By M H Ahssan
The coordinated terrorist attacks on Mumbai, which killed over 120 persons and drew more than a 1,000 security men from the Indian Army, Marine Commandos, the National Security Guard commandos besides the local police to neutralise about two dozen young, well-armed terrorists, is one of the most audacious attacks on India and reveal the maturing of a strongly networked terror coalition with links to terrorist groups based in Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Two other attacks of similar nature were the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts and the December 13, 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament. The latest Mumbai attack, in a way, had operational strategies drawn from both the attacks.
The attacks point at the inevitable expansion of the radical fringe within the 150-million strong Muslim community and the increasing influence of al Qaeda or its allies like Lashkar-e-Tayiba on such men spread out across India, particularly in west and south India.
The involvement of the criminal underworld in Mumbai in carrying out the attacks is strongly suspected. The 1993 blasts were carried out by the members gang lead by Dawood Ibrahim, who now lives in Karachi, Pakistan. Dawood was designated as a terrorist supporter in 2003 by the US government for his links with al Qaeda (sharing his smuggling routes with the terror syndicate). Dawood also financed Lashkar activities, a group suspected to have organised the Mumbai attacks.
The latest series of attacks, carried out by a well-trained, indoctrinated cluster of young jihadis, had other similarities with the 1993 serial blasts and the Parliament attack. The objectives, for instance, were more or less the same.
Draw international attention
Cripple the economic hub of the country
Paralyse the government/political process
Provoke communal backlash
Invite more recruits and support for such activities in future
In the Parliament attack, few men, all young, entered the Parliament complex, opened indiscriminate firing and attempted to enter the chamber with the objective of holding political leaders hostage. The 1993 Mumbai blast had targeted some of the well-known landmarks in southern Mumbai, including The Taj and cinema theatres like Metro. There were plans to hold political leaders hostage after entering the Mantralaya (the state secretariat).
Both the attacks had the hand of either Pakistan-based terrorist groups like Jaish-e-Mohammad or LeT or the criminal syndicate led by Dawood Ibrahim, who had the blessings of Pakistan's intelligence agency, the Inter Services Intelligence.
Few conclusions can be drawn about the nature and strength of the group involved in the Mumbai 2008 attack.
1. The number of terrorists involved in the attack (no less than 24) and the high level of coordination and determination they showed in holding ground for more than 30 hours against one of the world's best, and experienced, elite commando force and soldiers point to the involvement of a well-established and highly networked terrorist group or alliance like LeT.
2. LeT has been involved in attacks like the Red Fort [Images] attack of 2000, the Parliament Attack of 2001, the Akshardham attack of 2002 and Bangalore IIM attack of 2005 where a modus operandi similar to the Mumbai 2008 attack -- open attack with assault rifles --was used.
3. The terrorists involved in the attack, as in the past cases, are likely to be `volunteers` and not members of the suspect terrorist groups. This is the strategy which al Qaeda has been utilising over the past seven years.
4. The attack was carefully planned, and most likely monitored closely by the masterminds from safe distances. The targets were selected for their visibility, impact, lax security, easy accessibility, hostage taking, and to find convenient fortifications to counter police action.
5. The attack of this magnitude need to be rehearsed and the target locations recceed several times. Most likely, the targets were recceed the morning of the attack.
6. The attack could not have taken place without a local support base, most likely involving the criminal underworld which has a substantial presence in Mumbai.
7. The use of assault rifles and hand grenades point to the involvement of the Mumbai underworld, likely to be the one controlled by Dawood whose association with ISI is well known.
Given these factors and similarities in modus operandi, selection of targets and use of sophisticated weapons and explosives, the involvement of a similar groups with links to ISI becomes highly probable. The suspicion also gathers strength from the role of ISI in carrying out a suicide bombing against the Indian Embassy in Kabul in July 2008. The suicide bomber was a Lashkar operative. LeT has been operating several training camps in North West Frontier Province and Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir where, according to a well-respected Pakistani magazine Herald, recruits, both from Pakistan and other countries, have been training in fidayeen or suicide missions since 2006.
LeT operates a huge empire of schools and charity organisations under the camouflage of a social and religious organisation, Jamaat-ud Dawa from Lahore. LeT chief Hafiz Saeed has been promoting anti-India and anti-Western feelings during his Friday prayers. As recent as October 13, he told his audience that, 'India understands only one language that is jihad'. He argued that, 'India has blocked the water of River Chenab and constructed the Baglihar Dam. Pakistan has failed to stop India from doing so. The only reason is, all this has happened because jihad has been abandoned. India understands only one language ie the language of jihad... jihad cannot be suppressed. In fact, with little support, it can break apart India just like the former USSR.'
The LeT, a pro-Wahhabi group, has been a key instrument of the ISI in sidelining different Deobandi terrorist groups active in India, including Kashmir for the past few years. One of the founding members of LeT has been Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian jihadi ideologue, more famous as Osama bin Laden's teacher.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Mumbai. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Mumbai. Sort by date Show all posts
Friday, November 28, 2008
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Great New Year Bash in Hyderabad
By M H Ahssan
Hyderabad City Is Emerging As Top Destination Ahead Of Hotspots Like Goa, Mumbai and Bangalore
Move over Goa, Mumbai and Bangalore, Hyderabad is the place to be for this New Year's eve. With terror strikes and security fears casting a shadow of dread over the regular party hotspots, Hyderabad has become the destination this December 31 for popular international and national artists like DJ Ravin from Buddha Bar, Paris, DJ Gino from Paris, Dale Anderson who is based in London, the Danish-Indian Bombay Rockers and DJ Suketu from Mumbai.
"Mumbai is on a high alert and with rumours floating around that Goa is likely to be the next target, people are scared to venture to these regular party destinations. Places like Hyderabad, which were never in the limelight until now, suddenly seem like a good option as they are perceived to be relatively safer," says DJ Lloyd, resident DJ at Poison Mumbai, who chose to play in Hyderabad on New Year's eve, over Mumbai and Goa.
In fact, Hyderabad is much better than even Bangalore and Chennai, agrees DJ Murthy. "I had 10 gigs in Goa and three in Mumbai lined up for December, all of which are cancelled. Chennai has also cancelled a number of its dos," he states adding that despite security apprehensions, this city still seems a safer place to be.
Organisers of these events say that unlike the previous years when people from here would head towards Goa and Mumbai to celebrate the new year, this time they are quite content to stay in the city. The organisers of Race 2009, an event which will see Bollywood's DJ Suketu usher in the new year, expect a number people from other places to visit the city. "Suketu is playing in India on December 31 for the first time in five years. It is going to be a big event and we are expecting some people from Mumbai too, who would like to attend this event," says DJ Ankit Sharma, event manager, Race 2009.
Hyderabadis, who are staying back this year, feel that the city will offer them a good time without the tension of terror threats marring their evening, believes Lloyd. Hyderabad on its part is going all out to make the night memorable for revellers with famous DJs, fancy audio-visual systems transported from Mumbai and even an artificial beach with a cruise liner and the others.
"There are different kinds of parties to suit different kinds of crowds. One can choose the music and atmosphere one wants. There is something for everyone this year," says Murthy.
"Two DJs from Paris are visiting India for the first time, and that too in Hyderabad, so it is going to be a huge party," says Rebecca Lee from Extreme Sports Bar, one of the sponsors of Nirvana 2009 to be held at HICC.
Apart from the entertainment, event organisers are doing their best to ensure their guests topmost security. "As per police instructions we are providing Z-grade security with 150 guards, police personnel, sniffer dogs and metal detectors at the venue. For one week prior to the event, our security team will be keeping an eye over the place to see that nothing untoward happens," says Sharma.
"We will provide a secure environment. There will be extra security at the gates, handbag checks and car passes will be allotted with tickets so there will be nothing to worry about," assures Lee.
Hyderabad City Is Emerging As Top Destination Ahead Of Hotspots Like Goa, Mumbai and Bangalore
Move over Goa, Mumbai and Bangalore, Hyderabad is the place to be for this New Year's eve. With terror strikes and security fears casting a shadow of dread over the regular party hotspots, Hyderabad has become the destination this December 31 for popular international and national artists like DJ Ravin from Buddha Bar, Paris, DJ Gino from Paris, Dale Anderson who is based in London, the Danish-Indian Bombay Rockers and DJ Suketu from Mumbai.
"Mumbai is on a high alert and with rumours floating around that Goa is likely to be the next target, people are scared to venture to these regular party destinations. Places like Hyderabad, which were never in the limelight until now, suddenly seem like a good option as they are perceived to be relatively safer," says DJ Lloyd, resident DJ at Poison Mumbai, who chose to play in Hyderabad on New Year's eve, over Mumbai and Goa.
In fact, Hyderabad is much better than even Bangalore and Chennai, agrees DJ Murthy. "I had 10 gigs in Goa and three in Mumbai lined up for December, all of which are cancelled. Chennai has also cancelled a number of its dos," he states adding that despite security apprehensions, this city still seems a safer place to be.
Organisers of these events say that unlike the previous years when people from here would head towards Goa and Mumbai to celebrate the new year, this time they are quite content to stay in the city. The organisers of Race 2009, an event which will see Bollywood's DJ Suketu usher in the new year, expect a number people from other places to visit the city. "Suketu is playing in India on December 31 for the first time in five years. It is going to be a big event and we are expecting some people from Mumbai too, who would like to attend this event," says DJ Ankit Sharma, event manager, Race 2009.
Hyderabadis, who are staying back this year, feel that the city will offer them a good time without the tension of terror threats marring their evening, believes Lloyd. Hyderabad on its part is going all out to make the night memorable for revellers with famous DJs, fancy audio-visual systems transported from Mumbai and even an artificial beach with a cruise liner and the others.
"There are different kinds of parties to suit different kinds of crowds. One can choose the music and atmosphere one wants. There is something for everyone this year," says Murthy.
"Two DJs from Paris are visiting India for the first time, and that too in Hyderabad, so it is going to be a huge party," says Rebecca Lee from Extreme Sports Bar, one of the sponsors of Nirvana 2009 to be held at HICC.
Apart from the entertainment, event organisers are doing their best to ensure their guests topmost security. "As per police instructions we are providing Z-grade security with 150 guards, police personnel, sniffer dogs and metal detectors at the venue. For one week prior to the event, our security team will be keeping an eye over the place to see that nothing untoward happens," says Sharma.
"We will provide a secure environment. There will be extra security at the gates, handbag checks and car passes will be allotted with tickets so there will be nothing to worry about," assures Lee.
Thursday, April 09, 2015
IPL 8 Match Review: Rusty Bowling, Clinical Batting Makes 'Kolkata Kinght Riders' First Win Against 'Mumbai Indians'
Forty overs is too short a span to judge a team’s performance, but holders Kolkata Knight Riders will still take a lot of positives out of their seven-wicket win over Mumbai Indians in the IPL-8 opener. Despite KKR’s recent success of late, MI has been quite a painful thorn in their sides; this is only KKR’s fifth win against them in all eight IPL seasons.
Some of these defeats have been quite painful; in 2013, Harbhajan hit a six in the last over to win a match Mumbai had all but lost and in 2011, Mumbai had knocked Kolkata out in the eliminator, winning a close match by five wickets.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Mumbai's night of terror
By M H Ahssan
The unprecedented night of horror in India's financial capital began at about 9.30 pm for two Germans, Rita and Thomas, part of a Lufthansa in-flight crew finishing dinner at Leopold Cafe in Colaba in south Mumbai.
Barely five hours earlier, HNN published an news article (Closing time for India's Iranian cafes) mentioning the restaurant as a favorite of Western tourists, and this popularity caused it to be among the first of 12 terrorist targets on Wednesday night that killed more than 80 people and injured nearly 300, and the figures are rising.
Apart from the cafe, groups of militants armed with automatic weapons and grenades burst into luxury hotels, a hospital and a railway station, spewing death. As of publication time, many tourists were being held hostage in the Taj Mahal hotel, a 105-year-old landmark, and the five-star Trident Oberoi.
"I saw the terrorist firing his machine gun at people sitting at the next table," Rita said, "and then thought the gun would turn around to me." But the terrorist, in his mid-30s, swung the gun away from her, momentarily distracted by his accomplice waiting in the mezzanine floor and firing randomly at diners.
Her life had been saved in that split second. Police said they had killed four gunmen and arrested nine. A group identifying itself as the Deccan Mujahideen said it was responsible, per emails sent to news organizations. Virtually nothing is known of this group. "Deccan" is an area of India and "Mujahideen" is the plural form of a Muslim participating in jihad. Security officials believe it unlikely an unknown group could carry out such a precise and heavily-armed attack.
It is more likely to be the work of the Indian Mujahideen, an Islamist group that has claimed responsibility for other attacks in India. On Thursday morning, speaking from inside the Oberoi where foreigners are being held hostage, a man identified as Sahadullah told India TV he belonged to an Indian Islamist group seeking to end the persecution of Indian Muslims: "We want all mujahideens held in India released and only after that we will release the people."
No one knows how the terrorists arrived in the city. One theory is that they came from the sea in an explosives-laden boat. But there is no doubt about their agenda.
Rita, Thomas and Jesper, the latter the owner of a shipping company from Denmark, fell to the floor with other diners at the Leopold, some on top of each other. "We thought if we lay down and kept still, the gunman would think we are dead," said Rita, a blonde stewardess serving on Lufthansa Flight 764 from Mumbai to Munich.
As the machinegun-wielding murderer ran up to join his accomplice upstairs, the trio fled into an already panic-stricken street, over a dead body and leaving their bags, money, cell phones and unpaid dinner bill behind. But the night of terror for Rita and her friends was only beginning, as it was for a city of 13 million not unused to terrorist strikes but never in such prolonged horror.
The trio were staying at the Oberoi Hotel in Nariman Point, a rare case of victims caught in two of the dozen terrorist-hit areas in Mumbai on the fateful night. Hemant Karkare, chief of the city's anti-terrorism squad, was among three senior police officials killed in a police counter-attack against the terrorists holding hostages as the Oberoi and Taj Mahal. By 10.30pm outside the Oberoi, by the Arabian Sea on Marine Drive, it was surreally quiet, with roads dark and deserted, in contrast to the usual daytime office bustle in one of the city's busiest and most expensive office areas.
I reached the Oberoi minutes after seeing the news flash on TV, even as gunmen were holed up inside the hotel and police cordons were being thrown around the white-painted building. I recalled the Marriott in Islamabad, which terrorists struck on September 20, setting it alight. Would the Oberoi and Taj suffer the same devastating fate? No one nearby, including police constables, had any clear idea of what was happening, except that gun shots had been fired and there were multiple explosions.
