The Bygone Tyrant!

Mubarak toppled

Louis XVI

Hosni Mubarak has slunk from the world stage, not as spectacular as Louis XVI or the Ceausescu's. But in a post dramatic fashion that saw him hesitate, then in the face of a massive ground swell of peaceful cries for him to go, he leaves. What is not seen, was the implied tip of the bayonet wielded by the Egyptian Army whose middle and junior officer corp were not beholding to the old guard and if asked in a few years down range, would probably admit that they would never have turned their guns on their fellow citizens with whom they shared the same arrested existence.

Thomas Barnett and his associates at Wikistrat pretty much called this dance during this first round, just as if it were a hoe-down barn dance where the dance caller guides the dancers. In this case it was a collaboration of Barnett and company and their live wikistrat analysis who were subscriber/readers who participated in the decision making process by visiting a Virtual War Room where a reader could vote for the possible outcome based on their own perception of the crisis. The outcome was remarkable achievement in crowdsourcing  as Barnett notes below.

This train keeps rolling!

Elvis, we are now told, has truly "left the building," as Mubarak has handed power to the senior military council.

So the journey along Wikistrat's 1-2-3-4 scenarios is complete: explosive rip of initial protests shakes everything up but triggers no Tunisia-like fall, then the steady drip of protests, strikes, defections, etc, pushes Mubarak into a number of "slips", none of which placate the mob. Eventually, the military steps in (apparently Leon Panetta's prediction was dead-on and just a few hours off) and takes the Turkish path (assuming temporary rule but promising the much-desired free elections).

The table has been run.

Read more:
Mubarak Steps Down

For me the back story is how over the course of a week the judgement of the crowd (Wikistrat readers), picked the scenarios that are as of today proving true. The War Room laid out four choices in several categories and as noted below; after several days a pattern emerged that never wavered.


Unfolding Pathways
■Military's tightening grip (42%) (39%) (36%) (37%) (36%)


■Movement's steady drip (9%) (13%) (16%) (19%) (18%) (24%)


■Protests' explosive rip (33%) (30%) (22%) (21%) (22%) (21%)


■Mubarak's many slips (16%) (19%) (23%) (24%) (19%)


Regime Response
■Big man steps down (40%) (39%) (41%) (38%) (37%) (36%) (37%)


■(Next military) man up! (26%) (22%) (31%) (32%) (34%)


■Systemic crack down (26%) (32%) (19%) (21%) (20%)


■Oppositions leaders hunted down (9%) (7%) (9%) (8%)


US Response
■"Too preliminary to take a stand" (47%) (51%) (54%) (53%) (54%) (44%)


■"I'm with the Band" (of Netizens) (21%) (17%) (20%) (21%) (20%) (36%)


■"Let me be the first to shake your hand!" (24%) (23%) (22%) (21%) (17%)


■Stand by your man! (9%) (7%) (5%) (4%) (3%)


Regional Responses
■Frantic firewalling (35%) (34%) (39%) (36%) (38%) (39%)


■Dominoes keep falling (21%) (22%) (23%) (23%) (22%) (26%) (25%)


■Head-in-sand stalling (23%) (24%) (25%) (23%) (26%) (21%) (22%)


■Tehran comes calling (21%) (20%) (19%) (16%) (15%) (14%)


Global Responses
■"Who lost Egypt?" (42%) (43%) (42%) (39%) (40%)


■"We are all Egyptians now!" (28%) (26%) (28%) (29%) (30%) (32%)


■"Let my people go!" (28%) (26%) (25%) (28%) (26%)


■"Boycott Pharaoh's cotton (2%) (6%) (5%) (4%) (3%)


Tipping Points
■Viennese sausage-making (40%) (45%) (46%) (45%)


■That iconic photo of ElBaradei on a tank (19%) (17%) (21%) (22%) (21%) (25%) (26%)


■"Murderers row" press conference (35%) (31%) (26%) (24%) (26%) (21%)


■First UN sanctions against newest "rogue regime" (7%) (9%) (8%) (9%)


Exit Glidepath

■Think Turkey, now (35%) (39%) (43%) (49%) (53%) (52%) (51%)


■Think Pakistan, anytime (23%) (22%) (32%) (27%) (24%) (25%) (26%)


■Think Iran, 1979 (23%) (24%) (12%) (13%) (14%) (15%)


■Think China, 1989 (19%) (15%) (14%) (11%) (10%) (9%)

Read more
Egypt Coming Together Nicely Enough


Close by, another astute observer of the world scene whose gaze is usually cast out to sea, filed these thoughts on the changes in Egypt today. Galhran of information dissemination  writes;

Credit Connectivity. We are all standing witness to a manifestation of the power of connectivity. Whether it is the internet, cellular technologies, Al Jazeera, or any number of networks and networking tools leveraged for communications and information flows and access - connectivity is the underwriting power that is motivating social changes globally in 2011.

