What Are Friends For?

Friends are there when you need them. Friends can be relied upon. Friends make life easier. They care about you and about your concerns. They are capable of great assistance in times of need. And, in fact, they are your friends most often because of shared values, traditions, cultures and world-view. All right, we can stick politics and ideology in there as well. And they are valued simply because of their dependability, their friendship. There when you need them.

Doubt it? Well, don't.

Ask David Coleman Headley, Pakistan born and American by preference who re-named himself from Daood Gilani, to appear more American. Well, as it happens, and happens so often, appearances can be deceiving. As can loyalties as has been proven time and again. Infiltration of one's enemies' inner resources and sources can prove to be infinitely liberating, and practically useful.

When Tahawwur Hussain Rana, another man of Pakistani origin, but Canadian by migration and adoption of citizenship, met Daood Gilani, they recognized one another as brothers-in-spirit. Having, indeed much in common. Beginning with their source of birth, and their shared religious devotion. And then, of course, there was the political-ideological dimension of their heritage, and their religion.

One was active, the other passive. In the sense that Mr. Rana, a successful businessman, who owned a travel agency, First World, gave cover to the jihad-resourceful Mr. Gilani. Aiding and assisting him in setting up bogus First World set-ups in India and in Denmark, so Mr. Gilani could, without arousing undue suspicion, enter Mumbai and at his leisure, working in tandem with Pakistan's jihadist Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, scope out venues.

Significant venues they would be too, to successfully mount a protracted and deadly suicide mission. Where ten gunmen trained by terror group Lashkar used rifles, grenades and explosives in their attacks on the Taj Mahal and Oberoi hotels,the Leopold Cafe, Chabad House, and the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus train station in Mumbai. Next stop: an attack against Jyllands-Posten newspaper in Denmark, and its cartoonist and editor.

Intelligence successfully waylaid these conspirators from embarking on the last leg of their most current enterprise in terror. And both Tahawwur Hussain Rana and his great good friend, David Coleman Headley, aka Daood Gilani, have been indicted in the United States for their enterprising friendship on behalf of murderous jihad. Concluding yet another chapter in the annals of global terror.