The Big Picture

Surprisingly, most terrorism analysts in India and abroad have overlooked what in my view is the most significant aspect of the jihadi terrorist strike inMumbai from November 26 to 29, namely, the pre-planned attack on foreigners. 

In the past, one had seen in Kashmir two instances of deliberate attacks onforeigners-- on seven Israeli tourists by the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Frontin 1991 and  the kidnapping of some Western tourists by theHarkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) operating under the name Al Faran in 1995. 

But, one had not seen such  deliberate attacks on foreigners in Indianterritory outside J&K with the main focus of the attacks on Israelis andother Jewish people. Of the 25 foreigners killed, eight were Israeli nationals --twoof them with dual American nationality-- one Jewish person from Mexico, fournon-Jewish Americans and 12 other foreigners. One does not know whether any ofthe other foreigners killed were also Jewish. 

After the Mombasa attack on Israeli tourists by Al Qaeda in November, 2002,in which 13 Israelis were killed, this was  the second most devastatingattack on Jewish people outside Israel since 9/11. One notices that some Israelianalysts have compared the deliberate attack on Jewish people in Mumbai to theattack on the Israeli athletes at the time of the Munich Olympics in 1972. Onehas even alleged that the terrorist attack on the Jewish people in Mumbai washandled as incompetently  by the Indian counter-terrorism machinery as theattack on the Israelis in Munich was handled by the  then West Germancounter-terrorism machinery. There has even been a reference to alleged Indianarrogance-- which has been compared to the alleged West German arrogance-- inreportedly declining to accept Israeli offer of assistance in terminating theterrorism situation in the Narriman House where most of the Jewish people werekilled. 

In an earlier article, I had  said that anger in Pakistan over theincreasing Indo-Israeli strategic co-operation was one of the motivating factorsfor the terrorist strike in Mumbai. This is comparable to the anger overIndia’s strategic co-operation with the Hamid Karzai Government in Afghanistanwhich led to the terrorist strike outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul in Julylast. I see the Kabul and Mumbai strikes as inter-related. Governmental and somenon-governmental circles in Pakistan view the Indian co-operation with theKarzai Government and Israel as detrimental to Pakistan’s national interests.It is very unlikely that such  attacks will affect this co-operation, butdespite this, the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and Al Qaeda will continue to targetIsraeli nationals and interests in Indian territory in future. 

Indian media and analysts have not taken note of the wave of anger andindignation, which swept across Israel and the Jewish diaspora outside Israelafter the details of the attacks on the Jewish people came to be known. AtMumbai, among the foreigners, the Americans and the Europeans were only thesecondary targets-- collateral to the targeted attack on the Jewish people --but they, particularly the Americans, could become the primary targets in otherincidents in future. 

In addition to fears of an Indian military response, it is indignation overthe attacks on the Jewish people and the killing of four Americans, which shouldexplain the American pressure  on the Pakistani civilian and militaryleadership  to act immediately against the LET and its office-bearersresponsible for the attack. One could discern feelings of nervousness inGovernmental circles in Pakistan because the Mumbai strike is being investigatednot only by the Indian investigators, but also by the USA’s Federal Bureau ofInvestigation (FBI) and by the Israeli agencies because of the fatalitiessuffered by their nationals. Pakistan might be able to reject--as it always does--theevidence collected by the Indian agencies as unreliable and fabricated, but itcannot reject evidence independently collected by the American and Israeliagencies. 

Will Israel take revenge for the brutal killing of its citizens and otherJewish people? If so, how, where and in what form?  One had seen with whatdetermination the Israelis went after the Black September terrorists, who killedtheir athletes in Munich. One would be surprised if they do not do so againstthe LET. 

The conventional wisdom among analysts not only in India , but also elsewhereis that the desire to derail the Indo-Pakistan dialogue and to afford thePakistan Army a pretext for scaling down its military operations against AlQaeda and the Taliban in the Pashtun tribal belt and move some of the troopsfrom there to the Indian border is also an important motivating factor for the Mumbai attack. 

