The precision planned para-military attacks that began in Mumbai two days ago continue as this post is being written. The events as they unfold are unique in their execution. Instead of planted bombs or coordinated suicide missions this attack has all the marks of a well planned mission designed to create as much chaos as possible by prolonging the attacks and leaving the police and security forces stymied in their first efforts to contain the mayhem. A secondary consequence has been the world's news organizations splashing images of a city of twenty million under siege from within.
India has endured hundreds of terrorist attacks in the past four years, the toll has been over 4000 souls lost since 2004. They have lost three leaders to assassinations in sixty years, the famed Mahatma Ghandi, Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister, and her son Rajiv Gandhi a former Prime Minster. As several of the post below will attest, keeping India connected to the global community is an important linch pin in South Asia.
Leading off, is this from Small Wars Journal who found the report by Bill Roggio at The Long War Journal How the Mumbai Attack Differs "as good as it can get from early accounts."
Equal billing, and hat tip to Mark at Zenpundit for this Mumbai Complex Terror Op.
From Tom Barnett, the long view of what this means for India's future role in the World.
The post in full:
It couldn't get much clearer: the terrorists wanted to sever India's growing globalization ties in general and specifically those with the West. While India is no stranger to such terror (indeed, it can claim to have endured more experience in this regard than any other great power over the last quarter-century, with no other even coming close), these attacks seem to signal a new era for the nation: like a China, India becomes increasingly targeted for its role in embracing and spreading globalization. Thus its need to have a globally conscious and responsible military--meaning an end to the strategic myopia over Jammu & Kashmir.
If the upshot of these attacks is that India makes such a decision to recast its grand strategic vision so as to make it more commensurate with its expanding global economic presence, then this System Perturbation will have served its historic purpose--just not in the way its perpetrators imagined.
In that sense, the cruel realist in me says the timing could not have been better--on many levels.
The blog Kings of War from the Department of War Studies, King's College London offers this observation.
It is becoming increasingly clear that there is both a Pakistani connection and an LeT connection. I say both because this does not just appear to have been a question of LeT operatives training Indians for the operation or Pakistanis from one of the other groups taking part. It now seems LeT trained a number of actors and dispatched some of its own operatives as part of a 12 man fidayeen squad – if the Indian media has the number right – to take part in the attack. This information comes from the interrogation of one of the fidayee captured alive who, according to early reports, is named Ajmal Amir Kamal and hails from the Punjab in Pakistan.
For the whole post:
And this:
And from Understanding Each Other, Diversity and Dissent, hosted by pavocavalry, is this trio of posts.
Hindu violence -Hindu violence A look at internal violence that has racked India for almost all of it's sixty year history.
AN INCIDENT THAT CAN START A NEW INDO PAK WAR A short list of what might tinder a new INDO PAK War.
Geopolitical Consequences of the Bombay Attacks Pavocavlry posts this from Strafor.
UPDATE:
Terrorist Siege Has Ended, India Says -New York Times
MUMBAI, India — Indian commandos took control of the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower, the last nest of terrorist resistance, on Saturday morning, after a lengthy assault that left three terrorists dead and sections of the hotel in flames, the head of the commando unit said in a televised news conference.
Armed Teams Sowed Chaos With Precision- New York Times
MUMBAI, India — As Prasan Dhanur prepared his 13-foot boat on Wednesday evening for a hard night of fishing, he saw something strange.
A black inflatable lifeboat equipped with a brand new Yamaha outboard motor threaded its way among the small, wooden fishing boats at anchor and pulled up to the slum’s concrete pier.
Ten men, all apparently in their early 20s, jumped out. They stripped off orange windbreakers to reveal T-shirts and blue jeans. Then they began hoisting large, heavy backpacks out of the boat and onto their shoulders, each taking care to claim the pack assigned to him.
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