Credit the Egyptian Army. The initial decision to not engage the protesters directly in protection of the regime has proven the Egyptian Army as a remarkably professional organization at time of extreme pressure. Internal revolutions can stir many emotions, but the professionalism demonstrated in Egyptian Army's character, methods, spirit, and conduct at the street level day after day is the single greatest contributing factor that led to today's result.

Credit the US military. For the tens of thousands of US Marines who have deployed on MEUs over the last many, many years and worked along side the Egyptian military training them to be professional soldiers, take pride in your efforts this day. You cannot be credited as a primary cause of the professionalism demonstrated by the Egyptian Army, but by any measurement you can be credited as a significant contributing influence towards that professionalism.

There is more and is well worth the read
A Few Thoughts on Egypt

World Police Blotter

One of the popular sections found in many local newspapers in the United States, used to be the "Crime Report" or "Police Blotter" that listed the crimes and police calls during the past week.

Today, in our global world, newspaper headlines and the blogs have taken on the same persona. A laundry list of crimes seem to have crowded war and economic woes off the front pages. To illustrate that point are the following stories. John Robb, author of the book Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization, had this to say about Mexico in an interview with Danger Room, Inside the Brave New War, Part 1 » . "Groups like the Zetas are fighting a war to make Mexico ungovernable. They are taking stuff right out of the Al Qaeda in Iraq handbook. Video Executions. Beheadings. Assassination. Weakening the state. It’s the same as Iraq but in Mexico." Robbs thesis is.

That the shift from state-against-state conflicts to wars against small, ad hoc bands of like-minded insurgents will lead to a world with as many tiny armies as there are causes to fight for. Our new enemies are looking for gaps in vital systems where a small, cheap action—blowing up an oil pipeline or knocking out a power grid—will generate a huge return.

Much of the news below mirrors the scenarios that Robb predicted. The question is how the nations and people of the world unite to confront this new threat.

As we review our version of the "World Police Blotter" we begin by visiting Galrahn of Information Dissemination who writes this about the latest in confronting the pirate threat in the Horn of Africa.

His take on China being urged to join the fight.

I think that might be the smell of maturity. Just one more interesting footnote in what looks to be an evolving PLAN maritime strategy in the second part of 2008. They really are poised for a breakout into the blue next year. It will be interesting to watch, not just what they do, but how we react.
More.....PLA General: We Should Fight Pirates

And his comments on the the UN moving against piracy.

Yesterday (Dec. 2, 2008), the U.N. Security Council unanimously passed UNSCR 1846. From our perspective, the most significant aspect of this resolution is its inclusion of the Suppression of Unlawful Acts (SUA) clause. This clause, based on the United Nations Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Maritime Navigation, provides an immediately available instrument for logistically effective consequence delivery applicable to 78% of the world's States (those nations who have signed the Convention).

More....What A Cooperative Maritime Strategy Looks Like

Not to be left out the Washington Post's Peter Fromuth offers this.

Somali pirates hijack another boat -- or two or three -- every day despite the best efforts of the U.S. 5th Fleet, NATO, Russia, India and others. This is not new; pirates have been frustrating the mighty for at least 2,000 years -- since snatching Julius Caesar, then ransoming him for 50 talents, and leading Alexander the Great on a wild goose chase around the Mediterranean. As the U.N. Security Council grapples with Somali piracy, its members are in venerable company. Read the rest...Fighting Pirates - Washington Post opinion

Mumbai continues to lead with stories like the following.

President Asif Ali Zardari says his government has no concrete evidence of Pakistani involvement in the attacks, and American officials have not established a direct link to the government. But as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice landed in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, on Thursday morning, pressure was building on the government to confront the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which Indian and American officials say carried out the Mumbai attacks.
Read the whole story...Mumbai Attack Is Test of Pakistan’s Ability to Curb Militants - Jane Perlez and Somini Sengupta, New York Times

And as noted in an earlier post. Death closer to home should sweep away all concerns about pirates and Indo/Pak conflicts. My post Bloody Thanksgiving Weekend was no sooner posted when news came in that Tijuana suffered 37 murders over this past weekend.

