Inside The Criminal–Terror Nexus That Enabled The 1993 Mumbai Blasts – OpEd |
When Indian investigators began pulling apart the 1993 Mumbai blasts case, they did not find a terror cell that had learned to act like criminals. They found a criminal empire that had decided to act like a terror network. That is a different problem, and it took years to fully understand.Dawood Ibrahim had been running D-Company since the early 1980s. By 1993, the organization had divisions covering smuggling, extortion, contract killings, real estate, and money movement through informal hawala channels. It had contacts in Dubai, Pakistan, and across South Asia. It had people on port docks, inside customs offices, and inside law enforcement in multiple cities. It was not built for terrorism.
It was built for profit. But the infrastructure it had assembled was exactly what a large-scale........