Small groups of bystanders joined fleeing uniformed hotel staff running into the night. Sporadic gunfire and explosions could be heard from the Taj Mahal about two kilometers away. Oberoi hotel guests periodically raced out, crouching and escorted by poorly armed policemen. Sunil (name changed on request), a Marine Commando Special Forces Officer, residing nearby, had heard the first explosion outside the Oberoi.
An explosives specialist, Sunil said that he gauged by the sound that it involved low-grade explosives of about 10 kilograms, of the kind that can be packed into a fire extinguisher and set off with a mobile phone ring as a trigger.
Other explosions were grenade attacks, the first of many across Mumbai. "The explosion in the Air India building in the 1993 bomb blast attacks was so loud the ground shook," remembers officer Sunil. "First you feel the building shake and then you hear the loud explosion."
At this point security men asked us to move away from the area, particularly since I was wearing a white shirt and could be a sitting target at night for bullets.
It was a terrible feeling of deja vu for officer Sunil, who, like me, had similarly raced out into the streets in Churchgate on midday on Friday, March 12, 1993, to see a sea of glass shards amid dead, bleeding and dying bodies strewn around the Air India building, just a stone's throw the Oberoi. In that incident, a series of 13 blasts killed up to 250 people, with 700 injured. Fifteen years later, Mumbai has suffered more serial terrorist strikes. In the intervening years, the city has been the victim of bomb attacks, but it has never seen anything like the carnage of Wednesday night - it was pure and simple urban warfare.
Mumbai has been attacked six times since 1993. The last major attack was in in 2006 when 200 people were killed in attacks on the rail transit system.
"This is a high-risk zone," said officer Sunil. "There could be delayed explosions." His prediction was correct; within 30 minutes, with gunfire and explosions had turned Mumbai into Baghdad.
A black-suited Oberoi banquet manager was standing in a dark, nearly deserted lane opposite the outwardly silent hotel, staring up at the few lighted room windows. His hotel would be nearly empty of guests by the morning.
The still surreal silence was broken occasionally by a rush of feet fleeing the hotel, or policemen crouching into firing positions near the hotel's perimeter, or warning onlookers to go away. "Fortunately, we had only one function tonight, in one banquet room out of the nine we have," the banquet manager said. "Otherwise, the causalities might have been higher." He said the hotel had about 45% occupancy.
"Two masked armed gunmen randomly fired from the ramp in the lobby," the Oberoi shopping mall manager standing nearby reported on his cell phone to a senior. "The Kandahar [restaurant[ is badly damaged, sir. No word of causalities." A pattern was emerging. Two-member teams of gunmen had fanned out across Mumbai, randomly firing into crowds and hurling grenades out of backpacks.
Most of the targets were tourist-oriented, including railway stations and hospitals. Reports emerged of terrorists looking in particular for American and British guests at the Oberoi and Taj Mahal, two luxury landmarks and rated by Forbes and Conde Nast among the world's best business hotels. In a sense, Mumbai and India's economy was under attack.
A young food and beverage trainee attending a roof-top party at the Oberoi had just escaped into the street, still panting, and reported seeing a Japanese guest shot in the hip. "Another guest said he had seen a man being shot dead before his eyes," he said. "We heard there is another explosion in Mazgaon Docks. We live near there and have to go."
By 11.30 pm, when I met Thomas, Rita and Jesper near the Air India building facing the Arabian Sea, Marine Drive had turned into a Hollywood disaster movie set: ambulances, police vehicles, satellite TV vans, trucks of heavily armed soldiers rumbling into the zone and reporters screaming into their cell phones. Thomas and Rita were desperately trying to contact three missing crew members, not yet sure whether one of them had escaped alive out of the Leopold Cafe.
Soldiers were moving into the Oberoi, seven grenade explosions rocked the Taj Mahal, India's first-ever five-star hotel, with its famous sea-facing dome on fire. Like other hotel guests, the Lufthansa crew were stranded outside for the night. Shipping company owner Jesper had experienced bullets flying near his head when he served as solder in a United Nations peacekeeping mission in Yugoslavia 13 years ago.
"We were caught in the crossfire between Bosnians and Serbs," Jesper remembered. "But tonight was more terrifying because I had no gun to defend myself. Soldiers firing on soldiers in a war is easier to understand than civilians firing at other civilians." "This is my first visit to Mumbai and I like it," said Rita, who nearly lost her life in the Leopold Cafe and escaped being killed in the Oberoi in a night of terror that she and Mumbai will never forget. "But I don't want to come back here again."
Lufthansa eventually picked up Rita, Thomas and Jesper in the morning and moved them to the Hyatt Residency near the airport. Flights out of Mumbai were expected to be full on Thursday. But Mumbai has so far refused to heed chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh's advice to stay indoors. Office attendance is expected to be down, but suburban trains are running and the city is attempting to come out to work. For stoic, terrorist-battered Mumbai, work and life go on.
The unprecedented night of horror in India's financial capital began at about 9.30 pm for two Germans, Rita and Thomas, part of a Lufthansa in-flight crew finishing dinner at Leopold Cafe in Colaba in south Mumbai.
Barely five hours earlier, HNN published an news article (Closing time for India's Iranian cafes) mentioning the restaurant as a favorite of Western tourists, and this popularity caused it to be among the first of 12 terrorist targets on Wednesday night that killed more than 80 people and injured nearly 300, and the figures are rising.
Apart from the cafe, groups of militants armed with automatic weapons and grenades burst into luxury hotels, a hospital and a railway station, spewing death. As of publication time, many tourists were being held hostage in the Taj Mahal hotel, a 105-year-old landmark, and the five-star Trident Oberoi.
"I saw the terrorist firing his machine gun at people sitting at the next table," Rita said, "and then thought the gun would turn around to me." But the terrorist, in his mid-30s, swung the gun away from her, momentarily distracted by his accomplice waiting in the mezzanine floor and firing randomly at diners.
Her life had been saved in that split second. Police said they had killed four gunmen and arrested nine. A group identifying itself as the Deccan Mujahideen said it was responsible, per emails sent to news organizations. Virtually nothing is known of this group. "Deccan" is an area of India and "Mujahideen" is the plural form of a Muslim participating in jihad. Security officials believe it unlikely an unknown group could carry out such a precise and heavily-armed attack.
It is more likely to be the work of the Indian Mujahideen, an Islamist group that has claimed responsibility for other attacks in India. On Thursday morning, speaking from inside the Oberoi where foreigners are being held hostage, a man identified as Sahadullah told India TV he belonged to an Indian Islamist group seeking to end the persecution of Indian Muslims: "We want all mujahideens held in India released and only after that we will release the people."
No one knows how the terrorists arrived in the city. One theory is that they came from the sea in an explosives-laden boat. But there is no doubt about their agenda.
Rita, Thomas and Jesper, the latter the owner of a shipping company from Denmark, fell to the floor with other diners at the Leopold, some on top of each other. "We thought if we lay down and kept still, the gunman would think we are dead," said Rita, a blonde stewardess serving on Lufthansa Flight 764 from Mumbai to Munich.
As the machinegun-wielding murderer ran up to join his accomplice upstairs, the trio fled into an already panic-stricken street, over a dead body and leaving their bags, money, cell phones and unpaid dinner bill behind. But the night of terror for Rita and her friends was only beginning, as it was for a city of 13 million not unused to terrorist strikes but never in such prolonged horror.
The trio were staying at the Oberoi Hotel in Nariman Point, a rare case of victims caught in two of the dozen terrorist-hit areas in Mumbai on the fateful night. Hemant Karkare, chief of the city's anti-terrorism squad, was among three senior police officials killed in a police counter-attack against the terrorists holding hostages as the Oberoi and Taj Mahal. By 10.30pm outside the Oberoi, by the Arabian Sea on Marine Drive, it was surreally quiet, with roads dark and deserted, in contrast to the usual daytime office bustle in one of the city's busiest and most expensive office areas.
I reached the Oberoi minutes after seeing the news flash on TV, even as gunmen were holed up inside the hotel and police cordons were being thrown around the white-painted building. I recalled the Marriott in Islamabad, which terrorists struck on September 20, setting it alight. Would the Oberoi and Taj suffer the same devastating fate? No one nearby, including police constables, had any clear idea of what was happening, except that gun shots had been fired and there were multiple explosions.
Small groups of bystanders joined fleeing uniformed hotel staff running into the night. Sporadic gunfire and explosions could be heard from the Taj Mahal about two kilometers away. Oberoi hotel guests periodically raced out, crouching and escorted by poorly armed policemen. Sunil (name changed on request), a Marine Commando Special Forces Officer, residing nearby, had heard the first explosion outside the Oberoi.
An explosives specialist, Sunil said that he gauged by the sound that it involved low-grade explosives of about 10 kilograms, of the kind that can be packed into a fire extinguisher and set off with a mobile phone ring as a trigger.
Other explosions were grenade attacks, the first of many across Mumbai. "The explosion in the Air India building in the 1993 bomb blast attacks was so loud the ground shook," remembers officer Sunil. "First you feel the building shake and then you hear the loud explosion."
At this point security men asked us to move away from the area, particularly since I was wearing a white shirt and could be a sitting target at night for bullets.
It was a terrible feeling of deja vu for officer Sunil, who, like me, had similarly raced out into the streets in Churchgate on midday on Friday, March 12, 1993, to see a sea of glass shards amid dead, bleeding and dying bodies strewn around the Air India building, just a stone's throw the Oberoi. In that incident, a series of 13 blasts killed up to 250 people, with 700 injured. Fifteen years later, Mumbai has suffered more serial terrorist strikes. In the intervening years, the city has been the victim of bomb attacks, but it has never seen anything like the carnage of Wednesday night - it was pure and simple urban warfare.
Mumbai has been attacked six times since 1993. The last major attack was in in 2006 when 200 people were killed in attacks on the rail transit system.
"This is a high-risk zone," said officer Sunil. "There could be delayed explosions." His prediction was correct; within 30 minutes, with gunfire and explosions had turned Mumbai into Baghdad.
A black-suited Oberoi banquet manager was standing in a dark, nearly deserted lane opposite the outwardly silent hotel, staring up at the few lighted room windows. His hotel would be nearly empty of guests by the morning.
The still surreal silence was broken occasionally by a rush of feet fleeing the hotel, or policemen crouching into firing positions near the hotel's perimeter, or warning onlookers to go away. "Fortunately, we had only one function tonight, in one banquet room out of the nine we have," the banquet manager said. "Otherwise, the causalities might have been higher." He said the hotel had about 45% occupancy.
"Two masked armed gunmen randomly fired from the ramp in the lobby," the Oberoi shopping mall manager standing nearby reported on his cell phone to a senior. "The Kandahar [restaurant[ is badly damaged, sir. No word of causalities." A pattern was emerging. Two-member teams of gunmen had fanned out across Mumbai, randomly firing into crowds and hurling grenades out of backpacks.
Most of the targets were tourist-oriented, including railway stations and hospitals. Reports emerged of terrorists looking in particular for American and British guests at the Oberoi and Taj Mahal, two luxury landmarks and rated by Forbes and Conde Nast among the world's best business hotels. In a sense, Mumbai and India's economy was under attack.
A young food and beverage trainee attending a roof-top party at the Oberoi had just escaped into the street, still panting, and reported seeing a Japanese guest shot in the hip. "Another guest said he had seen a man being shot dead before his eyes," he said. "We heard there is another explosion in Mazgaon Docks. We live near there and have to go."
By 11.30 pm, when I met Thomas, Rita and Jesper near the Air India building facing the Arabian Sea, Marine Drive had turned into a Hollywood disaster movie set: ambulances, police vehicles, satellite TV vans, trucks of heavily armed soldiers rumbling into the zone and reporters screaming into their cell phones. Thomas and Rita were desperately trying to contact three missing crew members, not yet sure whether one of them had escaped alive out of the Leopold Cafe.
Soldiers were moving into the Oberoi, seven grenade explosions rocked the Taj Mahal, India's first-ever five-star hotel, with its famous sea-facing dome on fire. Like other hotel guests, the Lufthansa crew were stranded outside for the night. Shipping company owner Jesper had experienced bullets flying near his head when he served as solder in a United Nations peacekeeping mission in Yugoslavia 13 years ago.
"We were caught in the crossfire between Bosnians and Serbs," Jesper remembered. "But tonight was more terrifying because I had no gun to defend myself. Soldiers firing on soldiers in a war is easier to understand than civilians firing at other civilians." "This is my first visit to Mumbai and I like it," said Rita, who nearly lost her life in the Leopold Cafe and escaped being killed in the Oberoi in a night of terror that she and Mumbai will never forget. "But I don't want to come back here again."
Lufthansa eventually picked up Rita, Thomas and Jesper in the morning and moved them to the Hyatt Residency near the airport. Flights out of Mumbai were expected to be full on Thursday. But Mumbai has so far refused to heed chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh's advice to stay indoors. Office attendance is expected to be down, but suburban trains are running and the city is attempting to come out to work. For stoic, terrorist-battered Mumbai, work and life go on.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Mumbai a target for terrorists
By Golden Reejsinghani
Terrorists are like black shadows that stealthily come in the night and do their work. Mumbai is known as a safe city and the people living in this city always thought Afghanistan, Kashmir and Pakistan were soft targets for terrorists. But now Mumbai is also under their fire. Terrorists ran amuck on the streets of Mumbai spraying bullets and lobbying grenades on innocent people without making the concession for the old , infirm , women , children and sick people their main aim was to destroy the very fabric of Mumbai and to kill the spirit of the cosmopolitan nature for which it is famous.
In 1993 the first bomb blast ripped the city apart. But the denizens of Mumbai rose up like a proverbial phoenix from the ashes and rebuilt the city and this continued till today but this did not go down well with the terrorist and therefore they tried many more times to bring Bombay and its people to their knees. Some of the terrorist attacks which followed the 1993 carnage are given below.
August 28 , 1997 – Bomb blasts took place near Jama Masjid injuring 3 people
January 24,1998- Malad 1 person got injured
February 27, 2008 – Virar – 9 people got injured.
December 2, 2002 – Blast in BEST Bus at Ghatkopar.
December 6, 2002 – Mumbai Central Railway station 25 people got injured.
January 27, 2003 – Vile Parle killing 1 and injuring at least 25.
March 13 , 2003 - Mulund Railway station killing 11 and injuring 80
August 25, 2003 – Two taxis were ripped apart in the morning in Mumbai.
July 11, 2006 – Serial Blasts took place at 7 places in the evening killing 225 and injuring 890 innocent citizens.
July 29, 2003 - Ghatkopar killing 3 and injuring 34 people.
This time around the terrorists wanted to really kill the spirit of the city and aim at destroying the pride of Mumbai when inconceivable terror and over whelming feeling of fear and anxiety returned to Mumbai’s Streets on Wednesday night killing more than 25 people and injuring at least 327 people including the ATS chief < anti terrorism squad chief > Mr. Hemant Karkare, additional commissioner Ashok Kamte and the encounter specialist Mr. Vijay Salaskr. All these top notch officials laid their life for the love of the country fighting bravely with the terrorists. .
