Under attack, India reels

Appeals to maintain unity and communal harmony and demands for more concerted action reverberated throughout the country, as India reeled under unprecedented terror attacks at the heart of its commercial capital, Mumbai.

Terrorists chose the most high-profile targets to stage the attacks and drive home the message that India is still ill-prepared and under-equipped to deal with such exigencies.

Nearly two dozen heavily armed men shot their way through crowded railway stations and barged into two-star hotels, taking several foreigners hostage on Wednesday evening. For almost 40 hours, the insurgents carried out a string of attacks at 10 different locations, killing more than 125 people, including nine foreigners, and leaving over 250 injured.

By early on Friday, 28 November, troops continued to battle alleged Islamist insurgents, who used hostages as human shields. Some 14 police officers responsible for dealing with terror outfits, including the chief of the Anti Terror Squad of Mumbai, were killed in fighting.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh categorically said the terrorists were from "outside the country," and that the government would raise the issue with its neighbors about the use of their territory for launching "attacks on us." He was ostensibly pointing fingers at Pakistan.

Singh's contention was based on the arrest of a suspect by National Security Guard commandoes flushing out terrorists from a hotel. The suspect arrested is from Pakistan's Faridkot district, according to reports. Also, a hitherto unknown outfit, Deccan Mujahideen, has sent an email claiming responsibility for the attacks. Investigations have revealed that the email originated from Moscow.

Authorities said other terror suspects arrested by the security forces had revealed that they had come from Pakistan in trawlers and landed on Mumbai's coastline, a few hours away from Pakistan's Karachi coast. The Indian navy and coast guard later intercepted and engaged a suspected trawler in the high seas, believed to be carrying more terrorists and ordnance on board.

The attacks came barely days after the Indian prime minister's announcement that the government would be ready with an action plan to deal with terrorism within 100 days, and ahead of several provincial polls in which increasing terrorism in the country featured as a main issue.

The terror unleashed in Mumbai has rattled the ruling coalition, which faces parliamentary elections in a few months.

Singh announced in his address to the nation that new laws would be drafted to tackle terror and that police reforms would be undertaken soon. He assured the country that the government was taking serious steps to protect its citizens.
But Singh's statement seems to have come too late and demonstrates the lack of political will to deal with terrorism. More than 300 people have been killed in terror attacks across the country since April this year, and hundreds of others have been injured.

In the last major terrorist attack on 30 October in the eastern state of Assam, some 76 people were killed and over 320 wounded.

"There is a lack of crisis infrastructure. If this is the environment we are forced to live with then we should have adequate infrastructure, or else the lives of innocent civilians will be at risk," media quoted Ratan Tata, chairman of Tata Sons, one of the biggest industrial conglomerates of the country that also owns the iconic seven-star Taj Mahal Hotel, as saying. Terrorists stormed the hotel Wednesday evening, killing many guests and staff, and taking foreigners hostage.

Indeed, the Indian police and security agencies require desperate reform and modernization. The Mumbai police and security forces were found lacking when the attacks began. Police officers armed with British colonial-era muskets were attempting to fight terrorists carrying automatic AK-47 rifles, rocket propelled grenade launchers and other sophisticated fire arms.

Hours after the terror spilled blood on the streets of the city, with bodies strewn on the road, the government decided to call in the army, National Security Guards and navy commandoes. But it was only in the late hours of Thursday that the police buckled under intense public pressure and handed over the operations to the army and other elite paramilitary commandoes, who had been flown in from the capital, New Delhi.

Live images of the encounters beamed by TV channels into boardrooms and bedrooms sparked off acute panic and condemnation of the political leadership.

"Isn't it shocking that politicians took a long time to call the army? This should have been done at the beginning," Prakash Borvankar, an investment banker in Mumbai, who watched the live telecast as India's biggest stock exchange remained closed for the day, told ISN Security Watch.  

Terror attacks are not new to Mumbai, which has been targeted over the past decade.

On 11 July 2006, some 180 people were killed in seven bomb explosions at railway stations in the city. Several other minor attacks have taken place since then, but the latest one is unprecedented. Almost all of these attacks have been blamed on Islamists.

Lashkar-e-taiba, a Pakistan-based jihadi outfit, has denied involvement in the latest attack, but senior intelligence official of the federal agency told ISN Security Watch on condition of anonymity that recent satellite phone conversations intercepted by them had indicated Laskhar's heightened interest in Mumbai.

A dearth of personnel and sophisticated equipment are the two major operational hurdles faced by the intelligence machinery and the security forces. In the absence of the political will to bolster their strength, these agencies are operating with available resources.

"Our request and needs get buried under bureaucratic red tape. Several proposals to augment the intelligence infrastructure are pending with the policymakers for a long time now. We need modernization and strength to deal with the evolving situation," an intelligence official told ISN Security Watch.

Since 2006, the government has been planning to securitize India's extremely porous 7,517-kilometer coastline - the lack of security which helped the militants to reach the coastline of Mumbai right in front of the Taj Mahal hotel. Security forces had tracked and nabbed four Lashkar militants in 2007 who had come through the sea route and moved to the north of the country. Yet no concrete steps have been taken to strengthen the security of the maritime boundary.

Appalled by the extremely coordinated terror attack and the urban warfare that has been ongoing for the past two days, the US government has reportedly dispatched a team of FBI counter insurgency and forensic experts to work with Indian investigators.