WHILE it is too early to know exactly what happened in Mumbai as the fog of war still blankets the city, multiple press reports from India allow for a general picture to be painted. An estimated 12 to 25 terrorists are believed to have entered Mumbai by sea on November 26 at around 9:30 p.m. (local time). After landing, the terrorists initiated attacks at a police station, then fanned across the city to attack the soft underbelly of hotels, cafes, cinemas, and hospitals. Civilians were gunned down and taken as hostage, while terrorists shouted out for people carrying US and British passports.
India’s cities are no strangers to indiscriminate terror attacks. Such attacks have occurred at regular interval with steadily increasing frequency in the recent years. Mumbai alone witnessed several terrorist activities in recent past. It started with the series of thirteen explosions resulted in 257 deaths and over 700 injured on the March 12, 1993. Then on March 13, 2003, a bomb attack on a commuter train killed 11 persons. In another incident, twin car bombings killed at least 52 people and injured 150 persons. Again, seven bomb blasts occurred at various places on the Mumbai suburban railway, killing 200, on July 11, 2006.
In the current year alone, India suffered a high number of terrorist bomb attacks including in New Delhi, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Jaipur, Hyderabad , Guwati, and Manipur.
Now the burning question is: what is new about the Mumbai attack? What is new is that this is the first time that Westerners, in particular the Americans and the British, and Jews, were targeted on Indian soil. As a result, this attack has received the highest global media coverage since 9/11.
The obvious novelty and uniqueness of the attack is the use of "frontal built up area assault" tactics combining "amphibious operation" and instead of timed explosive devices one or more bombings at distinct sites, that is going to be a new chapter in the history of terrorism. But it is not a fully new symptom in India.
This may be new in the urban Indian context. However, there was one similar incident — an attack by a five-man squad armed with rifles and grenades on India’s parliament in New Delhi in December 2001.
The attackers were narrowly prevented by alert staff from gaining access to the building, where hundreds of parliamentarians and ministers were attending a session. This Delhi attack led on almost to a war between India and Pakistan.
This "frontal built up area assault" that took place in Mumbai is also known as "Fidayeen technique" in the terrorism history of Indian sub-continent. The Fidayeen technique — a rudimentary form of "shock and awe" warfare — was introduced into Kashmir by Pakistani radical organisations that entered the Kashmir insurgency from the mid-1990s onwards. The large majority of Fidayeen attacks in Kashmir were perpetrated by one such organisation, the Lashkar-e-Toiba, headquartered in Pakistan and founded and led by Pakistani religious radicals.
But the deployment of exactly the same tactic in central Mumbai shows that this technique has now found a new and even more dangerous theatre in which to operate.
The tactic is thus not without precedent, but the havoc in Mumbai may nonetheless mark a new chapter in the evolution of urban terrorism in India. The gunmen who attacked two luxury hotels, and a fashionable cafe frequently visited by Westerners, have brought the "war" — as they see it — to India’s elite class, and to affluent Westerners living in or visiting India’s most cosmopolitan city.
An attack of this nature cannot be launched together overnight. It requires planning, scouting, financing, training, and a supporting network to aid the terrorists. It is more than likely that the masterminds are seasoned operatives and that the foot-soldiers, young as they may have been, had undergone rigorous training for months and perhaps years. It is reported that the terrorists were so prepared and organised that they established an operational control room inside the Taj Mahal hotel. The attacks also show every sign of having been designed to maximise the media attention on a global scale.
The Mumbai incident clearly brought India to a massive intelligence and security failure. In the first several hours after the incidents began, the response of the Indian authorities was very inefficient, slow, and confused .
The first forces sent to the scene were inexperienced local police officers equipped with poor arms and ammunition (whereas the terrorists were well equipped with modern AK-47 rifles, grenades and other modern explosives), who sustained heavy casualties as a result.
It took a long time before Indian military and police authorities realised the magnitude of the attack and deployed skilled forces including army and navy commando units to the ten affected sites. These units, in particular the National Security Guard’s Black Cats commando force, have an impressive operational record, especially in Kashmir and against the Pakistani army. It is hard to believe even these the commandoes also faced problems due to not having the knowledge of the layouts of such key installations.
The global intelligence and spy agencies had been reporting that this attack on India’s financial capital Mumbai, bears all the trademarks of al-Qaida — simultaneous assaults meant to kill scores of Westerners in iconic buildings — but clues so far point to homegrown Indian terrorists supported by external forces like Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaishe-e-Mohammad based in neighbouring countries. However, let me reiterate that at this moment in time it is premature to draw any conclusions as to the provenance of the terrorists.
In some ways, the attack illustrated just how fluid the terror tactics have become since 9/11 and how the threat has become more global in character. Al-Qaida’s leaders on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border still provide inspiration but groups are becoming increasingly local. And one thing is clear — they all work under the same umbrella of ideology that al-Qaida had been trying to spread all over the world.
The group that claimed responsibility, Deccan Mujahideen, was unknown to global security officials. The name suggests the group is from the Indian state of Hyderabad. One of the suspects reportedly called an Indian television station, speaking Urdu, to demand the return of Muslim lands. That most likely was a reference to Kashmir, territory claimed by both India and Pakistan.
Now the time has come for the Indian and Pakistani governments to co-operate with each other for facing the same enemy of global terrorism. If they continue the old political tactics of playing the blame game, the umbrella of al-Qaida will be strengthened. It is well to remember that al-Qaida desires increased tension between Pakistan and India .
Finally, India itself should look into its own short-comings in security apparatus to modernise the policing system and organise a national level intelligence to deal with terrorism effectively.