Mumbai Represents a Different Kind of Terrorism
A Conspiracy of Theories Taking Shape on Mumbai Terrorists
Nov 30, 2008
The three days at the end of November 2008 will long be remembered internationally for the carnage and sheer horror that took place in Mumbai, India. When at 9:30 p.m. on Wednesday, November 26th, terrorists simultaneously attacked as many as 13 locations.
The attacks including three major incursions into two luxury hotels, The Taj Mahal Hotel and The Oberoi Hotel, and The Nariman House, a five-story landmark in the Colaba section of Mumbai, and home to a Jewish outreach Center were all targeted.
Mumbai Becomes Center of World Attention
As the world watched, these three buildings would become the main set in a drama that would engulf the lives of numerous Mumbai police officers, India's Special Commando Unit, and numerous foreign visitors.
As the walls and floors of the Taj Mahal Hotel, The Oberoi Hotel and The Nariman House all became both strewn with blood and riddled with automatic gunfire, at least 180 people were killed and 300 injured.
Reports from a bevy of news organizations to include CBS, NBC, CNN and the BBC displayed the haunting figure of a British national of Indian descent telling an interviewer that, "They were looking for foreigners. Anyone with a British or American Passport...they were looking for foreigners."
The lamentable part of this ordeal for many of the street vendors, taxi drivers, and merchants in this sprawling metropolis of over 13 million was that they were substituted and killed when the terrorists could not find the European and American aliens they were looking for.
One Group Claims Responsibility
Although a group calling itself the Deccan Mujahideen has claimed responsibility for the coordinated and deadly attacks, the gunman's mode of operation seems very different from anything India has experienced up to now.
Unusual due to its size and boldness of attacking where both tourists and wealthy Indians congregate for a night on the town at a restaurant, or gather in hotels for wedding receptions. But especially for not utilizing a suicide bomber or setting of bombs indirectly, instead choosing an extremely direct mode of attack that would most assuredly cost them their lives. To this end most terrorist experts seem at a loss to explain this new group except to claim that perhaps it is not a new group at all.
Two of the attackers were reported by The New York Times newspaper to have called into local television stations demanding to speak with the government, while complaining about the treatment of Muslims in India and also complaining about Pakistani deaths in the disputed region of Kashmir.
India's Prime Minister Addresses Nation
In a nation-wide televised speech Manmohan Singh India's Prime Minister seemed to blame Pakistan when he said the forces that attacked the country were, "based outside this country." Mr. Sing also seemed to warn India would, "take up strongly with our neighbors that the use of their territory for launching attacks on us will not be tolerated, and that there will be a cost, if suitable measures are not taken by them."
According to Al Jezeera correspondent Riz Khan, while commenting on the Mumbai attacks on his program The RIz Khan Show, stated that perhaps Prime Minister Singh's comments have a double meaning, first relating that the tribal areas of Pakistan would not be tolerated as a safe haven for terrorist fighters to plan and then carry out attacks on India. And secondly, a plea for Pakistan to take a stronger stand against Al Qaeda and any of their nefarious and analogous groups.
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