The article by William Booth, in the Washington Post begins.

MEXICO CITY -- The death squads of the drug cartels are killing in spectacularly gruesome ways, using the violence as a language to deliver a message to society.

Increasingly, bodies show unmistakable signs of torture. Videos of executions are posted on the Internet, as taunts, as warnings. Corpses are dumped on playgrounds, with neatly printed notes beside them. And very often, the heads have been removed.

When someone rolled five heads onto the dance floor in a cantina in Michoacan state two years ago, even the most hardened Mexicans were shocked. Now ritual mutilations are routine. In the border city of Tijuana, 37 people were slain over the weekend, including four children. Nine of the adults were decapitated, including three police officers whose badges were stuffed in their mouths.

Note the same words used above, by John Robb, Video Executions. Beheadings. Assassination. Weakening the state. It’s the same as Iraq but in Mexico."

Read the whole story: Mexico Drug Cartels Send A Message of Chaos, Death - William Booth, Washington Post

Regarding this threat on our southern border, comes this welcome news.

Experts' Report Urges Changes in National Security System - Walter Pincus, Washington Post

Chief among its recommendations is merging the National Security and Homeland Security councils and creating a director for national security who would manage implementation of the president's policies rather than just coordinate the views of Cabinet members and present them to the president, as the national security adviser currently does.

And this from the New York Times.

The United States formally released on Wednesday the first part of a $400 million aid package to help Mexico fight drug trafficking, a sign of how much more involved the United States is becoming in Mexico’s brutal drug war.

Read the whole story....Money to Fight Drug Gangs Is Released to Mexico

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This article from the New York Times December 4, 2008 opens with this chilling introduction.

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TIJUANA, Mexico — The sedated patient, his bullet wounds still fresh from a shootout the night before, was lying on a gurney in the intensive care unit of a prestigious private hospital here late last month with intravenous fluids dripping into his arm. Suddenly, steel-faced gunmen barged in and filled him with even more bullets. This time, he was dead for sure.

Hospitals Now a Theater in Mexico’s Drug War

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Finally, this from EagleOne about something he heard on the way home from work.

Behind The Terror: The Role Of Organized Crime : NPR

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If this post seems redundant from Sunday's post it is because the problems persist and threaten connectivity in insidious ways. They seem to grow larger by the day. The answer to two of these issues, piracy and drug wars in Mexico are tied to economics. People will do what they must to make a living. Once one goes beyond the law, greed, just as it effects unregulated businesses everywhere will know no bounds. Laws that govern society and ensure a form of fairness, like taxes, regulatory controls, and community and social pressure set up the ruleset that allows for advancement through education, connectivity and fair and free competition.

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Many of the links and people listed in the blogroll are involved is trying to connect the world. Others are working to protect and maintain those important rulesets that have led to the advancements that have helped billions to a better future. Their efforts and voices are a tool to inform the public and help build a consensus for combating the threats of the 21st century.

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The criminal insurgency in Mexico will test our resolve to refrain from walling ourselves off. The answer lies in engagement and confronting evil. We have shown the world that our system of government is unique and for a brief window we may have been given a shot at using our bully pulpit, to lead the world by example.

Like Sliding Down A Mile Long Razor Blade Into A Pool of Vinegar

The headline is a good metaphor to compare the mission that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will be facing when she tries to restrain India and still protect our interests in Afghanistan. The first article describes India's demands of Pakistan. The second article, printed in full is courtesy of http://www.stratfor.com/ who provides strategic intelligence on global business, economic, security and geopolitical affairs.

First the news article.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India demanded Pakistan take decisive action over deadly attacks in Mumbai it said were carried out by militants from its nuclear-armed rival, while the West urged cooperation to ease tension.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa were due in New Delhi, with the militant attacks that killed 183 people in India's financial capital threatening to reverse improving ties with Pakistan.

Britain's top military officer warned the tensions between the old adversaries could set back Pakistan's offensive against Islamist militants along the Afghan border.

India's foreign ministry said on Monday it called in Pakistan's envoy to New Delhi and told him attackers, who investigators said had months of commando training in Pakistan, had come from there.
More....India demands Pakistan act decisively on Mumbai attack, from Reuters.

As the preceding article focused on India's proverbial line in the sand challenge to Pakistan, the next article from George Friedman of www.stratfor.com, looks at the strategy behind the Mumbai Attack.