The main aim of these terrorists was to bring a dead end to the country’s commercial center Mumbai .The terrorists who attacked Mumbai moved about in groups of two’s and three’s and attacked the innocent people on the roads all over the city, setting off inter connected numerous blasts and gunshot in many localities across the city including the CST train station and two posh five star hotels – Oberoi trident and the Taj Mahal Hotel. These two hotels are pride of Mumbai , especially the Taj Mhal hotel which is known as a heritage hotel and every tourist envy, the terrorist tried their best to d0 9/11 to the hotels like they did to twin towers in USA and most recently to Marriott hotel in Pakistan, but in spite of their best efforts the two hotels took all the beating right on their bellies and stood like two sentinels looking them squarely in the eye and challenging them to destroy them, today the terrorists are all smoked out of the hotels and their dead bodies removed to the morgue except for one Azam Amir Kassam a 21 year old who is from Faridkot which is in Pakistan, he is the only one who is captured alive and who is spilling the beans on his comrades.
The terrorists arrived in the city through the sea route with hand grenades, Automatic machine guns and a large amount of explosives. The terrorists did not even refrain from harming hospitals like the GT and the Cama hospital.
Eye witness Santosh singh said,‘Hand grenades, automatic machine guns and rifles were used by the terrorists to spread unimaginable terror and kill the innocent people. Unfortunately Non –resident Indians and the policemen were the major targets of these people”
Eye witnesses recounting Tales of Horror
TAJ: Many were the people who were trapped inside the two prestigious hotels, according to one eye witness Jaisingh Giakwad Patel, NCP MP from Beed said “he was staying in room 319 in Taj hotel and he saw that the terrorists were well equipped. Around 9.45 p.m. “I was watching TV when I heard gunfire I thought these must be fire crackers, but when this continued for sometime I called up the reception and I was told not to open the door because the hotel was under siege from terrorists. whole night the firing continued and the sound of grenades shattered the silence of the night, the terrorists forcibly opened the doors of foreign nationals and they were taken hostages the terrorists positioned themselves in strategic locations around the hotel and anyone who dared to peep out of their room was shot down in cold blood. All this time I had nothing to eat I survived on 3 fruits, a few bottles of cold drinks and water till I was rescued by NSG commandos 2.30”.
CHATRAPATI SHIVAJI TERMINUS TRAIN STATION: Ramakrishna Athyale who has a pan shop went to the CST station to catch a train at 9.10 p.m. when he had just boarded the train he heard the gun shots. In a second of minutes People were running all over the station.
VILE PARLE: Ram Prasad Singh was on the road in his car when the taxi near the fly over exploded “I was 500 meters away from the place where the taxi exploded and everything was surrounded in smoke and the vehicle that contained the bomb blew into bits and pieces.”
COLABA: “I and my friends were eating outside at a road side stall when we heard gunshots and all the people were running helter skelter this occurred around 9.55 p.m At that moment I and my friends could not think of anything but run”. – Ramprasad Sanghvi executive.
WADI BUNDER: Amina Sheikh was an eye witness to the blast that took place near the BPT Colony at wadi bunder near the sandhurst road , recounts that “ it was a very scary situation to face when I saw many dead and blown away to pieces when the bomb exploded in a taxi stationed outside the hutments colony”.
It is bewildering to see how innocent citizens are being wiped out by the terrorists. And disgusting to see these terrorists killing people at will There must be some solution to this nagging problem-to clear terrorists from the city it took 52 hours of hard work and back breaking labor along with this there were many who lost their lives, many who are permentaly maimed, many who have lost their jobs in these days of recessions. Who is going to give these people back their loved ones, their jobs and what about the trauma, people who have seen the carnage at close quarters will carry this trauma throughout their lives, there must be some solution to the problem and this can be solved only if all the governments of the world get together and start a fight against terrorists and countries harboring these terrorist the attacks are becoming very frequent every country in the world is being targeted by these dark forces because they feel invincible-somebody has to make them realize that they are not invincible and the start should be made by India because it has seen the worst attack of terrorism in this century. India needs to establish a national terrorist law and its approach in dealing with the terrorists should be even handed. There is an urgent need to damp down the temperature in the country and along the lines of L.O.C. India also needs a united policy direction at the national level to deal with terrorism.
Terrorists are like black shadows that stealthily come in the night and do their work. Mumbai is known as a safe city and the people living in this city always thought Afghanistan, Kashmir and Pakistan were soft targets for terrorists. But now Mumbai is also under their fire. Terrorists ran amuck on the streets of Mumbai spraying bullets and lobbying grenades on innocent people without making the concession for the old , infirm , women , children and sick people their main aim was to destroy the very fabric of Mumbai and to kill the spirit of the cosmopolitan nature for which it is famous.
In 1993 the first bomb blast ripped the city apart. But the denizens of Mumbai rose up like a proverbial phoenix from the ashes and rebuilt the city and this continued till today but this did not go down well with the terrorist and therefore they tried many more times to bring Bombay and its people to their knees. Some of the terrorist attacks which followed the 1993 carnage are given below.
August 28 , 1997 – Bomb blasts took place near Jama Masjid injuring 3 people
January 24,1998- Malad 1 person got injured
February 27, 2008 – Virar – 9 people got injured.
December 2, 2002 – Blast in BEST Bus at Ghatkopar.
December 6, 2002 – Mumbai Central Railway station 25 people got injured.
January 27, 2003 – Vile Parle killing 1 and injuring at least 25.
March 13 , 2003 - Mulund Railway station killing 11 and injuring 80
August 25, 2003 – Two taxis were ripped apart in the morning in Mumbai.
July 11, 2006 – Serial Blasts took place at 7 places in the evening killing 225 and injuring 890 innocent citizens.
July 29, 2003 - Ghatkopar killing 3 and injuring 34 people.
This time around the terrorists wanted to really kill the spirit of the city and aim at destroying the pride of Mumbai when inconceivable terror and over whelming feeling of fear and anxiety returned to Mumbai’s Streets on Wednesday night killing more than 25 people and injuring at least 327 people including the ATS chief < anti terrorism squad chief > Mr. Hemant Karkare, additional commissioner Ashok Kamte and the encounter specialist Mr. Vijay Salaskr. All these top notch officials laid their life for the love of the country fighting bravely with the terrorists. .
The main aim of these terrorists was to bring a dead end to the country’s commercial center Mumbai .The terrorists who attacked Mumbai moved about in groups of two’s and three’s and attacked the innocent people on the roads all over the city, setting off inter connected numerous blasts and gunshot in many localities across the city including the CST
The terrorists arrived in the city through the sea route with hand grenades, Automatic machine guns and a large amount of explosives. The terrorists did not even refrain from harming hospitals like the GT and the Cama hospital.
Eye witness Santosh singh said,‘Hand grenades, automatic machine guns and rifles were used by the terrorists to spread unimaginable terror and kill the innocent people. Unfortunately Non –resident Indians and the policemen were the major targets of these people”
Eye witnesses recounting Tales of Horror
TAJ: Many were the people who were trapped inside the two prestigious hotels, according to one eye witness Jaisingh Giakwad Patel, NCP MP from Beed said “he was staying in room 319 in Taj hotel and he saw that the terrorists were well equipped. Around 9.45 p.m. “I was watching TV when I heard gunfire I thought these must be fire crackers, but when this continued for sometime I called up the reception and I was told not to open the door because the hotel was under siege from terrorists. whole night the firing continued and the sound of grenades shattered the silence of the night, the terrorists forcibly opened the doors of foreign nationals and they were taken hostages the terrorists positioned themselves in strategic locations around the hotel and anyone who dared to peep out of their room was shot down in cold blood. All this time I had nothing to eat I survived on 3 fruits, a few bottles of cold drinks and water till I was rescued by NSG commandos 2.30”.
CHATRAPATI SHIVAJI TERMINUS TRAIN STATION: Ramakrishna Athyale who has a pan shop went to the CST station to catch a train at 9.10 p.m. when he had just boarded the train he heard the gun shots. In a second of minutes People were running all over the station.
VILE PARLE: Ram Prasad Singh was on the road in his car when the taxi near the fly over exploded “I was 500 meters away from the place where the taxi exploded and everything was surrounded in smoke and the vehicle that contained the bomb blew into bits and pieces.”
COLABA: “I and my friends were eating outside at a road side stall when we heard gunshots and all the people were running helter skelter this occurred around 9.55 p.m At that moment I and my friends could not think of anything but run”. – Ramprasad Sanghvi executive.
WADI BUNDER: Amina Sheikh was an eye witness to the blast that took place near the BPT Colony at wadi bunder near the sandhurst road , recounts that “ it was a very scary situation to face when I saw many dead and blown away to pieces when the bomb exploded in a taxi stationed outside the hutments colony”.
It is bewildering to see how innocent citizens are being wiped out by the terrorists. And disgusting to see these terrorists killing people at will There must be some solution to this nagging problem-to clear terrorists from the city it took 52 hours of hard work and back breaking labor along with this there were many who lost their lives, many who are permentaly maimed, many who have lost their jobs in these days of recessions. Who is going to give these people back their loved ones, their jobs and what about the trauma, people who have seen the carnage at close quarters will carry this trauma throughout their lives, there must be some solution to the problem and this can be solved only if all the governments of the world get together and start a fight against terrorists and countries harboring these terrorist the attacks are becoming very frequent every country in the world is being targeted by these dark forces because they feel invincible-somebody has to make them realize that they are not invincible and the start should be made by India because it has seen the worst attack of terrorism in this century. India needs to establish a national terrorist law and its approach in dealing with the terrorists should be even handed. There is an urgent need to damp down the temperature in the country and along the lines of L.O.C. India also needs a united policy direction at the national level to deal with terrorism.
Friday, May 24, 2013
FIXING: MEIYAPPAN, MUMBAI POLICE PLAY HIDE AND SEEK
When the Queen of England is not in residence at the Buckingham Palace, the Union Jack flutters over the iconic palace to signal the royal absence to her plebeian subjects – and to anyone else who may profit from that information. It is a curious courtly protocol that was introduced in 1997 after a controversy that arose following the death in a car crash in Paris of Princess Diana, whose relations with the British royal family had become severely strained.
Far away from London, another such royal ritual involving flags and a “Super King” was played out for Mumbai Police officials who turned up in Chennai to serve a summons notice on Gurunath Meiyappan, CEO of the Chennai Super King franchise and the jamai raja of BCCI president N Srinivasan.
Wednesday, July 20, 2016
Failure To Prove Zakir Naik's 'Terror Links' Has Left Police Looking Foolish
By SAHIL JOSHI | INNLIVE
The Islamic televangelist wanted to play a victim of media campaign against him as he knew that this would earn him more followers.
Islamic televangelist Zakir Naik has become a headache for the investigating agencies. Because the police simply don't know how to pin him down.
It has been a week and the Mumbai Police is yet to submit its report on the investigation ordered by Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis after the media went all-out against Naik for his allegedly inspiring the terrorists who attacked a Dhaka cafe earlier this month.
Thursday, March 21, 2013
'SANJAY DUTT WILL GO TO JAIL AGAIN!'
12:30 pm: Grateful to SC for reducing sentence: Dutt’s lawyer
Sanjay Dutt’s lawyer Satish Maneshinde said he was grateful to the Supreme Court for reducing Dutt’s sentence. “We respect the SC order, we will go by whatever the court directs us to go through.”
“Whatever be the judgement, we will go through it.”
When asked whether he would appeal against the order, Maneshinde said he could not comment until he got a copy of the order.
11: 47 am: SC sentences Sanjay Dutt to five years in jail
The Supreme Court on Thursday ordered Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt to serve a five year jail sentence for his role in the 1993 Mumbai blasts. Dutt had already served a jail sentence of a year-and-a-half.
The Supreme Court has given Dutt and the other accused who are on bail a period of one month to surrender. Dutt will spend a period of three years and six months in jail.
Earlier, a TADA court had sentenced Sanjay Dutt to six years in jail. The Supreme Court reduced the TADA court order and awarded him to serve a sentence of five years, the minimum sentence under the Arms Act.
Sanjay Dutt was found in possession of weapons at his residence.
Sanjay Dutt, however, can file a review petition before the Supreme Court.
Dutt’s sister Priya Dutt was in court while the sentence was pronounced.
11: 42 am: Life sentence of Rehman Azimulla reduced to 10 years
Life sentence of Ashrafur Rehman Azimulla has been reduced to 10 years while that of Imtiyaz Yunusmiya Ghavte to jail term already undergone.
SC upholds life sentence of 16 out of 18 convicts sentenced by TADA court.
11:38 am: Death sentence of blast mastermind Yakub Memon upheld
The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the death sentence of blast mastermind Yakub Memon, prime accused Tiger Memon’s brother.
The apex court in its ruling reportedly said there is no doubt that Memon played a huge role in the 1993 serial blasts.
Police, customs and coastal guards are also to be blamed for 1993 blasts: SC.
The Supreme Court reduced the death sentence of 10 other accused to life imprisonment considering the fact that they have spent 20 years in jail. It also ruled that life term convicts will remain in jail till their death.
Condemning the role of Pakistan in the blasts, the SC reportedly said: It is clear that ISI training was given to the accused in Islamabad. Confessions of terrorists reveal ISI encouraged terrorism.
“They (accused) had a green channel entrance and exit in Pakistan. No immigration procedures were followed.”
Yakub Memon and all absconding accused (Dawood Ibrahim and others) were “archers” and rest of the accused were “arrows” in their hands.
11: 30 am: SC will pronounce order on ’93 Mumbai blasts
The Supreme Court will pronounce its order on the 1993 Mumbai blasts today. In the multiple blasts across Mumbai, 257 were killed and 713 were injured.
The apex court will pronounce its verdict on the 124 cross appeals by those convicted by a special court for the 1993 Bombay serial bomb blasts, including film star Sanjay Dutt, as well as by the Maharashtra government challenging some acquittals and seeking enhanced sentences for other guilty.
A bench of Justice P Sathasivam and Justice BS Chauhan had heard the spate of cross petitions by the convicts and the state of Maharashtra over ten months. The hearing that commenced on 1 November, 2011, concluded on 29 August, 2012.
The court dealing with the then Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act had convicted and sentenced 12 accused to death, 20 to life imprisonment, and 46 others, including Sanjay Dutt, were given varying terms of imprisonments.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had faced flak for not challenging the TADA court verdict acquitting Sanjay Dutt of charges under the TADA but convicting him under the Arms Act and sentencing him to six years imprisonment. However, in the course of the hearing of his appeal, the CBI had opposed the actor’s plea challenging his conviction and sentencing.
