By Aparna Pande
This article appeared in Indolink on November 26, 2008
Kuch baat hai kii hasti mitati nahin hamari Sadiyon raha hai dushman daure jahan hamara (Something there is that keeps us, our entity from being eroded For ages has been our enemy, the way of the world)
That is the spirit of Mumbai; the spirit of India. The financial capital of India was struck by terror attacks which are still going on while I am writing this article sitting far away from my desk in Boston.
A series of coordinated terrorist attacks took place at 7 different locations in Mumbai late Wednesday night. Preliminary findings indicate that around 90 people have been killed as yet and around 200 or so injured.
The focus of the coordinated assaults was South Bombay where two upscale hotels (The Taj and The Oberoi), Trident hotel and Leopold Café, Metro cinema, the Chatrapati Shivaji Rail Terminus and Cama Hospital were among the key places hit.
In the coordinated attacks several men armed with AK-47 rifles stormed into the passenger hall of Mumbai’s main Chhatrapati Shivaji railway station, opened fire and threw grenades. The Taj and Oberoi hotels were attacked by gunmen who entered firing and also took some guests – including some foreigners – hostage. There was a hostage situation also at Cama hospital, a hospital mainly for women and children.
Anti -terrorist commando units and the army were called in to help with this situation and the fight is still on. Among those killed in these operations was the head of Mumbai’s Anti-Terrorism Squad Hemant Karkare.
The young men involved in these attacks were described by bystanders as very young men, in their early 20s, wearing jeans and T-shirts. They brandished AK-47s and grenades. Some of these attackers were also seen standing on top of one of the hotels and lobbying grenades at passers-by.
Even by the standards of terrorism in India, which has suffered a rising number of terrorist attacks this year, these assaults were particularly brazen and dramatically different in their scale and execution. Instead of anonymously planted bombs, as in the previous attacks, the assailants on Wednesday night were spectacularly well-armed and confrontational.
The fact that these young men walked in with arms meant that not only did they plan on a long conflict with security forces but they also knew that they may not survive this attack. So it was a well-planned out suicide mission of sorts. Mumbai, or Bombay, has seen several terror attacks in recent years. In 1993, the Mumbai stock exchange, trains, hotels and gas stations, were bombed apparently in retaliation for the December 1992 destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya by Hindu fundamentalists. Those bombings killed more than 250 and injured more than 1,000.
In 2003, 52 people were killed in another set of bombings blamed on Muslim militants. In July 2006, a series of bombs planted inside commuter trains killed 187 people.
India itself has seen a number of attacks in recent year, five attacks already in 2008 – May in Jaipur, July in Bangalore and in Ahmedabad and September in New Delhi. The Indian Mujahideen, a little known group before the attacks this year, took responsibility for most of these attacks and threatened more.
Even though information is still trickling in about the details of the present crisis according to both Indian and foreign intelligence experts the coordinated attacks, the large amount of AK-47s and grenades and the targets chosen show links to a much larger organization or organizations than the little known group Deccan Mujahideen. Most believe that the style indicated ties to the Islamist organization the Lashkar-e-Taiba.
In the serial bombings earlier this year too though the Indian Mujahideen took responsibility most experts believed that they were tied to the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). SIMI is a radical jihadi organization whose goal is the establishment of an Islamic state in India. These analysts believe that since 2006 the SIMI has apparently liased with Islamist groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including the Lashkar e Taiba and the Taliban, to secure logistics assistance.
India has been the target of terrorism for decades. From the 1990s onwards, however, on average India has had over 4000 fatalities every year. The highest was over 5000 in 2001 and though the numbers have declined from 2004, this year India has already had over 1300 dead.
Well-planned bombings have thus struck regularly at several Indian cities, from Hyderabad to Jaipur to Bombay to Ahmedabad and Bangalore, in what officials and analysts claim have been attempts to provoke violence between Hindus and Muslims. So far, those attempts have not succeeded.
Despite the frequent incidents of terrorism in India, India has not done too badly. Even at the height of terrorism in Punjab, Punjab continued to play its role as the granary of India and Sikhs continued to remain a part of India and India also had a Sikh President.
Despite the surge in jihadi terrorism it has not succeeded in disrupting India’s communal harmony. India has emerged as one of the leading IT powers in the world. Indian economy continues to grow at eight plus per cent and foreign investment flows continue to remain high.
The aim of a terror attack is to scare people; the job of the government is to reassure people. Every time there is an attack the Indian populace has responded in a very mature way and defeated the purpose of terrorism by moving on with their lives. The international community has also continued to believe India will take care of the problem.
After every terrorist attack in a tourist resort or large city, whether Bali, Mombasa, Casablanca or Sharm-el-Sheikh, there was an exodus of tourists from there along with large-scale cancellations of air and hotel bookings. Though we can take solace from the fact that this has not happened to that extent in any Indian city; yet it should not make us complacent either.
These attacks in Mumbai, specifically targeted hotels and restaurants visited by foreign tourists and businessmen. Thus, India needs to do more. The fact that these men could walk into the Taj and Oberoi, Trident hotel or even Leopold’s Café with guns, grenades shows that one level there is a problem of security in most of these high target locations.
With elections on in various states in India, Kashmir included, and national elections scheduled early next year the opposition parties, like the B.J.P. (Bharatiya Janata Party) have seized on attacks like these to criticize the coalition government led by the Congress Party.
The right response for the government and the opposition in this situation should be to not just calm the people and reassure foreign governments that India is under control but to also try to do something to change the situation on the ground. To come up with long-term policies to increase India’s intelligence expertise, increase Indian intelligence agencies Humint (human intelligence) and Techint (technical intelligence).
Indian intelligence has often warned about the possibility of terror attacks like the ones which took place earlier this year, but it has rarely talked about the kind of situation which is taking place in Mumbai right now.
Terrorism is a problem which has faced India for decades but India has still not been able to come up with a viable anti-terror policy. It also does not have any federal agency which is in charge of this.
Also India needs to increase cooperation with intelligence agencies in other countries around the world – the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel. However, it also needs to improve ties with intelligence agencies in its own neighborhood.
There will be many analysts and politicians who will talk about the ‘foreign hand’ being involved in this incident – by which they mean Pakistan or more specifically the Pakistani intelligence agency, the ISI.
Blaming one another is not going to solve the problem, finding the terrorists and trying to prevent future attacks should be the priority. India and Pakistan set up an anti-terrorism institutional mechanism a year ago to identify and implement counter-terrorism initiatives and investigations.
Due to mistrust among the intelligence and military communities on both sides this mechanism has not yet taken off. There is a need to try and get it to work. The fact that these attacks took place on a day that the Indian and Pakistani Foreign Ministers met in New Delhi to talk about peace talks give this even more significance.
Mumbai is a city with a fighting spirit, it bounces back after every attack, it always has and it always will.
As an Indian I only hope that this time round too Mumbai will fight back … and that the Indian government will value the lives lost, both of security forces and ordinary citizens and even foreigners, and come up with a long-term strategy not another ad hoc policy.