The article in full:

Strategic Motivations for the Mumbai Attack

Last Wednesday evening, a group of Islamist operatives carried out a complex terror operation in the Indian city of Mumbai. The attack was not complex because of the weapons used or its size, but in the apparent training, multiple methods of approaching the city and excellent operational security and discipline in the final phases of the operation, when the last remaining attackers held out in the Taj Mahal hotel for several days. The operational goal of the attack clearly was to cause as many casualties as possible, particularly among Jews and well-to-do guests of five-star hotels. But attacks on various other targets, from railroad stations to hospitals, indicate that the more general purpose was to spread terror in a major Indian city. While it is not clear precisely who carried out the Mumbai attack, two separate units apparently were involved. One group, possibly consisting of Indian Muslims, was established in Mumbai ahead of the attacks. The second group appears to have just arrived. It traveled via ship from Karachi, Pakistan, later hijacked a small Indian vessel to get past Indian coastal patrols, and ultimately landed near Mumbai.

Extensive preparations apparently had been made, including surveillance of the targets. So while the precise number of attackers remains unclear, the attack clearly was well-planned and well-executed.

Evidence and logic suggest that radical Pakistani Islamists carried out the attack. These groups have a highly complex and deliberately amorphous structure. Rather than being centrally controlled, ad hoc teams are created with links to one or more groups. Conceivably, they might have lacked links to any group, but this is hard to believe. Too much planning and training were involved in this attack for it to have been conceived by a bunch of guys in a garage. While precisely which radical Pakistani Islamist group or groups were involved is unknown, the Mumbai attack appears to have originated in Pakistan. It could have been linked to al Qaeda prime or its various franchises and/or to Kashmiri insurgents.

More important than the question of the exact group that carried out the attack, however, is the attackers’ strategic end. There is a tendency to regard terror attacks as ends in themselves, carried out simply for the sake of spreading terror. In the highly politicized atmosphere of Pakistan’s radical Islamist factions, however, terror frequently has a more sophisticated and strategic purpose. Whoever invested the time and took the risk in organizing this attack had a reason to do so. Let’s work backward to that reason by examining the logical outcomes following this attack.

An End to New Delhi’s Restraint
The most striking aspect of the Mumbai attack is the challenge it presents to the Indian government — a challenge almost impossible for New Delhi to ignore. A December 2001 Islamist attack on the Indian parliament triggered an intense confrontation between India and Pakistan. Since then, New Delhi has not responded in a dramatic fashion to numerous Islamist attacks against India that were traceable to Pakistan. The Mumbai attack, by contrast, aimed to force a response from New Delhi by being so grievous that any Indian government showing only a muted reaction to it would fall.

India’s restrained response to Islamist attacks (even those originating in Pakistan) in recent years has come about because New Delhi has understood that, for a host of reasons, Islamabad has been unable to control radical Pakistani Islamist groups. India did not want war with Pakistan; it felt it had more important issues to deal with. New Delhi therefore accepted Islamabad’s assurances that Pakistan would do its best to curb terror attacks, and after suitable posturing, allowed tensions originating from Islamist attacks to pass.

This time, however, the attackers struck in such a way that New Delhi couldn’t allow the incident to pass. As one might expect, public opinion in India is shifting from stunned to furious. India’s Congress party-led government is politically weak and nearing the end of its life span. It lacks the political power to ignore the attack, even if it were inclined to do so. If it ignored the attack, it would fall, and a more intensely nationalist government would take its place. It is therefore very difficult to imagine circumstances under which the Indians could respond to this attack in the same manner they have to recent Islamist attacks.

What the Indians actually will do is not clear. In 2001-2002, New Delhi responded to the attack on the Indian parliament by moving forces close to the Pakistani border and the Line of Control that separates Indian- and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, engaging in artillery duels along the front, and bringing its nuclear forces to a high level of alert. The Pakistanis made a similar response. Whether India ever actually intended to attack Pakistan remains unclear, but either way, New Delhi created an intense crisis in Pakistan.

The U.S. and the Indo-Pakistani Crisis
The United States used this crisis for its own ends. Having just completed the first phase of its campaign in Afghanistan, Washington was intensely pressuring Pakistan’s then-Musharraf government to expand cooperation with the United States; purge its intelligence organization, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), of radical Islamists; and crack down on al Qaeda and the Taliban in the Afghan-Pakistani border region. Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf had been reluctant to cooperate with Washington, as doing so inevitably would spark a massive domestic backlash against his government.

The crisis with India produced an opening for the United States. Eager to get India to stand down from the crisis, the Pakistanis looked to the Americans to mediate. And the price for U.S. mediation was increased cooperation from Pakistan with the United States. The Indians, not eager for war, backed down from the crisis after guarantees that Islamabad would impose stronger controls on Islamist groups in Kashmir.