A series of 13 car bomb blasts had ripped through Mumbai on March 12, 1993, resulting in the death of 257 people and injuries to 713. The locations that were targeted included fisherman’s colony in Mahim Causeway, Zaveri Bazaar, Plaza Cinema, Century Bazaar, Katha Bazaar, Hotel Sea Rock, Sahar Airport, Air India building, Hotel Juhu Centaur, the Bombay Stock Exchange Building and the Passport Office.
The TADA court trial court of Justice P.D. Kode had commenced the trial Nov 4, 1993, and pronounced its 4,230-page verdict on July 31, 2007.
On the other hand, Actor Sanjay Dutt’s conviction was upheld by the Supreme Court today. The actor had previously been sentenced to six years in jail. However, the apex court has reduced his sentence from six years to five. Sanjay has not been granted any probation and will have to spend three years and six months of his remaining jail time in prison, given that has already served 18 months of his sentence. Here is a timeline of Sanjay Dutt’s case.
Aug 29, 2012: After a marathon ten-month-long hearing, the Supreme Court reserved its verdict on a number of appeals and cross-appeals in the 1993 Mumbai serial terror bombing case in which 257 people were killed and 713 others were injured.
Sanjay Dutt was facing charges for illegal possession of weapons under the arms act.
Appearing for the actor, senior counsel Harish Salve told the apex court bench of Justice P Sathasivam and Justice BS Chauhan that Sanjay Dutt came to possess the weapons in question in September 1992 when his father Sunil Dutt and sisters were facing threats, as the senior Dutt’s help to Muslim victims during the Mumbai riots had angered powerful people.
He also told the Supreme Court that his offense of possessing a rifle and ammunition was not linked to the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts.
27 November 2007: Sanjay Dutt was granted bail by the Supreme Court.
22 October 2007: Dutt was back in jail but again applied for bail.
23 August, 2007: Sanjay Dutt was released from jail.
20 August 2007: Supreme Court of India granted Dutt interim bail. He was released after the Yerwada Central Jail authorities received a copy of the court’s bail order. The bail was deemed to be valid until the special TADA court, which sentenced Dutt on 31 July, provided a copy of its judgment to him.
7 August 2007: Sanjay Dutt appealed against the sentence.
2 August 2007: Sanjay Dutt was moved from Arthur Road jail in Mumbai to the Yerwada Central Jail in Pune.
31 July 2007: Sanjay Dutt was sentenced to six years rigorous imprisonment for illegally possessing weapons. However, he was also “cleared of terrorism conspiracy charges in the blasts” related to the 1993 bombings. Sanjay Dutt was immediately taken into custody and lodged in the Arthur Road jail.
March 2006: When framing murder charges against extradited Abu Salem and co-accused Riyaz Siddiqui in the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts case, the prosecution said that Salem delivered 9 AK-56 rifles and some hand grenades to Dutt at his Bandra house in the second week of January 1993.
2006: The case opened for sentencing for all the 189 accused.
April 1997: Sanjay was released once again on police bail terms.
December 1995: Sanjay Dutt was rearrested after being granted bail in October.
November 1993: A 90,000 page primary chargesheet was filed against the 189 accused in the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts case which included Sanjay Dutt’s name as well.
19 April 1993: Due to terrorist interactions, and illegal weapons possession, Sanjay was arrested under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act (TADA). He spent 16 months in jail until he was granted bail in October 1995.
12 March, 1993: A series of 13 bomb explosions took place in Mumbai, Maharashtra, killing 250 people and injuring 700. The attacks were coordinated by Dawood Ibrahim and Tiger Memon.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Exclusive: Indian Mujahideen - The Terror And The Threat
By Newscop / INN Bureau
The Indian Mujahideen are both a grave threat and a complex puzzle for this country. As recently as June-end, the Gujarat Police released the interrogation report of one of IM’s key operatives, Danish Riyaz, 29, a software engineer from Ranchi. The Crime Branch had arrested him on 22 June at Vadodara railway station aboard the Secunderabad-Rajkot Express after a tip-off. He was accused of sheltering Abdul Subhan Qureshi in Ranchi, allegedly a mastermind of the Delhi and Ahmedabad blasts of 2008.
Monday, December 01, 2008
The hottest place in the world!
By M H Ahssan & John Wilson
During the recently concluded American elections, vice president-elect Joe Biden made the widely criticized point that president-elect Barack Obama would be tested very soon after ascending to the job. It appears from recent events that his particular prophesy has been fulfilled, and rather earlier than even he had imagined, namely, even before Obama takes on the job of president. It may be no exaggeration to point out that much like September 11, 2001, charted the course of the George W Bush administration, the Mumbai massacre on Thanksgiving 2008 could well chart the course of the Obama presidency.
Firm evidence with respect to the participation of Pakistani government agents in the latest terrorist outrage in Mumbai that left nearly 200 people dead is still unavailable as I write this article; however, the apparent presence of a naval vessel carrying the terrorists to the city's shore as well as the targeting of patently Western and Jewish people in Mumbai points outside the pattern of terrorism that Mumbai has witnessed thus far; namely that of killing locals in mass numbers through the use of explosive devices planted on taxis and trains. I return to the failures of the Indian government in the second half of this article, after first dealing with the immediate consequences for Pakistan should the involvement of its citizens be proven over the near term.
There is a second possibility that I discussed with my Asia Times Online colleague Spengler, namely that the attacks on Mumbai were a response to the anti-piracy actions of the Indian navy that resulted in the sinking of a Somali pirate mother ship last week. The mother ship was a Thai fishing trawler that the pirates had seized a short while before. It is not much of a secret that Somali pirates are well aligned with al-Qaeda for their training and weapons; it is also possible that an important al-Qaeda functionary was killed in the Indian attack.
Based on the complicated set of facts in front of us, it seems logical for now to conclude that the Mumbai operations were the product of meticulous planning and action taken almost exclusively by non-locals to prevent the risk of information leaking to Indian police if locals had been taken into confidence. The most logical source of such people would be the Islamic terrorist continuum operating under the auspices of al-Qaeda and loosely aligned with renegade elements of the Pakistani government itself, namely the Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI; the notorious state-within-state.
Much as everyone discusses the carnage in Mumbai, I cannot escape the feeling that execution was hurried along; the use of even a slightly larger force with more deadly weapons could well have created a multiplication of damage and casualties in Mumbai. That suggests that the operation was executed prematurely: precisely what one should expect if planners had somehow suspected being exposed and their carefully planned actions aborted entirely. It is for this reason that I suspect the Pakistani government’s actions against the ISI as the primary trigger for this terrorist attack.
From a longer-term perspective, it shocks me that more Western agencies including the US and UK governments do not take full cognizance of the size of the challenge in Pakistan. US neo-conservatives for example highlight Iran as the major threat to the planet, despite the fact that its 60 million people are relatively well-off, demographically in decline and most importantly a Shi'ite people surrounded by inimical Sunni groups.
In contrast, Pakistan is a country possessing nuclear weapons and hosting over 150 million people skewed towards the young. Its share of young, unemployed and restless people with a penchant for religious extremism since the early 1980s has steadily risen to the point where calling the country the leading breeding center for terrorism globally wouldn’t be too far-fetched. All of these factors have led to the undermining of civilian government, while the country's elite slide into accommodation with religious fanatics from al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
A few weeks back, I wrote an article (Triangulating an Asian conflict Asia Times Online, September 6, 2008 ) that discussed the potential for Pakistan slipping deeply into the Taliban sphere of operations, in turn imperiling its neighbors, including most urgently India and less probably China over the longer term. What looked like a thesis has now come fully into the realm of probability.
Thus, the indomitable force of Islamic fundamentalism that emerges from Pakistan will have to confront the immovable objects of Han and Hindu resurgence. It is well likely that the first course of action will be against the well known enemy of India rather than the scarier opponent in China, but that is a relatively minor detail in that it only applies over the relative near term.
Of course, the primary thrust of that article was not so much the existence of these threats, but the regional media's casual disregard for the security situation with column inches being devoted instead to the wardrobe choices of the Republican vice-presidential nominee, Sarah Palin. In that article, I juxtaposed the emerging Taliban threat to Pakistan in the context of its worsening economic fundamentals, even as the resurgence of Hindu nationalism made the idea of rapprochement unattainable.
One of the key changes ushered in by President Asif Ali Zardari was the broadening of ties with India, leaving out for now the thorny issue of Kashmir but focusing instead on improving trade and infrastructure while making a common cause against Islamic terrorists. This made sense not only because Zardari owed his ascent to the assassination of his wife, former premier Benazir Bhutto, but also because sidelining the army by achieving peace with India would help to secure his own future.
Proceeding in that vein, and acting finally on a key recommendation by the US government that had been made as early as 2006, earlier last week it emerged that the "political" wing of the ISI had been disbanded. Now of course, much of the ISI isn't supposed to exist in the first place, therefore one uses ground contacts to determine just how serious such changes actually are; in this case it appears that the government's action was seen as a stinging slap on the face of the ISI by effectively rendering the organization captive to the policies and actions of the government in power rather than being determined by its own senior cadre of advisors and agents as had been done previously.
In effect, disbanding the political wing of the ISI was seen as a move for the Pakistani government to take direct charge of ISI activities, and stop being hostage to the machinations of the ISI itself. In the past, the political wing of the ISI was thought to be responsible for the removal of Benazir Bhutto, the trial by fire of Nawaz Sharif, the removal of president General Pervez Musharraf and most recently the assassination of Benazir Bhutto herself. It was for this reason that the ISI took great pains to ensure that her death was blamed on an accident (head hitting the door handle) rather than an assassin's bullets because the difference is the one between martyrdom and destiny.
(The existence of such a political organization that in effect polices the government on behalf of a sinister group of senior insiders is something of a puzzle in democracies across the Western world but is a matter of resigned acceptance in many countries including Russia and most communist countries including China and Vietnam. Across the Islamic world such political wings are active in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran under the guise of the religious police.)
For all intent and purposes it appears that the operations against targets in Mumbai were planned months in advance for execution at an appropriate time; the direct action of the Pakistani government against the ISI may have provided just such a trigger. It is also possible that the anger of al-Qaeda at India for the loss of a pirate mother ship in the past two weeks was a factor in pushing the action.
Whatever the reason for the "Go" command, the more disturbing elements are the implications for the Pakistani government itself. It is unlikely that the governments of the US, UK, Israel and India will take the involvement of agents within the Pakistani government in the Mumbai bombings lightly. However, that anger is beside the point because it is not clear to me that the Pakistani government can actually survive any course of action against these embedded agents.
With its credibility badly damaged in the eyes of the world, the government will have to rush towards a compromise position with the very people it sought to dislodge, namely forces friendly to Islamic terrorism within the agencies of the government including the army and the ISI. In return for promises of going easy, the government would get nominal visibility in future plans.
Then-president Musharraf came to a similar arrangement in the months following 9/11 and US actions against Afghanistan. In return for face-saving bans on terrorist outfits that gathered funds and hired Pakistanis for their operations, he allowed the outfits to expand their soft programs, including Islamic education, pushing back women's rights and broadening the run of the Taliban in border areas with Afghanistan. This worked for a reasonable period of time until finally the US government lost patience with the foot-dragging on operations against al-Qaeda/Taliban fighters nesting within Pakistan. That in turn caused the Americans to act against Musharraf, and bring in Bhutto, albeit with unimaginable consequences for the latter.
In all this, there was also a history lesson that was completely missed, namely the events of 1999 when then prime minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, proposed peace; this led his then head of the army Musharraf and a handful of top officers to plot the onset of a war with India by using irregular units of the Pakistani army in the guise of Islamic militants that attacked a forward Indian army unit in Kashmir; the resulting battle led not only to a threat of a nuclear strike by Pakistan but also eventually to the replacement of Sharif by Musharraf, after Sharif was forced to settle for peace by the US and other countries for the illegal actions of the army.
What is different this time around is that instead of the army being at loggerheads with the government, a small group within the ISI appears to have achieved the ability to destabilize both the government and the Pakistani army. For security experts, this was an obvious conclusion to reach when Musharraf was pushed out of power, and when Zardari started his peacemaking routine with India. My discomfort stems from the fact that no one in power across the US and India saw it coming.
To any dispassionate observer, it is easy to conclude that Pakistan is now a failed state on the lines of Somalia and Afghanistan where the government writ runs only in limited areas while everywhere else in the country is dominated by warlords. The only national institution in Pakistan is its army, although the push against Musharraf and the actions of the Taliban against specific army units point to cracks within that could well result in final breakdown of its command structure. It goes without saying that only the al-Qaeda/Taliban combine stand to take advantage of such a breakdown of the army command structure, using the opportunity to seize control of nuclear weapons.
Now, just to state the obvious from my perspective, there isn't anything particularly bad about people belonging to a particular religion or ethnic group securing nuclear weapons capability. The problem with al-Qaeda and the Taliban taking control of these weapons of mass destruction though are that the groups put the survival of their own people second to the achievement of longer-term principles. This casual disregard for the lives of their own people - well witnessed in Afghanistan, Iraq and other theaters of al-Qaeda/Taliban operations - is what makes the idea of them seizing nuclear weapons so much more of a strategic nightmare.
Seeing the events of the Thanksgiving massacre unfold in Mumbai, I was reminded of an awful joke from Israeli television during the first Gulf War in 1990, after Saddam Hussein launched daily Scud missile attacks on the Jewish state. Told that the wild targeting and the inbuilt inaccuracy of the Scud missiles meant that the chances of anyone actually dying from such an attack were broadly the same as winning the national lottery, one comic deadpanned, "Yes, but you didn't tell me there were so many draws every day."
That sick joke must have gone through the minds of more than one person in Mumbai over the past few days as the latest attacks add to the recent history of terrorism against people in the city that started with the serial bombings of 1993 that killed more than a thousand people. More recently, there have been sporadic attacks using bombs in taxis and trains that have killed over 500 people.
A security expert on television made the point that the terrorists had chosen soft targets such as hotels and hospitals, but this comment only caused me to laugh mirthlessly. For it appears to me that the Indian government long ago beat the terrorists to that job, by making not just Mumbai but other big Indian cities also soft targets for terrorism.
In the months after 9/11 in the US, as well as the terrorist attacks on Madrid it became clear that the ultimate objective of al-Qaeda and its related groups was to destabilize multi-ethnic democracies everywhere. Being the only one of its kind in Asia, it would have been foolhardy for India not to see itself as a target even before taking into account specific issues such as the simmering Kashmir insurgency, its relative proximity to the US and lastly the large Muslim population that lives in its secular rather than theocratic framework that directly challenges the orthodox ideology of al-Qaeda.
Yet and almost alone among all such democracies, the Indian government refused to change its homeland security apparatus in the months following the terrorist attacks on the Indian parliament in 2001, as well as deeper provocations such as the attacks on Mumbai in later months.
