Fighting Continues In Mumbai
The BBC is essentially live blogging from the scene in Mumbai.
Juan Cole provides some background to the incident.
My take is that this is a reaction to Pakistani President Zardari’s recent moves to improve relations with India and to gain control of Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence which has been backing mujahideen groups all over the region since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Peace is the last thing that the Indian Mujahideen and other terrorist groups want in the region. If Pakistan and India normalize relations, resources will be freed up to track down these groups and their Hindu counterparts in the area.
As to the “targeting” of Westerners in this operation, that’s probably a calculated move to increase media coverage. Every country and their associated media pay more attention if their nationals are involved. It also makes corporations from Western countries nervous about doing business in India. Publicity and fear are the foundation of terrorism.
4 comments
Been looking for usually reliable sources for information about this attack. There is an amazing amount of noise being generated by just about everyone. A lot is simple ignorance or knee-jerk, some is also obviously (to me anyway) purposeful misdirection. Some are difficult to tell if honest or not! Mind you, this would have been just a normal day at the office when I worked Intel in the 80’s! Guess I’m getting a bit rusty, or just less tolerant with all this crap as I get older. 😉
Cernig over at C&L seems to have at least tried to put together an honest perspective piece. (Not that I’ve always agreed with cernig over the years). 😉 🙂
The Mumbai Attacks – Al Qaeda, Pakistani Proxies or Hindutva Backlash?
I think, like you, that it will be some time (if ever) before we know the story. I agree with your comments above. I also think this is going to escalate.
It would seem there was a mix of experienced hands and young dead-enders [probably remnants of the banned Indian Islamic students group] with the pros still fighting it out in the hotels.
The anti-terrorist police were probably the primary target, and that operation seems to have been successful. The other actions would have pulled resources away from the police headquarters. It depends on the timing, i.e. the other attacks should have started first which would draw the command staff back to the headquarters to coordinate the efforts while the armed resources were sent out of the headquarters to respond to the other events.
The secondary events were designed for a maximum impact on the foreign community to ensure media coverage. This would be a text book action. Apparently the attack on the Indian parliament didn’t seem to do much good, so you go after the money, which is in Mumbai.
It’s going to be a while before things become clear. I watched a little bit of the coverage when they were pulling the majority of people out of the Taj hotel and noticed the camera quickly moved away when it momentarily caught the man who must have been the incident commander [peaked cap with red and gold braid, better grade of tan uniform, no obvious weapon] so there is some censorship going on. The camera went from smoothly panning to jerking away and didn’t go back to the service entrance of the hotel. I’m not certain how much information is going to be shared, because they haven’t mentioned the attack on the headquarters since the initial reports.
Sadly, I wasn’t paying too much attention to this yesterday until I found the financee of one of the directors in my department at work was in the city. She had flown there the day before to be with her family, prior to their wedding next month. I found out today she is safe. Small, scary world. Thanks for providing the additional information.
I’m glad to hear she’s alright, LK. I follow these things to gain a sense if the governments are going to do something that will unintentionally help the terrorists. If you overreact it helps these creeps and provides recruits. That’s why it is better dealt with terrorism as a police and intelligence problem, to be sure you are targeting the right people. You arrest and prosecute those you can, and “neutralize” them when you have no choice.
The thousands of innocent people swept up by the Hedgemony are all potential terrorist recruits. They all have a valid grievance against the US, which makes the matter worse.