While this could have been one of the motivating factors for the LET, onefinds it difficult to understand how this could have been a motivating factorfor the Army and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) since the peace processwas started by Pervez Musharraf in consultation with the Corps Commanders andthe present military leadership, including Gen.Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, the Chiefof the Army Staff, was a party to that decision. If they now wanted to reversethat decision in order to justify their scaling down their operations in thetribal belt, which  are  aggravating the anti-army anger among thePashtuns, they could have easily done it without the need for a massiveterrorist strike in Mumbai, which has only hardened international opinionagainst the Pakistan Army. 

Only the desire to target India’s relations with the Karzai Government andIsrael provides a convincing explanation for the ISI involvement in the attack,if it is proved. 

More than a week after the strike, one still does not have a satisfactoryreconstruction of the  strike. In one’s anxiety to get as muchinformation as possible from the captured terrorist, one does not seem to havepaid attention to the important aspect of debriefing all the foreign survivorsin the two hotels attacked as to what exactly happened. All of them haveimmediately gone back to their respective countries and we do not have theirversion of what happened inside the hotels. 

There seems to be an attempt to avoid a detailed enquiry into thedeficiencies in our intelligence and counter-terrorism apparatus, which made thestrike possible. Removal of  the ministers in the government of India andMaharashtra, who were responsible for dealing with terrorism,  was theeasiest part of the post-mortem. The more difficult and necessary part is adetailed enquiry into the entire failure of our security apparatus. One coulddiscern an attempt to avoid this. Public pressure should be kept up on the governmentto hold such an enquiry and to share its findings with the public. 

The inadequacies of our intelligence and investigating agencies  and ofthe legal infrastructure against terrorism were known earlier. The startling newrevelation is the inadequacies in our physical security apparatus, which madethe terrorist strike possible and in our rapid response mechanism, which wasbrought out by the long time taken to terminate the terrorism situation. 

Mumbai is our economic capital. The corporate headquarters of many leading--Indianand foreign--companies are located there. Many of our sensitive establishmentssuch as the Bombay High off-shore oil installations and some nuclearestablishments are also located there. One would have, therefore, expected thatour physical security infrastructure in Mumbai would have been the strongest.Instead it was found to have been very weak and was unable to deny success tothe terrorists despite the availability of advance intelligence about theLET’s plans for a sea-borne act of terrorism in Mumbai. If it was so weak inMumbai, one has reasons to be worried regarding the shape of the physicalsecurity infrastructure in other cities. 

The terrorist strike and its sequel have also brought out the totallydisjointed manner in which our entire counter-terrorism machinery-- theintelligence agencies, the Armed Forces, particularly the Navy, the Police, theNational Security Guards, the National Security Council Secretariat (NSG) andthe Joint Intelligence Committee --  have been functioning without anysynergy in thinking or action. While the poor reflexes of the Police in dealingwith terrorism were known earlier and had been crying for attention for manyyears, the poor reflexes of the Navy--particularly on the West Coast, which ismost vulnerable to terrorist attacks by sea-- should be a matter of greatconcern to our policy-makers. 

After 9/11, we have been holding joint counter-terrorism exercises with manycountries. Just now, an exercise with China is on. No such exercise seems tohave been held among the various agencies of our counter-terrorism community inorder to test periodically their ability to act jointly in specific situations. 

Our counter-terrorism strategy is a fits and starts strategy. In ourpreoccupation with handling the sequel to the Mumbai strike, we should not losesight of the investigation into the serial blasts in Uttar Pradesh,  Jaipur,Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Delhi and Assam, which involved home-grown jihadis. Thereis very little progress in identifying the command and control of the so-calledIndian Mujahideen (IM)  and in taking action to neutralize it. The threatposed by the home-grown jihadis has not diminished. On the contrary, it couldincrease further due to the copy-cat effect of Mumbai. 

Now that we have an energetic and lucid-thinking Home Minister, in ShriP.Chidambaram, one hopes he will pay attention to all these aspects and removethe deficiencies to prevent any more terrorist strikes. If we fail to do so,India could lose its attraction to foreign investors.

B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. ofIndia, New Delhi, and, presently Director, Institute For Topical Studies,Chennai.