There is no national body coordinating counter-terrorist intelligence across state lines; this would be tragic in a monolingual country like the United States but completely unfathomable in a multi-ethnic multilingual country like India. There is no apparent infrastructure to enable responses to crisis situations that aren’t conventional military attacks such as the Kargil war mentioned previously in this article.
Much has been made of the commercial importance of Mumbai, a fact that even economists like me only understand when looking at the domicile of India’s largest companies and its richest people. An overwhelming majority of India's richest 100 people live and work in Mumbai, a journalist friend recently pointed out that over a quarter of the country’s revenue from taxing salaries arose from companies domiciled in this one city.
In any other emerging market leave alone democracy, Mumbai would automatically have been accorded protected status with governments bending over backwards to improve infrastructure and ensure security. None of these things have happened though, due to the curious and illogical domination of the Indian political spectrum by communists. As I wrote in another article for Asia Times Online (India’s real terrorists May 17, 2008), the role of communists in pushing back efforts to modernize and protect Mumbai cannot be overstated.
Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak made the point on Friday that India's special forces unit that dealt with the siege at the top hotels in Mumbai did not appear to be well prepared, nor could they be considered sufficiently well trained for such complex operations. This is a matter not just of concern for Indians, but also an invitation to question the absence of coordination with security experts from Israel and the United States. Interestingly, while India is one of the largest buyers of defense equipment from Israel, it has thus far failed to secure much training in anti-terrorism from Israeli and American experts.
The reason isn't hard to find - efforts to enlarge such cooperation with Israel and the United States inevitably run into opposition from a motley crew of communists across the country. While their opposition to the US on ideological grounds is well known (as shown by the recent blocking of the nuclear deal with the US even though the positive effects of securing safe power stations running on nuclear fuel is obvious to any industrialist), it is interesting to note that protests against "Zionism" are usually led by the same communists. The arguments were first aired by the USSR at the height of the Cold War, and India’s communists are the only ones in the world to still subscribe to that world view.
Driven as much by envy of the industrious people of the city as by its relative prosperity and ability to attract the best talent from around the country, communists have steadily pushed against infrastructure improvements. Much of the security ills of the famously diverse city arise from the under-investment on infrastructure and inability to corral the criminal groups that operate openly in the city.
On the heels of this attack, India has once again made some cosmetic changes by replacing its most senior politician in charge of security with Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram. Given that I have not been impressed with the country’s ability to manage its finances over the past five years, it is unlikely that the government will do much to improve.
There are only two courses of action open to the Indian government; firstly to launch a strike against Pakistan-based training camps for Islamic terrorists such as those belonging to the banned Laskhar-e-Taiba and the Jaish Mohammad; this course of action risks opening up a full scale war with Pakistan. The second course of action would for the government to do precisely nothing but to passively sit around awaiting another terrorist attack on the country’s citizens.
While I fear the first course of action, I am well inclined to believe that it is the second course of action that will most likely emerge. In terms of protecting the well-being of its citizens as I have noted previously on many occasions, India is not China.
As per the observations on this report, Pakistan's military age population is far greater than those of other Muslim military powers in the region. With about 20 million men of military age, Pakistan today has as much manpower as Turkey and Iran combined, and by 2035 it will have half again as many.
Half the country is illiterate and three-quarters of it subsists on less than $2 a day, according to the World Bank. That is to say that Pakistan's young men are more abundant as well as cheaper than in any other country in the region. Very poor and ignorant young men, especially if their only education has been in Salafi madrassas (seminaries), are very easy to enlist in military adventures.
The West presently is unable to cope with a failed state like Somalia, with less than a tenth as many military-age men as Pakistan, but which nonetheless constitutes a threat to world shipping and a likely source of funding for terrorism. How can the West cope with the humiliation of Pakistan's pro-American president and the inability of its duly-constituted government to suppress Islamist elements in its army and intelligence services? For the moment, Washington will do its best to prop up its creature, President Asif Ali Zardari, but to no avail. The alternatives will require the West to add several zeros to whatever the prevailing ceiling might be for acceptable collateral damage.
During the recently concluded American elections, vice president-elect Joe Biden made the widely criticized point that president-elect Barack Obama would be tested very soon after ascending to the job. It appears from recent events that his particular prophesy has been fulfilled, and rather earlier than even he had imagined, namely, even before Obama takes on the job of president. It may be no exaggeration to point out that much like September 11, 2001, charted the course of the George W Bush administration, the Mumbai massacre on Thanksgiving 2008 could well chart the course of the Obama presidency.
Firm evidence with respect to the participation of Pakistani government agents in the latest terrorist outrage in Mumbai that left nearly 200 people dead is still unavailable as I write this article; however, the apparent presence of a naval vessel carrying the terrorists to the city's shore as well as the targeting of patently Western and Jewish people in Mumbai points outside the pattern of terrorism that Mumbai has witnessed thus far; namely that of killing locals in mass numbers through the use of explosive devices planted on taxis and trains. I return to the failures of the Indian government in the second half of this article, after first dealing with the immediate consequences for Pakistan should the involvement of its citizens be proven over the near term.
There is a second possibility that I discussed with my Asia Times Online colleague Spengler, namely that the attacks on Mumbai were a response to the anti-piracy actions of the Indian navy that resulted in the sinking of a Somali pirate mother ship last week. The mother ship was a Thai fishing trawler that the pirates had seized a short while before. It is not much of a secret that Somali pirates are well aligned with al-Qaeda for their training and weapons; it is also possible that an important al-Qaeda functionary was killed in the Indian attack.
Based on the complicated set of facts in front of us, it seems logical for now to conclude that the Mumbai operations were the product of meticulous planning and action taken almost exclusively by non-locals to prevent the risk of information leaking to Indian police if locals had been taken into confidence. The most logical source of such people would be the Islamic terrorist continuum operating under the auspices of al-Qaeda and loosely aligned with renegade elements of the Pakistani government itself, namely the Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI; the notorious state-within-state.
Much as everyone discusses the carnage in Mumbai, I cannot escape the feeling that execution was hurried along; the use of even a slightly larger force with more deadly weapons could well have created a multiplication of damage and casualties in Mumbai. That suggests that the operation was executed prematurely: precisely what one should expect if planners had somehow suspected being exposed and their carefully planned actions aborted entirely. It is for this reason that I suspect the Pakistani government’s actions against the ISI as the primary trigger for this terrorist attack.
From a longer-term perspective, it shocks me that more Western agencies including the US and UK governments do not take full cognizance of the size of the challenge in Pakistan. US neo-conservatives for example highlight Iran as the major threat to the planet, despite the fact that its 60 million people are relatively well-off, demographically in decline and most importantly a Shi'ite people surrounded by inimical Sunni groups.
In contrast, Pakistan is a country possessing nuclear weapons and hosting over 150 million people skewed towards the young. Its share of young, unemployed and restless people with a penchant for religious extremism since the early 1980s has steadily risen to the point where calling the country the leading breeding center for terrorism globally wouldn’t be too far-fetched. All of these factors have led to the undermining of civilian government, while the country's elite slide into accommodation with religious fanatics from al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
A few weeks back, I wrote an article (Triangulating an Asian conflict Asia Times Online, September 6, 2008 ) that discussed the potential for Pakistan slipping deeply into the Taliban sphere of operations, in turn imperiling its neighbors, including most urgently India and less probably China over the longer term. What looked like a thesis has now come fully into the realm of probability.
Thus, the indomitable force of Islamic fundamentalism that emerges from Pakistan will have to confront the immovable objects of Han and Hindu resurgence. It is well likely that the first course of action will be against the well known enemy of India rather than the scarier opponent in China, but that is a relatively minor detail in that it only applies over the relative near term.
Of course, the primary thrust of that article was not so much the existence of these threats, but the regional media's casual disregard for the security situation with column inches being devoted instead to the wardrobe choices of the Republican vice-presidential nominee, Sarah Palin. In that article, I juxtaposed the emerging Taliban threat to Pakistan in the context of its worsening economic fundamentals, even as the resurgence of Hindu nationalism made the idea of rapprochement unattainable.
One of the key changes ushered in by President Asif Ali Zardari was the broadening of ties with India, leaving out for now the thorny issue of Kashmir but focusing instead on improving trade and infrastructure while making a common cause against Islamic terrorists. This made sense not only because Zardari owed his ascent to the assassination of his wife, former premier Benazir Bhutto, but also because sidelining the army by achieving peace with India would help to secure his own future.
Proceeding in that vein, and acting finally on a key recommendation by the US government that had been made as early as 2006, earlier last week it emerged that the "political" wing of the ISI had been disbanded. Now of course, much of the ISI isn't supposed to exist in the first place, therefore one uses ground contacts to determine just how serious such changes actually are; in this case it appears that the government's action was seen as a stinging slap on the face of the ISI by effectively rendering the organization captive to the policies and actions of the government in power rather than being determined by its own senior cadre of advisors and agents as had been done previously.
In effect, disbanding the political wing of the ISI was seen as a move for the Pakistani government to take direct charge of ISI activities, and stop being hostage to the machinations of the ISI itself. In the past, the political wing of the ISI was thought to be responsible for the removal of Benazir Bhutto, the trial by fire of Nawaz Sharif, the removal of president General Pervez Musharraf and most recently the assassination of Benazir Bhutto herself. It was for this reason that the ISI took great pains to ensure that her death was blamed on an accident (head hitting the door handle) rather than an assassin's bullets because the difference is the one between martyrdom and destiny.
(The existence of such a political organization that in effect polices the government on behalf of a sinister group of senior insiders is something of a puzzle in democracies across the Western world but is a matter of resigned acceptance in many countries including Russia and most communist countries including China and Vietnam. Across the Islamic world such political wings are active in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran under the guise of the religious police.)
For all intent and purposes it appears that the operations against targets in Mumbai were planned months in advance for execution at an appropriate time; the direct action of the Pakistani government against the ISI may have provided just such a trigger. It is also possible that the anger of al-Qaeda at India for the loss of a pirate mother ship in the past two weeks was a factor in pushing the action.
Whatever the reason for the "Go" command, the more disturbing elements are the implications for the Pakistani government itself. It is unlikely that the governments of the US, UK, Israel and India will take the involvement of agents within the Pakistani government in the Mumbai bombings lightly. However, that anger is beside the point because it is not clear to me that the Pakistani government can actually survive any course of action against these embedded agents.
With its credibility badly damaged in the eyes of the world, the government will have to rush towards a compromise position with the very people it sought to dislodge, namely forces friendly to Islamic terrorism within the agencies of the government including the army and the ISI. In return for promises of going easy, the government would get nominal visibility in future plans.
Then-president Musharraf came to a similar arrangement in the months following 9/11 and US actions against Afghanistan. In return for face-saving bans on terrorist outfits that gathered funds and hired Pakistanis for their operations, he allowed the outfits to expand their soft programs, including Islamic education, pushing back women's rights and broadening the run of the Taliban in border areas with Afghanistan. This worked for a reasonable period of time until finally the US government lost patience with the foot-dragging on operations against al-Qaeda/Taliban fighters nesting within Pakistan. That in turn caused the Americans to act against Musharraf, and bring in Bhutto, albeit with unimaginable consequences for the latter.
In all this, there was also a history lesson that was completely missed, namely the events of 1999 when then prime minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, proposed peace; this led his then head of the army Musharraf and a handful of top officers to plot the onset of a war with India by using irregular units of the Pakistani army in the guise of Islamic militants that attacked a forward Indian army unit in Kashmir; the resulting battle led not only to a threat of a nuclear strike by Pakistan but also eventually to the replacement of Sharif by Musharraf, after Sharif was forced to settle for peace by the US and other countries for the illegal actions of the army.
What is different this time around is that instead of the army being at loggerheads with the government, a small group within the ISI appears to have achieved the ability to destabilize both the government and the Pakistani army. For security experts, this was an obvious conclusion to reach when Musharraf was pushed out of power, and when Zardari started his peacemaking routine with India. My discomfort stems from the fact that no one in power across the US and India saw it coming.
To any dispassionate observer, it is easy to conclude that Pakistan is now a failed state on the lines of Somalia and Afghanistan where the government writ runs only in limited areas while everywhere else in the country is dominated by warlords. The only national institution in Pakistan is its army, although the push against Musharraf and the actions of the Taliban against specific army units point to cracks within that could well result in final breakdown of its command structure. It goes without saying that only the al-Qaeda/Taliban combine stand to take advantage of such a breakdown of the army command structure, using the opportunity to seize control of nuclear weapons.
Now, just to state the obvious from my perspective, there isn't anything particularly bad about people belonging to a particular religion or ethnic group securing nuclear weapons capability. The problem with al-Qaeda and the Taliban taking control of these weapons of mass destruction though are that the groups put the survival of their own people second to the achievement of longer-term principles. This casual disregard for the lives of their own people - well witnessed in Afghanistan, Iraq and other theaters of al-Qaeda/Taliban operations - is what makes the idea of them seizing nuclear weapons so much more of a strategic nightmare.
Seeing the events of the Thanksgiving massacre unfold in Mumbai, I was reminded of an awful joke from Israeli television during the first Gulf War in 1990, after Saddam Hussein launched daily Scud missile attacks on the Jewish state. Told that the wild targeting and the inbuilt inaccuracy of the Scud missiles meant that the chances of anyone actually dying from such an attack were broadly the same as winning the national lottery, one comic deadpanned, "Yes, but you didn't tell me there were so many draws every day."
That sick joke must have gone through the minds of more than one person in Mumbai over the past few days as the latest attacks add to the recent history of terrorism against people in the city that started with the serial bombings of 1993 that killed more than a thousand people. More recently, there have been sporadic attacks using bombs in taxis and trains that have killed over 500 people.
A security expert on television made the point that the terrorists had chosen soft targets such as hotels and hospitals, but this comment only caused me to laugh mirthlessly. For it appears to me that the Indian government long ago beat the terrorists to that job, by making not just Mumbai but other big Indian cities also soft targets for terrorism.
In the months after 9/11 in the US, as well as the terrorist attacks on Madrid it became clear that the ultimate objective of al-Qaeda and its related groups was to destabilize multi-ethnic democracies everywhere. Being the only one of its kind in Asia, it would have been foolhardy for India not to see itself as a target even before taking into account specific issues such as the simmering Kashmir insurgency, its relative proximity to the US and lastly the large Muslim population that lives in its secular rather than theocratic framework that directly challenges the orthodox ideology of al-Qaeda.
Yet and almost alone among all such democracies, the Indian government refused to change its homeland security apparatus in the months following the terrorist attacks on the Indian parliament in 2001, as well as deeper provocations such as the attacks on Mumbai in later months.