In 2001-2002, the Indo-Pakistani crisis played into American hands. In 2008, the new Indo-Pakistani crisis might play differently. The United States recently has demanded increased Pakistani cooperation along the Afghan border. Meanwhile, President-elect Barack Obama has stated his intention to focus on Afghanistan and pressure the Pakistanis.

Therefore, one of Islamabad’s first responses to the new Indo-Pakistani crisis was to announce that if the Indians increased their forces along Pakistan’s eastern border, Pakistan would be forced to withdraw 100,000 troops from its western border with Afghanistan. In other words, threats from India would cause Pakistan to dramatically reduce its cooperation with the United States in the Afghan war. The Indian foreign minister is flying to the United States to meet with Obama; obviously, this matter will be discussed among others.

We expect the United States to pressure India not to create a crisis, in order to avoid this outcome. As we have said, the problem is that it is unclear whether politically the Indians can afford restraint. At the very least, New Delhi must demand that the Pakistani government take steps to make the ISI and Pakistan’s other internal security apparatus more effective. Even if the Indians concede that there was no ISI involvement in the attack, they will argue that the ISI is incapable of stopping such attacks. They will demand a purge and reform of the ISI as a sign of Pakistani commitment. Barring that, New Delhi will move troops to the Indo-Pakistani frontier to intimidate Pakistan and placate Indian public opinion.

Dilemmas for Islamabad, New Delhi and Washington
At that point, Islamabad will have a serious problem. The Pakistani government is even weaker than the Indian government. Pakistan’s civilian regime does not control the Pakistani military, and therefore does not control the ISI. The civilians can’t decide to transform Pakistani security, and the military is not inclined to make this transformation. (Pakistan’s military has had ample opportunity to do so if it wished.)

Pakistan faces the challenge, just one among many, that its civilian and even military leadership lack the ability to reach deep into the ISI and security services to transform them. In some ways, these agencies operate under their own rules. Add to this the reality that the ISI and security forces — even if they are acting more assertively, as Islamabad claims — are demonstrably incapable of controlling radical Islamists in Pakistan. If they were capable, the attack on Mumbai would have been thwarted in Pakistan. The simple reality is that in Pakistan’s case, the will to make this transformation does not seem to be present, and even if it were, the ability to suppress terror attacks isn’t there.

The United States might well want to limit New Delhi’s response. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is on her way to India to discuss just this. But the politics of India’s situation make it unlikely that the Indians can do anything more than listen. It is more than simply a political issue for New Delhi; the Indians have no reason to believe that the Mumbai operation was one of a kind. Further operations like the Mumbai attack might well be planned. Unless the Pakistanis shift their posture inside Pakistan, India has no way of knowing whether other such attacks can be stymied. The Indians will be sympathetic to Washington’s plight in Afghanistan and the need to keep Pakistani troops at the Afghan border. But New Delhi will need something that the Americans — and in fact the Pakistanis — can’t deliver: a guarantee that there will be no more attacks like this one.

The Indian government cannot chance inaction. It probably would fall if it did. Moreover, in the event of inactivity and another attack, Indian public opinion probably will swing to an uncontrollable extreme. If an attack takes place but India has moved toward crisis posture with Pakistan, at least no one can argue that the Indian government remained passive in the face of threats to national security. Therefore, India is likely to refuse American requests for restraint.
It is possible that New Delhi will make a radical proposal to Rice, however. Given that the Pakistani government is incapable of exercising control in its own country, and given that Pakistan now represents a threat to both U.S. and Indian national security, the Indians might suggest a joint operation with the Americans against Pakistan.

What that joint operation might entail is uncertain, but regardless, this is something that Rice would reject out of hand and that Obama would reject in January 2009. Pakistan has a huge population and nuclear weapons, and the last thing Bush or Obama wants is to practice nation-building in Pakistan. The Indians, of course, will anticipate this response. The truth is that New Delhi itself does not want to engage deep in Pakistan to strike at militant training camps and other Islamist sites. That would be a nightmare. But if Rice shows up with a request for Indian restraint and no concrete proposal — or willingness to entertain a proposal — for solving the Pakistani problem, India will be able to refuse on the grounds that the Americans are asking India to absorb a risk (more Mumbai-style attacks) without the United States’ willingness to share in the risk.

