a bus driver were killed and several more wounded. No group has taken responsibility, but the similarities to the orchestrated assaults in Mumbai were alarming. (See pictures of Mumbai sifting through the rubble.)

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Killing for Paradise
The organizers at Muridke, however, had different plans for Qasab. After his initial training in the philosophy of jihad, he was sent to Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, where he finally got the opportunity to handle a gun. "We were taken in a vehicle to a place called Mansera, [where] we were given training of all weapons for 21 days," Qasab says in his confession. In the subsequent four months of training, Qasab learned to fire AK-47s, studied the Indian security agencies and was trained in the "handling of hand grenade, rocket launchers and mortars, Uzi gun, pistol [and] revolver." Other LeT militants have noted the physical demands that accompanied the firearms practice. "The training was really tough," Mohammad Usman, a former jihadi, tells TIME. "But when we went to Kashmir, on my first operation across the Line of Control [which divides Pakistani-controlled Kashmir from the Indian side], I got separated from my group for 15 days. I had nothing, so the training helped."

Usman, now 36, was one of the founding militants in LeT — and his tale, too, sheds light on the growth of jihadi militancy. As a boy in the Punjabi city of Faisalabad, he often heard accounts of Indian atrocities against Muslims in Kashmir. In the early '90s, Kashmiris toured Pakistan, telling their stories and seeking donations for their cause. Usman was moved by the story of a man whose brother had been killed by Indian soldiers and whose sister had been sexually assaulted. "Then he asked, 'If this was your sister, what would you do?' That's when I decided to join the jihad." ((See pictures of a Jihadist's journey.))

In the beginning, Usman joined a Kashmiri militant outfit, but soon he banded together with other Pakistanis, including Saeed, to form LeT. "The Kashmiris appreciated us because we were good fighters," says Usman. "Unlike the Kashmiris, who only did hit-and-run attacks, we stayed and fought for hours." That confidence, he says, came from the training. "We were fearless. The Koran tells us that if we are martyred, we are successful. It is the misfortune of my life that I was not martyred."

The conviction that death in jihad would lead to paradise prompted LeT to develop its most devastating tactic in the fight against India: the fedayeen, or suicide squads. Instead of simply blowing themselves up, they conducted daring commando raids, trying to do as much damage as possible before their eventual martyrdom. In advance of each operation, the teams, with from two to 10 members, joined to pray. "We told each other, 'We will meet you again in the hereafter,'" says Usman.

While Qasab never mentions that he was part of such a unit, his preparation suggests that he had been chosen to learn fedayeen tactics, which are increasingly common outside Kashmir. For his final round of advanced training, Qasab moved to another camp near Muzaffarabad, also in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, where he says he met a man named Zaki-ur-Rehman "Chacha" (Uncle), who selected him as one of a team of 16 destined for a confidential operation. Qasab may have been referring to Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, a top LeT commander who was arrested by Pakistani security forces on Dec. 7 at a LeT compound just outside Muzaffarabad.

Missed Signals
Of the 16 selected for the operation, says Qasab, three ran away. The rest returned to Muridke, where for one month they were given swimming lessons and "acquainted with the environment experienced by a fisherman on a sea." (The fishpond on the Muridke campus, the size and shape of two Olympic-size pools placed at a right angle to each other, doubles as a swimming pool, a student told TIME.) While he was in Muridke, Qasab and his teammates attended lectures on the Indian intelligence agencies and watched videos highlighting atrocities committed against Muslims in India. Six of the 13 were dispatched to Kashmir; then three new members were brought into the group, according to the dossier on the attacks submitted by India to Pakistan, a copy of which was obtained by TIME. Now winnowed down to 10, the group was divided into two-person teams, and on Sept. 15 they were told their target: Mumbai.

The Mumbai attack was nominally conducted for the Kashmir struggle, but India has avoided linking the Mumbai attacks to Kashmir, and Qasab's confession does not mention it. Political leaders in Kashmir have deplored the barbarity of the attacks while acknowledging that Mumbai has drawn attention to their cause. For Qasab, the political implications of his mission were probably far from his mind as he went through the final stages of preparation. The commandos were shown images of Mumbai on Google Earth and told how to disembark from their boats. Qasab and his partner, Khan, were shown video footage of their designated target: Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, or Victoria Terminus, known in Mumbai as VT. The instructions were simple: "Carry out the firing at rush hours in the morning between 7 to 11 hours and between 7 to 11 hours in the evening. Then kidnap some persons, take them to the roof of some nearby building ... We were then to contact the media [and] make demands for releasing the hostages."

Qasab's final weeks of preparation were spent in a house near Karachi. It is possible that the attack had been compromised. In late September, India's Intelligence Bureau warned specifically about the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel, and in mid-October, U.S. intelligence agencies warned that Mumbai was a target of an attack by sea. The hotel tightened its security and received extra protection from the Mumbai police. But nothing happened, and the security measures were relaxed in mid-November.

Qasab's group stole out of Karachi's harbor at 4:15 a.m. on Nov. 22. While port authorities say no one can leave the shore without permission, it would have been easy for the men to leave in a boat already registered with the harbormaster. There are at least 150 launches a day at the Karachi port, says Abbas Ali, who runs a launch business. "Once mariners reach the deep sea, they can do anything, smuggling, drugs, whatever. There are not enough people to check all the boats." From the launch, the team boarded another boat and then a ship named Al-Husseini, which is thought by Pakistani investigators to be registered in the name of an Islamist group associated with LeT. Each militant was given a sack containing "eight grenades, one AK-47 rifle, 200 cartridges, two magazines and one cell phone for communication."

Qasab and the team turned on their GPS devices at 6:54 a.m., establishing a spot near Koti Bandar, about 93 miles (150 km) southeast of Karachi, as their starting point. Al-Husseini encountered an Indian fishing trawler, the M.V. Kuber. Qasab's confession states that "once they reached Indian waters, the crew hijacked an Indian fishing vessel." But the Indian dossier and intelligence sources describe the scenario slightly differently: the sources suspect that the operator of the ship, Amar Singh Solanki, might have been lured into Pakistani waters with the promise of money for smuggling.

Solanki was asked to take a more dangerous cargo than contraband. His four employees were moved onto Al-Husseini, where there were seven other LeT members already on board, the Indian dossier states. The four crew members were later killed. Solanki took on the 10 passengers carrying huge backpacks full of weapons and dried fruit and then navigated the boat about 550 nautical miles (1,020 km) to Mumbai, until the trawler stopped at a point just 4 nautical miles (7.5 km) from the city.

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