There is no national body coordinating counter-terrorist intelligence across state lines; this would be tragic in a monolingual country like the United States but completely unfathomable in a multi-ethnic multilingual country like India. There is no apparent infrastructure to enable responses to crisis situations that aren’t conventional military attacks such as the Kargil war mentioned previously in this article.
Much has been made of the commercial importance of Mumbai, a fact that even economists like me only understand when looking at the domicile of India’s largest companies and its richest people. An overwhelming majority of India's richest 100 people live and work in Mumbai, a journalist friend recently pointed out that over a quarter of the country’s revenue from taxing salaries arose from companies domiciled in this one city.
In any other emerging market leave alone democracy, Mumbai would automatically have been accorded protected status with governments bending over backwards to improve infrastructure and ensure security. None of these things have happened though, due to the curious and illogical domination of the Indian political spectrum by communists. As I wrote in another article for Asia Times Online (India’s real terrorists May 17, 2008), the role of communists in pushing back efforts to modernize and protect Mumbai cannot be overstated.
Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak made the point on Friday that India's special forces unit that dealt with the siege at the top hotels in Mumbai did not appear to be well prepared, nor could they be considered sufficiently well trained for such complex operations. This is a matter not just of concern for Indians, but also an invitation to question the absence of coordination with security experts from Israel and the United States. Interestingly, while India is one of the largest buyers of defense equipment from Israel, it has thus far failed to secure much training in anti-terrorism from Israeli and American experts.
The reason isn't hard to find - efforts to enlarge such cooperation with Israel and the United States inevitably run into opposition from a motley crew of communists across the country. While their opposition to the US on ideological grounds is well known (as shown by the recent blocking of the nuclear deal with the US even though the positive effects of securing safe power stations running on nuclear fuel is obvious to any industrialist), it is interesting to note that protests against "Zionism" are usually led by the same communists. The arguments were first aired by the USSR at the height of the Cold War, and India’s communists are the only ones in the world to still subscribe to that world view.
Driven as much by envy of the industrious people of the city as by its relative prosperity and ability to attract the best talent from around the country, communists have steadily pushed against infrastructure improvements. Much of the security ills of the famously diverse city arise from the under-investment on infrastructure and inability to corral the criminal groups that operate openly in the city.
On the heels of this attack, India has once again made some cosmetic changes by replacing its most senior politician in charge of security with Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram. Given that I have not been impressed with the country’s ability to manage its finances over the past five years, it is unlikely that the government will do much to improve.
There are only two courses of action open to the Indian government; firstly to launch a strike against Pakistan-based training camps for Islamic terrorists such as those belonging to the banned Laskhar-e-Taiba and the Jaish Mohammad; this course of action risks opening up a full scale war with Pakistan. The second course of action would for the government to do precisely nothing but to passively sit around awaiting another terrorist attack on the country’s citizens.
While I fear the first course of action, I am well inclined to believe that it is the second course of action that will most likely emerge. In terms of protecting the well-being of its citizens as I have noted previously on many occasions, India is not China.
As per the observations on this report, Pakistan's military age population is far greater than those of other Muslim military powers in the region. With about 20 million men of military age, Pakistan today has as much manpower as Turkey and Iran combined, and by 2035 it will have half again as many.
Half the country is illiterate and three-quarters of it subsists on less than $2 a day, according to the World Bank. That is to say that Pakistan's young men are more abundant as well as cheaper than in any other country in the region. Very poor and ignorant young men, especially if their only education has been in Salafi madrassas (seminaries), are very easy to enlist in military adventures.
The West presently is unable to cope with a failed state like Somalia, with less than a tenth as many military-age men as Pakistan, but which nonetheless constitutes a threat to world shipping and a likely source of funding for terrorism. How can the West cope with the humiliation of Pakistan's pro-American president and the inability of its duly-constituted government to suppress Islamist elements in its army and intelligence services? For the moment, Washington will do its best to prop up its creature, President Asif Ali Zardari, but to no avail. The alternatives will require the West to add several zeros to whatever the prevailing ceiling might be for acceptable collateral damage.
The hottest place in the world!
By M H Ahssan & John Wilson
During the recently concluded American elections, vice president-elect Joe Biden made the widely criticized point that president-elect Barack Obama would be tested very soon after ascending to the job. It appears from recent events that his particular prophesy has been fulfilled, and rather earlier than even he had imagined, namely, even before Obama takes on the job of president. It may be no exaggeration to point out that much like September 11, 2001, charted the course of the George W Bush administration, the Mumbai massacre on Thanksgiving 2008 could well chart the course of the Obama presidency.
Firm evidence with respect to the participation of Pakistani government agents in the latest terrorist outrage in Mumbai that left nearly 200 people dead is still unavailable as I write this article; however, the apparent presence of a naval vessel carrying the terrorists to the city's shore as well as the targeting of patently Western and Jewish people in Mumbai points outside the pattern of terrorism that Mumbai has witnessed thus far; namely that of killing locals in mass numbers through the use of explosive devices planted on taxis and trains. I return to the failures of the Indian government in the second half of this article, after first dealing with the immediate consequences for Pakistan should the involvement of its citizens be proven over the near term.
There is a second possibility that I discussed with my Asia Times Online colleague Spengler, namely that the attacks on Mumbai were a response to the anti-piracy actions of the Indian navy that resulted in the sinking of a Somali pirate mother ship last week. The mother ship was a Thai fishing trawler that the pirates had seized a short while before. It is not much of a secret that Somali pirates are well aligned with al-Qaeda for their training and weapons; it is also possible that an important al-Qaeda functionary was killed in the Indian attack.
Based on the complicated set of facts in front of us, it seems logical for now to conclude that the Mumbai operations were the product of meticulous planning and action taken almost exclusively by non-locals to prevent the risk of information leaking to Indian police if locals had been taken into confidence. The most logical source of such people would be the Islamic terrorist continuum operating under the auspices of al-Qaeda and loosely aligned with renegade elements of the Pakistani government itself, namely the Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI; the notorious state-within-state.
Much as everyone discusses the carnage in Mumbai, I cannot escape the feeling that execution was hurried along; the use of even a slightly larger force with more deadly weapons could well have created a multiplication of damage and casualties in Mumbai. That suggests that the operation was executed prematurely: precisely what one should expect if planners had somehow suspected being exposed and their carefully planned actions aborted entirely. It is for this reason that I suspect the Pakistani government’s actions against the ISI as the primary trigger for this terrorist attack.
From a longer-term perspective, it shocks me that more Western agencies including the US and UK governments do not take full cognizance of the size of the challenge in Pakistan. US neo-conservatives for example highlight Iran as the major threat to the planet, despite the fact that its 60 million people are relatively well-off, demographically in decline and most importantly a Shi'ite people surrounded by inimical Sunni groups.
In contrast, Pakistan is a country possessing nuclear weapons and hosting over 150 million people skewed towards the young. Its share of young, unemployed and restless people with a penchant for religious extremism since the early 1980s has steadily risen to the point where calling the country the leading breeding center for terrorism globally wouldn’t be too far-fetched. All of these factors have led to the undermining of civilian government, while the country's elite slide into accommodation with religious fanatics from al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
A few weeks back, I wrote an article (Triangulating an Asian conflict Asia Times Online, September 6, 2008 ) that discussed the potential for Pakistan slipping deeply into the Taliban sphere of operations, in turn imperiling its neighbors, including most urgently India and less probably China over the longer term. What looked like a thesis has now come fully into the realm of probability.
Thus, the indomitable force of Islamic fundamentalism that emerges from Pakistan will have to confront the immovable objects of Han and Hindu resurgence. It is well likely that the first course of action will be against the well known enemy of India rather than the scarier opponent in China, but that is a relatively minor detail in that it only applies over the relative near term.
Of course, the primary thrust of that article was not so much the existence of these threats, but the regional media's casual disregard for the security situation with column inches being devoted instead to the wardrobe choices of the Republican vice-presidential nominee, Sarah Palin. In that article, I juxtaposed the emerging Taliban threat to Pakistan in the context of its worsening economic fundamentals, even as the resurgence of Hindu nationalism made the idea of rapprochement unattainable.
One of the key changes ushered in by President Asif Ali Zardari was the broadening of ties with India, leaving out for now the thorny issue of Kashmir but focusing instead on improving trade and infrastructure while making a common cause against Islamic terrorists. This made sense not only because Zardari owed his ascent to the assassination of his wife, former premier Benazir Bhutto, but also because sidelining the army by achieving peace with India would help to secure his own future.
Proceeding in that vein, and acting finally on a key recommendation by the US government that had been made as early as 2006, earlier last week it emerged that the "political" wing of the ISI had been disbanded. Now of course, much of the ISI isn't supposed to exist in the first place, therefore one uses ground contacts to determine just how serious such changes actually are; in this case it appears that the government's action was seen as a stinging slap on the face of the ISI by effectively rendering the organization captive to the policies and actions of the government in power rather than being determined by its own senior cadre of advisors and agents as had been done previously.
In effect, disbanding the political wing of the ISI was seen as a move for the Pakistani government to take direct charge of ISI activities, and stop being hostage to the machinations of the ISI itself. In the past, the political wing of the ISI was thought to be responsible for the removal of Benazir Bhutto, the trial by fire of Nawaz Sharif, the removal of president General Pervez Musharraf and most recently the assassination of Benazir Bhutto herself. It was for this reason that the ISI took great pains to ensure that her death was blamed on an accident (head hitting the door handle) rather than an assassin's bullets because the difference is the one between martyrdom and destiny.
(The existence of such a political organization that in effect polices the government on behalf of a sinister group of senior insiders is something of a puzzle in democracies across the Western world but is a matter of resigned acceptance in many countries including Russia and most communist countries including China and Vietnam. Across the Islamic world such political wings are active in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran under the guise of the religious police.)
For all intent and purposes it appears that the operations against targets in Mumbai were planned months in advance for execution at an appropriate time; the direct action of the Pakistani government against the ISI may have provided just such a trigger. It is also possible that the anger of al-Qaeda at India for the loss of a pirate mother ship in the past two weeks was a factor in pushing the action.
Whatever the reason for the "Go" command, the more disturbing elements are the implications for the Pakistani government itself. It is unlikely that the governments of the US, UK, Israel and India will take the involvement of agents within the Pakistani government in the Mumbai bombings lightly. However, that anger is beside the point because it is not clear to me that the Pakistani government can actually survive any course of action against these embedded agents.
With its credibility badly damaged in the eyes of the world, the government will have to rush towards a compromise position with the very people it sought to dislodge, namely forces friendly to Islamic terrorism within the agencies of the government including the army and the ISI. In return for promises of going easy, the government would get nominal visibility in future plans.
Then-president Musharraf came to a similar arrangement in the months following 9/11 and US actions against Afghanistan. In return for face-saving bans on terrorist outfits that gathered funds and hired Pakistanis for their operations, he allowed the outfits to expand their soft programs, including Islamic education, pushing back women's rights and broadening the run of the Taliban in border areas with Afghanistan. This worked for a reasonable period of time until finally the US government lost patience with the foot-dragging on operations against al-Qaeda/Taliban fighters nesting within Pakistan. That in turn caused the Americans to act against Musharraf, and bring in Bhutto, albeit with unimaginable consequences for the latter.
In all this, there was also a history lesson that was completely missed, namely the events of 1999 when then prime minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, proposed peace; this led his then head of the army Musharraf and a handful of top officers to plot the onset of a war with India by using irregular units of the Pakistani army in the guise of Islamic militants that attacked a forward Indian army unit in Kashmir; the resulting battle led not only to a threat of a nuclear strike by Pakistan but also eventually to the replacement of Sharif by Musharraf, after Sharif was forced to settle for peace by the US and other countries for the illegal actions of the army.
What is different this time around is that instead of the army being at loggerheads with the government, a small group within the ISI appears to have achieved the ability to destabilize both the government and the Pakistani army. For security experts, this was an obvious conclusion to reach when Musharraf was pushed out of power, and when Zardari started his peacemaking routine with India. My discomfort stems from the fact that no one in power across the US and India saw it coming.
To any dispassionate observer, it is easy to conclude that Pakistan is now a failed state on the lines of Somalia and Afghanistan where the government writ runs only in limited areas while everywhere else in the country is dominated by warlords. The only national institution in Pakistan is its army, although the push against Musharraf and the actions of the Taliban against specific army units point to cracks within that could well result in final breakdown of its command structure. It goes without saying that only the al-Qaeda/Taliban combine stand to take advantage of such a breakdown of the army command structure, using the opportunity to seize control of nuclear weapons.
Now, just to state the obvious from my perspective, there isn't anything particularly bad about people belonging to a particular religion or ethnic group securing nuclear weapons capability. The problem with al-Qaeda and the Taliban taking control of these weapons of mass destruction though are that the groups put the survival of their own people second to the achievement of longer-term principles. This casual disregard for the lives of their own people - well witnessed in Afghanistan, Iraq and other theaters of al-Qaeda/Taliban operations - is what makes the idea of them seizing nuclear weapons so much more of a strategic nightmare.
Seeing the events of the Thanksgiving massacre unfold in Mumbai, I was reminded of an awful joke from Israeli television during the first Gulf War in 1990, after Saddam Hussein launched daily Scud missile attacks on the Jewish state. Told that the wild targeting and the inbuilt inaccuracy of the Scud missiles meant that the chances of anyone actually dying from such an attack were broadly the same as winning the national lottery, one comic deadpanned, "Yes, but you didn't tell me there were so many draws every day."
That sick joke must have gone through the minds of more than one person in Mumbai over the past few days as the latest attacks add to the recent history of terrorism against people in the city that started with the serial bombings of 1993 that killed more than a thousand people. More recently, there have been sporadic attacks using bombs in taxis and trains that have killed over 500 people.
A security expert on television made the point that the terrorists had chosen soft targets such as hotels and hospitals, but this comment only caused me to laugh mirthlessly. For it appears to me that the Indian government long ago beat the terrorists to that job, by making not just Mumbai but other big Indian cities also soft targets for terrorism.
In the months after 9/11 in the US, as well as the terrorist attacks on Madrid it became clear that the ultimate objective of al-Qaeda and its related groups was to destabilize multi-ethnic democracies everywhere. Being the only one of its kind in Asia, it would have been foolhardy for India not to see itself as a target even before taking into account specific issues such as the simmering Kashmir insurgency, its relative proximity to the US and lastly the large Muslim population that lives in its secular rather than theocratic framework that directly challenges the orthodox ideology of al-Qaeda.
Yet and almost alone among all such democracies, the Indian government refused to change its homeland security apparatus in the months following the terrorist attacks on the Indian parliament in 2001, as well as deeper provocations such as the attacks on Mumbai in later months.
There is no national body coordinating counter-terrorist intelligence across state lines; this would be tragic in a monolingual country like the United States but completely unfathomable in a multi-ethnic multilingual country like India. There is no apparent infrastructure to enable responses to crisis situations that aren’t conventional military attacks such as the Kargil war mentioned previously in this article.
Much has been made of the commercial importance of Mumbai, a fact that even economists like me only understand when looking at the domicile of India’s largest companies and its richest people. An overwhelming majority of India's richest 100 people live and work in Mumbai, a journalist friend recently pointed out that over a quarter of the country’s revenue from taxing salaries arose from companies domiciled in this one city.
In any other emerging market leave alone democracy, Mumbai would automatically have been accorded protected status with governments bending over backwards to improve infrastructure and ensure security. None of these things have happened though, due to the curious and illogical domination of the Indian political spectrum by communists. As I wrote in another article for Asia Times Online (India’s real terrorists May 17, 2008), the role of communists in pushing back efforts to modernize and protect Mumbai cannot be overstated.
Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak made the point on Friday that India's special forces unit that dealt with the siege at the top hotels in Mumbai did not appear to be well prepared, nor could they be considered sufficiently well trained for such complex operations. This is a matter not just of concern for Indians, but also an invitation to question the absence of coordination with security experts from Israel and the United States. Interestingly, while India is one of the largest buyers of defense equipment from Israel, it has thus far failed to secure much training in anti-terrorism from Israeli and American experts.
The reason isn't hard to find - efforts to enlarge such cooperation with Israel and the United States inevitably run into opposition from a motley crew of communists across the country. While their opposition to the US on ideological grounds is well known (as shown by the recent blocking of the nuclear deal with the US even though the positive effects of securing safe power stations running on nuclear fuel is obvious to any industrialist), it is interesting to note that protests against "Zionism" are usually led by the same communists. The arguments were first aired by the USSR at the height of the Cold War, and India’s communists are the only ones in the world to still subscribe to that world view.
Driven as much by envy of the industrious people of the city as by its relative prosperity and ability to attract the best talent from around the country, communists have steadily pushed against infrastructure improvements. Much of the security ills of the famously diverse city arise from the under-investment on infrastructure and inability to corral the criminal groups that operate openly in the city.
On the heels of this attack, India has once again made some cosmetic changes by replacing its most senior politician in charge of security with Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram. Given that I have not been impressed with the country’s ability to manage its finances over the past five years, it is unlikely that the government will do much to improve.
There are only two courses of action open to the Indian government; firstly to launch a strike against Pakistan-based training camps for Islamic terrorists such as those belonging to the banned Laskhar-e-Taiba and the Jaish Mohammad; this course of action risks opening up a full scale war with Pakistan. The second course of action would for the government to do precisely nothing but to passively sit around awaiting another terrorist attack on the country’s citizens.
While I fear the first course of action, I am well inclined to believe that it is the second course of action that will most likely emerge. In terms of protecting the well-being of its citizens as I have noted previously on many occasions, India is not China.
As per the observations on this report, Pakistan's military age population is far greater than those of other Muslim military powers in the region. With about 20 million men of military age, Pakistan today has as much manpower as Turkey and Iran combined, and by 2035 it will have half again as many.
Half the country is illiterate and three-quarters of it subsists on less than $2 a day, according to the World Bank. That is to say that Pakistan's young men are more abundant as well as cheaper than in any other country in the region. Very poor and ignorant young men, especially if their only education has been in Salafi madrassas (seminaries), are very easy to enlist in military adventures.
The West presently is unable to cope with a failed state like Somalia, with less than a tenth as many military-age men as Pakistan, but which nonetheless constitutes a threat to world shipping and a likely source of funding for terrorism. How can the West cope with the humiliation of Pakistan's pro-American president and the inability of its duly-constituted government to suppress Islamist elements in its army and intelligence services? For the moment, Washington will do its best to prop up its creature, President Asif Ali Zardari, but to no avail. The alternatives will require the West to add several zeros to whatever the prevailing ceiling might be for acceptable collateral damage.
During the recently concluded American elections, vice president-elect Joe Biden made the widely criticized point that president-elect Barack Obama would be tested very soon after ascending to the job. It appears from recent events that his particular prophesy has been fulfilled, and rather earlier than even he had imagined, namely, even before Obama takes on the job of president. It may be no exaggeration to point out that much like September 11, 2001, charted the course of the George W Bush administration, the Mumbai massacre on Thanksgiving 2008 could well chart the course of the Obama presidency.
Firm evidence with respect to the participation of Pakistani government agents in the latest terrorist outrage in Mumbai that left nearly 200 people dead is still unavailable as I write this article; however, the apparent presence of a naval vessel carrying the terrorists to the city's shore as well as the targeting of patently Western and Jewish people in Mumbai points outside the pattern of terrorism that Mumbai has witnessed thus far; namely that of killing locals in mass numbers through the use of explosive devices planted on taxis and trains. I return to the failures of the Indian government in the second half of this article, after first dealing with the immediate consequences for Pakistan should the involvement of its citizens be proven over the near term.
There is a second possibility that I discussed with my Asia Times Online colleague Spengler, namely that the attacks on Mumbai were a response to the anti-piracy actions of the Indian navy that resulted in the sinking of a Somali pirate mother ship last week. The mother ship was a Thai fishing trawler that the pirates had seized a short while before. It is not much of a secret that Somali pirates are well aligned with al-Qaeda for their training and weapons; it is also possible that an important al-Qaeda functionary was killed in the Indian attack.
Based on the complicated set of facts in front of us, it seems logical for now to conclude that the Mumbai operations were the product of meticulous planning and action taken almost exclusively by non-locals to prevent the risk of information leaking to Indian police if locals had been taken into confidence. The most logical source of such people would be the Islamic terrorist continuum operating under the auspices of al-Qaeda and loosely aligned with renegade elements of the Pakistani government itself, namely the Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI; the notorious state-within-state.
Much as everyone discusses the carnage in Mumbai, I cannot escape the feeling that execution was hurried along; the use of even a slightly larger force with more deadly weapons could well have created a multiplication of damage and casualties in Mumbai. That suggests that the operation was executed prematurely: precisely what one should expect if planners had somehow suspected being exposed and their carefully planned actions aborted entirely. It is for this reason that I suspect the Pakistani government’s actions against the ISI as the primary trigger for this terrorist attack.
From a longer-term perspective, it shocks me that more Western agencies including the US and UK governments do not take full cognizance of the size of the challenge in Pakistan. US neo-conservatives for example highlight Iran as the major threat to the planet, despite the fact that its 60 million people are relatively well-off, demographically in decline and most importantly a Shi'ite people surrounded by inimical Sunni groups.
In contrast, Pakistan is a country possessing nuclear weapons and hosting over 150 million people skewed towards the young. Its share of young, unemployed and restless people with a penchant for religious extremism since the early 1980s has steadily risen to the point where calling the country the leading breeding center for terrorism globally wouldn’t be too far-fetched. All of these factors have led to the undermining of civilian government, while the country's elite slide into accommodation with religious fanatics from al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
A few weeks back, I wrote an article (Triangulating an Asian conflict Asia Times Online, September 6, 2008 ) that discussed the potential for Pakistan slipping deeply into the Taliban sphere of operations, in turn imperiling its neighbors, including most urgently India and less probably China over the longer term. What looked like a thesis has now come fully into the realm of probability.
Thus, the indomitable force of Islamic fundamentalism that emerges from Pakistan will have to confront the immovable objects of Han and Hindu resurgence. It is well likely that the first course of action will be against the well known enemy of India rather than the scarier opponent in China, but that is a relatively minor detail in that it only applies over the relative near term.
Of course, the primary thrust of that article was not so much the existence of these threats, but the regional media's casual disregard for the security situation with column inches being devoted instead to the wardrobe choices of the Republican vice-presidential nominee, Sarah Palin. In that article, I juxtaposed the emerging Taliban threat to Pakistan in the context of its worsening economic fundamentals, even as the resurgence of Hindu nationalism made the idea of rapprochement unattainable.
One of the key changes ushered in by President Asif Ali Zardari was the broadening of ties with India, leaving out for now the thorny issue of Kashmir but focusing instead on improving trade and infrastructure while making a common cause against Islamic terrorists. This made sense not only because Zardari owed his ascent to the assassination of his wife, former premier Benazir Bhutto, but also because sidelining the army by achieving peace with India would help to secure his own future.
Proceeding in that vein, and acting finally on a key recommendation by the US government that had been made as early as 2006, earlier last week it emerged that the "political" wing of the ISI had been disbanded. Now of course, much of the ISI isn't supposed to exist in the first place, therefore one uses ground contacts to determine just how serious such changes actually are; in this case it appears that the government's action was seen as a stinging slap on the face of the ISI by effectively rendering the organization captive to the policies and actions of the government in power rather than being determined by its own senior cadre of advisors and agents as had been done previously.
In effect, disbanding the political wing of the ISI was seen as a move for the Pakistani government to take direct charge of ISI activities, and stop being hostage to the machinations of the ISI itself. In the past, the political wing of the ISI was thought to be responsible for the removal of Benazir Bhutto, the trial by fire of Nawaz Sharif, the removal of president General Pervez Musharraf and most recently the assassination of Benazir Bhutto herself. It was for this reason that the ISI took great pains to ensure that her death was blamed on an accident (head hitting the door handle) rather than an assassin's bullets because the difference is the one between martyrdom and destiny.
(The existence of such a political organization that in effect polices the government on behalf of a sinister group of senior insiders is something of a puzzle in democracies across the Western world but is a matter of resigned acceptance in many countries including Russia and most communist countries including China and Vietnam. Across the Islamic world such political wings are active in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran under the guise of the religious police.)
For all intent and purposes it appears that the operations against targets in Mumbai were planned months in advance for execution at an appropriate time; the direct action of the Pakistani government against the ISI may have provided just such a trigger. It is also possible that the anger of al-Qaeda at India for the loss of a pirate mother ship in the past two weeks was a factor in pushing the action.
Whatever the reason for the "Go" command, the more disturbing elements are the implications for the Pakistani government itself. It is unlikely that the governments of the US, UK, Israel and India will take the involvement of agents within the Pakistani government in the Mumbai bombings lightly. However, that anger is beside the point because it is not clear to me that the Pakistani government can actually survive any course of action against these embedded agents.
With its credibility badly damaged in the eyes of the world, the government will have to rush towards a compromise position with the very people it sought to dislodge, namely forces friendly to Islamic terrorism within the agencies of the government including the army and the ISI. In return for promises of going easy, the government would get nominal visibility in future plans.
Then-president Musharraf came to a similar arrangement in the months following 9/11 and US actions against Afghanistan. In return for face-saving bans on terrorist outfits that gathered funds and hired Pakistanis for their operations, he allowed the outfits to expand their soft programs, including Islamic education, pushing back women's rights and broadening the run of the Taliban in border areas with Afghanistan. This worked for a reasonable period of time until finally the US government lost patience with the foot-dragging on operations against al-Qaeda/Taliban fighters nesting within Pakistan. That in turn caused the Americans to act against Musharraf, and bring in Bhutto, albeit with unimaginable consequences for the latter.
In all this, there was also a history lesson that was completely missed, namely the events of 1999 when then prime minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, proposed peace; this led his then head of the army Musharraf and a handful of top officers to plot the onset of a war with India by using irregular units of the Pakistani army in the guise of Islamic militants that attacked a forward Indian army unit in Kashmir; the resulting battle led not only to a threat of a nuclear strike by Pakistan but also eventually to the replacement of Sharif by Musharraf, after Sharif was forced to settle for peace by the US and other countries for the illegal actions of the army.
What is different this time around is that instead of the army being at loggerheads with the government, a small group within the ISI appears to have achieved the ability to destabilize both the government and the Pakistani army. For security experts, this was an obvious conclusion to reach when Musharraf was pushed out of power, and when Zardari started his peacemaking routine with India. My discomfort stems from the fact that no one in power across the US and India saw it coming.
To any dispassionate observer, it is easy to conclude that Pakistan is now a failed state on the lines of Somalia and Afghanistan where the government writ runs only in limited areas while everywhere else in the country is dominated by warlords. The only national institution in Pakistan is its army, although the push against Musharraf and the actions of the Taliban against specific army units point to cracks within that could well result in final breakdown of its command structure. It goes without saying that only the al-Qaeda/Taliban combine stand to take advantage of such a breakdown of the army command structure, using the opportunity to seize control of nuclear weapons.
Now, just to state the obvious from my perspective, there isn't anything particularly bad about people belonging to a particular religion or ethnic group securing nuclear weapons capability. The problem with al-Qaeda and the Taliban taking control of these weapons of mass destruction though are that the groups put the survival of their own people second to the achievement of longer-term principles. This casual disregard for the lives of their own people - well witnessed in Afghanistan, Iraq and other theaters of al-Qaeda/Taliban operations - is what makes the idea of them seizing nuclear weapons so much more of a strategic nightmare.
Seeing the events of the Thanksgiving massacre unfold in Mumbai, I was reminded of an awful joke from Israeli television during the first Gulf War in 1990, after Saddam Hussein launched daily Scud missile attacks on the Jewish state. Told that the wild targeting and the inbuilt inaccuracy of the Scud missiles meant that the chances of anyone actually dying from such an attack were broadly the same as winning the national lottery, one comic deadpanned, "Yes, but you didn't tell me there were so many draws every day."
That sick joke must have gone through the minds of more than one person in Mumbai over the past few days as the latest attacks add to the recent history of terrorism against people in the city that started with the serial bombings of 1993 that killed more than a thousand people. More recently, there have been sporadic attacks using bombs in taxis and trains that have killed over 500 people.
A security expert on television made the point that the terrorists had chosen soft targets such as hotels and hospitals, but this comment only caused me to laugh mirthlessly. For it appears to me that the Indian government long ago beat the terrorists to that job, by making not just Mumbai but other big Indian cities also soft targets for terrorism.
In the months after 9/11 in the US, as well as the terrorist attacks on Madrid it became clear that the ultimate objective of al-Qaeda and its related groups was to destabilize multi-ethnic democracies everywhere. Being the only one of its kind in Asia, it would have been foolhardy for India not to see itself as a target even before taking into account specific issues such as the simmering Kashmir insurgency, its relative proximity to the US and lastly the large Muslim population that lives in its secular rather than theocratic framework that directly challenges the orthodox ideology of al-Qaeda.
Yet and almost alone among all such democracies, the Indian government refused to change its homeland security apparatus in the months following the terrorist attacks on the Indian parliament in 2001, as well as deeper provocations such as the attacks on Mumbai in later months.
There is no national body coordinating counter-terrorist intelligence across state lines; this would be tragic in a monolingual country like the United States but completely unfathomable in a multi-ethnic multilingual country like India. There is no apparent infrastructure to enable responses to crisis situations that aren’t conventional military attacks such as the Kargil war mentioned previously in this article.
Much has been made of the commercial importance of Mumbai, a fact that even economists like me only understand when looking at the domicile of India’s largest companies and its richest people. An overwhelming majority of India's richest 100 people live and work in Mumbai, a journalist friend recently pointed out that over a quarter of the country’s revenue from taxing salaries arose from companies domiciled in this one city.
In any other emerging market leave alone democracy, Mumbai would automatically have been accorded protected status with governments bending over backwards to improve infrastructure and ensure security. None of these things have happened though, due to the curious and illogical domination of the Indian political spectrum by communists. As I wrote in another article for Asia Times Online (India’s real terrorists May 17, 2008), the role of communists in pushing back efforts to modernize and protect Mumbai cannot be overstated.
Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak made the point on Friday that India's special forces unit that dealt with the siege at the top hotels in Mumbai did not appear to be well prepared, nor could they be considered sufficiently well trained for such complex operations. This is a matter not just of concern for Indians, but also an invitation to question the absence of coordination with security experts from Israel and the United States. Interestingly, while India is one of the largest buyers of defense equipment from Israel, it has thus far failed to secure much training in anti-terrorism from Israeli and American experts.
The reason isn't hard to find - efforts to enlarge such cooperation with Israel and the United States inevitably run into opposition from a motley crew of communists across the country. While their opposition to the US on ideological grounds is well known (as shown by the recent blocking of the nuclear deal with the US even though the positive effects of securing safe power stations running on nuclear fuel is obvious to any industrialist), it is interesting to note that protests against "Zionism" are usually led by the same communists. The arguments were first aired by the USSR at the height of the Cold War, and India’s communists are the only ones in the world to still subscribe to that world view.
Driven as much by envy of the industrious people of the city as by its relative prosperity and ability to attract the best talent from around the country, communists have steadily pushed against infrastructure improvements. Much of the security ills of the famously diverse city arise from the under-investment on infrastructure and inability to corral the criminal groups that operate openly in the city.
On the heels of this attack, India has once again made some cosmetic changes by replacing its most senior politician in charge of security with Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram. Given that I have not been impressed with the country’s ability to manage its finances over the past five years, it is unlikely that the government will do much to improve.
There are only two courses of action open to the Indian government; firstly to launch a strike against Pakistan-based training camps for Islamic terrorists such as those belonging to the banned Laskhar-e-Taiba and the Jaish Mohammad; this course of action risks opening up a full scale war with Pakistan. The second course of action would for the government to do precisely nothing but to passively sit around awaiting another terrorist attack on the country’s citizens.
While I fear the first course of action, I am well inclined to believe that it is the second course of action that will most likely emerge. In terms of protecting the well-being of its citizens as I have noted previously on many occasions, India is not China.
As per the observations on this report, Pakistan's military age population is far greater than those of other Muslim military powers in the region. With about 20 million men of military age, Pakistan today has as much manpower as Turkey and Iran combined, and by 2035 it will have half again as many.
Half the country is illiterate and three-quarters of it subsists on less than $2 a day, according to the World Bank. That is to say that Pakistan's young men are more abundant as well as cheaper than in any other country in the region. Very poor and ignorant young men, especially if their only education has been in Salafi madrassas (seminaries), are very easy to enlist in military adventures.
The West presently is unable to cope with a failed state like Somalia, with less than a tenth as many military-age men as Pakistan, but which nonetheless constitutes a threat to world shipping and a likely source of funding for terrorism. How can the West cope with the humiliation of Pakistan's pro-American president and the inability of its duly-constituted government to suppress Islamist elements in its army and intelligence services? For the moment, Washington will do its best to prop up its creature, President Asif Ali Zardari, but to no avail. The alternatives will require the West to add several zeros to whatever the prevailing ceiling might be for acceptable collateral damage.
Saturday, August 08, 2015
Costliest Deal: Mumbai's Penthouse Sold For Rs.202 Crore
According to confirmed reports, a sea-facing triplex penthouse measuring 17,000 square feet in South Mumbai's Napean Sea Road has been sold to a prominent industrialist for a whopping Rs 202 crore. This works out to be one of the most expensive transactions in the country as the buyers is paying Rs 1.20 lakh per square foot.
The apartment is on the 20th, 21st and 22nd floors of the Residence, being built by the Runwal Group and offers views of the the Arabian Sea and the Queen's Necklace and has 21 car-parking slots as part of the transaction.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Indomitable spirit of Mumbaikars
By M H Ahssan & Alex D'souza
Mumbai citizens cannot be blamed for feeling that they are under continuous siege. People stayed up most of Wednesday night and spent Thursday shaken to the core by the ongoing reports of continued assaults. Schools, colleges and many offices were closed, the streets were deserted, the city was almost hiding from itself, it seemed. On Thursday morning, there were signs of life on the streets — buses running, taxis plying — but beneath that calm was a palpable numbness.
All this is completely understandable. The scale of the attack by the terrorists was not only unprecedented but also unimaginable. Terrorists with assault weapons were roaming the streets, shooting people at will in the heart of the city — the nerve centre of the city’s business district. Commuters and passengers at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, people around Metro cinema, diners at Leopold Café and the residents and guests at Mumbai’s two most famous luxury hotels — the Oberoi and the Taj — were all victims. This is what we see in all those Bollywood films the city churns out in large numbers; no one thought that fiction would become a horrible fact of life. If Mumbai offers you one freedom more than any other Indian city, it is the freedom to wander around anywhere at anytime, at will and at whim. The terrorists stole this very basic cornerstone of Mumbai life from the citizens.
But after the numbness passes, Mumbai must wake up to realise that this theft of our spirit was only temporary. We cannot allow shameless terrorists to get away with their vile intentions. Mumbai has not been beaten by the bomb blasts of 1993 or the subsequent assaults by man and nature. At each point, the city has risen the next day — true, there is a compulsion too, since everyone must work for a living. But we do know that to succumb to fear will be to give in to what the terrorists want. The scale of this attack is horrendous, that is undeniable. The fact that the fight at the two hotels and at Nariman House continued through Thursday is also horrific. But this fear cannot be our ruling deity.
Here, the government has to do its duty to instil a sense of confidence. This is done in several ways, physical and psychological. Why close down the stock markets — they are a sign of confidence in not only the city but the country itself. Every effort must be made to get back to a normal routine even though we don’t know what “normal” will be any more. Will we now have to look around fearfully when we go to a restaurant? The trauma will not disappear, but we cannot let it weigh us down.
Through all the disasters that have visited Mumbai, the spirit of the Mumbaikar has asserted itself. After the flood of 2005, it was people who helped each other, opening their homes, hearts and bank balances. For all that Mumbai is called apathetic it is in fact a very giving city: it just does not wear its heart on its sleeve. But when the call comes, Mumbaikars rise to the occasion. It is that which we want to see, so that we can all take courage from each other and find that strength and determination to go on. The time has come for Mumbai to put its heart on display again. It is hurting, but it is still beating strong and true.
Mumbai citizens cannot be blamed for feeling that they are under continuous siege. People stayed up most of Wednesday night and spent Thursday shaken to the core by the ongoing reports of continued assaults. Schools, colleges and many offices were closed, the streets were deserted, the city was almost hiding from itself, it seemed. On Thursday morning, there were signs of life on the streets — buses running, taxis plying — but beneath that calm was a palpable numbness.
All this is completely understandable. The scale of the attack by the terrorists was not only unprecedented but also unimaginable. Terrorists with assault weapons were roaming the streets, shooting people at will in the heart of the city — the nerve centre of the city’s business district. Commuters and passengers at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, people around Metro cinema, diners at Leopold Café and the residents and guests at Mumbai’s two most famous luxury hotels — the Oberoi and the Taj — were all victims. This is what we see in all those Bollywood films the city churns out in large numbers; no one thought that fiction would become a horrible fact of life. If Mumbai offers you one freedom more than any other Indian city, it is the freedom to wander around anywhere at anytime, at will and at whim. The terrorists stole this very basic cornerstone of Mumbai life from the citizens.
But after the numbness passes, Mumbai must wake up to realise that this theft of our spirit was only temporary. We cannot allow shameless terrorists to get away with their vile intentions. Mumbai has not been beaten by the bomb blasts of 1993 or the subsequent assaults by man and nature. At each point, the city has risen the next day — true, there is a compulsion too, since everyone must work for a living. But we do know that to succumb to fear will be to give in to what the terrorists want. The scale of this attack is horrendous, that is undeniable. The fact that the fight at the two hotels and at Nariman House continued through Thursday is also horrific. But this fear cannot be our ruling deity.
Here, the government has to do its duty to instil a sense of confidence. This is done in several ways, physical and psychological. Why close down the stock markets — they are a sign of confidence in not only the city but the country itself. Every effort must be made to get back to a normal routine even though we don’t know what “normal” will be any more. Will we now have to look around fearfully when we go to a restaurant? The trauma will not disappear, but we cannot let it weigh us down.
Through all the disasters that have visited Mumbai, the spirit of the Mumbaikar has asserted itself. After the flood of 2005, it was people who helped each other, opening their homes, hearts and bank balances. For all that Mumbai is called apathetic it is in fact a very giving city: it just does not wear its heart on its sleeve. But when the call comes, Mumbaikars rise to the occasion. It is that which we want to see, so that we can all take courage from each other and find that strength and determination to go on. The time has come for Mumbai to put its heart on display again. It is hurting, but it is still beating strong and true.
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
Mumbai Massacre Story Unfolds in Terrorist’s Interrogation
By Sherry Minto & Alex D'souza
For the past week, newspaper readers across the world gazed at photographs of the dark young man who, sack slung over his shoulder, was caught on closed-circuit camera minutes before he opened fire at commuters at a busy Mumbai railway station.
Based on interviews with key officers involved in the investigation and on the interrogation records of the terrorist, The Hindu has been able to assemble key parts of the story behind the face.
Mohammad Ajmal Amir Iman (wrongly identified earlier as Kamaal and Kasav) began his journey to Mumbai on September 15, 2008. He was part of a group of ten men who had spent months training in marine combat and navigation skills in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and Punjab.
Lashkar military commander Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi, Iman has told investigators, showed them detailed maps of south Mumbai, and films of the targets they had been tasked to hit. Iman and his partner ‘Abu Umar’ — whose name, he learned, was in fact Mohammad Ismail — were tasked with attacking the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus.
Iman and the other terrorists were set to leave for Mumbai on September 27.
For reasons he claims to be unaware of, they were ordered to hold back. Late on November 22, Lakhvi finally gave the team a heads-up. At 4:15 a.m. on November 23, Iman and Ismail rowed out to sea along with four other groups: men Iman knew as Abu Akasha and Abu Umar; ‘Bada’ [Big] Abdul Rehman and Abu Ali; ‘Chhota’ [small] Abdul Rehman and Afadullah; Shoaib and Umar.
Each man was equipped with a Kalashnikov rifle and 200 rounds of ammunition and grenades. The group also had at least one state-of-the art Garmin global positioning system set, and several mobile phones fitted with SIM cards, which have now been determined to have been purchased in Kolkata and New Delhi. Three men had larger bags, packed with five timer-controlled Improvised Explosive Devices.
Near Indian coastal waters, the men hijacked a fishing boat. On reaching Mumbai, they rowed the last few nautical miles to Budhwar Park in an inflatable dinghy. From Budhwar Park, they travelled on to their targets by hailing taxis. Iman and Ismail reached CST as planned, and opened fire on the assembled commuters. While Ismail was killed when policemen at the site returned fire, braving grenades thrown at them, Iman was injured and is now in the Mumbai hospital.
Mumbai police officials were able to defuse two of the IEDs planted at the Taj Mahal hotel and a third at the Oberoi hotel, even as fighting broke out. This police action saved dozens of lives. However, two bombs went off in taxis used by the group, possibly after being abandoned in the vehicles.
Iman has told interrogators that right through the fighting, the Lashkar headquarters remained in touch with the group, calling their phones through a voice-over-internet service. In all likelihood, Indian investigators were able to intercept these calls, which would then form part of a compelling body of evidence to corroborate Iman’s account. In addition, Mumbai police sources said, investigators have succeeded in reconstructing the group’s journey through the Garmin GPS set that has been seized.
For the past week, newspaper readers across the world gazed at photographs of the dark young man who, sack slung over his shoulder, was caught on closed-circuit camera minutes before he opened fire at commuters at a busy Mumbai railway station.
Based on interviews with key officers involved in the investigation and on the interrogation records of the terrorist, The Hindu has been able to assemble key parts of the story behind the face.
Mohammad Ajmal Amir Iman (wrongly identified earlier as Kamaal and Kasav) began his journey to Mumbai on September 15, 2008. He was part of a group of ten men who had spent months training in marine combat and navigation skills in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and Punjab.
Lashkar military commander Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi, Iman has told investigators, showed them detailed maps of south Mumbai, and films of the targets they had been tasked to hit. Iman and his partner ‘Abu Umar’ — whose name, he learned, was in fact Mohammad Ismail — were tasked with attacking the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus.
Iman and the other terrorists were set to leave for Mumbai on September 27.
For reasons he claims to be unaware of, they were ordered to hold back. Late on November 22, Lakhvi finally gave the team a heads-up. At 4:15 a.m. on November 23, Iman and Ismail rowed out to sea along with four other groups: men Iman knew as Abu Akasha and Abu Umar; ‘Bada’ [Big] Abdul Rehman and Abu Ali; ‘Chhota’ [small] Abdul Rehman and Afadullah; Shoaib and Umar.
Each man was equipped with a Kalashnikov rifle and 200 rounds of ammunition and grenades. The group also had at least one state-of-the art Garmin global positioning system set, and several mobile phones fitted with SIM cards, which have now been determined to have been purchased in Kolkata and New Delhi. Three men had larger bags, packed with five timer-controlled Improvised Explosive Devices.
Near Indian coastal waters, the men hijacked a fishing boat. On reaching Mumbai, they rowed the last few nautical miles to Budhwar Park in an inflatable dinghy. From Budhwar Park, they travelled on to their targets by hailing taxis. Iman and Ismail reached CST as planned, and opened fire on the assembled commuters. While Ismail was killed when policemen at the site returned fire, braving grenades thrown at them, Iman was injured and is now in the Mumbai hospital.
Mumbai police officials were able to defuse two of the IEDs planted at the Taj Mahal hotel and a third at the Oberoi hotel, even as fighting broke out. This police action saved dozens of lives. However, two bombs went off in taxis used by the group, possibly after being abandoned in the vehicles.
Iman has told interrogators that right through the fighting, the Lashkar headquarters remained in touch with the group, calling their phones through a voice-over-internet service. In all likelihood, Indian investigators were able to intercept these calls, which would then form part of a compelling body of evidence to corroborate Iman’s account. In addition, Mumbai police sources said, investigators have succeeded in reconstructing the group’s journey through the Garmin GPS set that has been seized.
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