Setting the Stage for a New Indo-Pakistani Confrontation
That will set the stage for another Indo-Pakistani confrontation. India will push forces forward all along the Indo-Pakistani frontier, move its nuclear forces to an alert level, begin shelling Pakistan, and perhaps — given the seriousness of the situation — attack short distances into Pakistan and even carry out airstrikes deep in Pakistan. India will demand greater transparency for New Delhi in Pakistani intelligence operations. The Indians will not want to occupy Pakistan; they will want to occupy Pakistan’s security apparatus.

Naturally, the Pakistanis will refuse that. There is no way they can give India, their main adversary, insight into Pakistani intelligence operations. But without that access, India has no reason to trust Pakistan. This will leave the Indians in an odd position: They will be in a near-war posture, but will have made no demands of Pakistan that Islamabad can reasonably deliver and that would benefit India. In one sense, India will be gesturing. In another sense, India will be trapped by making a gesture on which Pakistan cannot deliver. The situation thus could get out of hand.

In the meantime, the Pakistanis certainly will withdraw forces from western Pakistan and deploy them in eastern Pakistan. That will mean that one leg of the Petraeus and Obama plans would collapse. Washington’s expectation of greater Pakistani cooperation along the Afghan border will disappear along with the troops. This will free the Taliban from whatever limits the Pakistani army had placed on it. The Taliban’s ability to fight would increase, while the motivation for any of the Taliban to enter talks — as Afghan President Hamid Karzai has suggested — would decline. U.S. forces, already stretched to the limit, would face an increasingly difficult situation, while pressure on al Qaeda in the tribal areas would decrease.

Now, step back and consider the situation the Mumbai attackers have created. First, the Indian government faces an internal political crisis driving it toward a confrontation it didn’t plan on. Second, the minimum Pakistani response to a renewed Indo-Pakistani crisis will be withdrawing forces from western Pakistan, thereby strengthening the Taliban and securing al Qaeda. Third, sufficient pressure on Pakistan’s civilian government could cause it to collapse, opening the door to a military-Islamist government — or it could see Pakistan collapse into chaos, giving Islamists security in various regions and an opportunity to reshape Pakistan. Finally, the United States’ situation in Afghanistan has now become enormously more complex.

By staging an attack the Indian government can’t ignore, the Mumbai attackers have set in motion an existential crisis for Pakistan. The reality of Pakistan cannot be transformed, trapped as the country is between the United States and India. Almost every evolution from this point forward benefits Islamists. Strategically, the attack on Mumbai was a precise blow struck to achieve uncertain but favorable political outcomes for the Islamists.

Rice’s trip to India now becomes the crucial next step. She wants Indian restraint. She does not want the western Pakistani border to collapse. But she cannot guarantee what India must have: assurance of no further terror attacks on India originating in Pakistan. Without that, India must do something. No Indian government could survive without some kind of action. So it is up to Rice, in one of her last acts as secretary of state, to come up with a miraculous solution to head off a final, catastrophic crisis for the Bush administration — and a defining first crisis for the new Obama administration. Former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once said that the enemy gets a vote. The Islamists cast their ballot in Mumbai.
www.stratfor.com

Either way, ten men, may have done more to weaken the saffron threads that hold peace together in South Asia, than any one could have imagined before last Wednesday night. Just by holding out, they created a news spectical that played out around the world as live video feeds kept viewers glued to their TV's watching this global trainwreck.

Mumbai Questions?

Mumbai Attackers

Mumbai Attacker

Mumbai First Responders

Mumbai First Responders

The photos above, were taken by a photographer who's story below reveals how the shock of such an attack paralyzed the police response.

From the London Independent, Jerome Taylor talks to the photographer whose picture went around the world.

'Armed police would not fire back. – I wish I'd had a gun, not a camera'

It is the photograph that has dominated the world's front pages, casting an astonishing light on the fresh-faced killers who brought terror to the heart of India's most vibrant city. Now The Independent can reveal how the astonishing picture came to be taken by a newspaper photographer who hid inside a train carriage as gunfire erupted all around him.

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In defense of the first responders, Webley revolvers and Lee-Enfield rifles against 'AK-47,s are no match in a stand up gunfight. I am also sure that the Mumbai police don't have the budget to allow for practice and qualifying for every officer, as most major cities require. Even the United States is not immune from being able to halt such sprees at their outset, "North Hollywood shootout" and Virginia Tech massacre.

In a related post, Zenpundit writes about Spree Terrorism and elicits several comments that scratch at the surface of the willingness of an organized band to kill indiscriminately.

Mark opens with these comments.

I lack sufficient depth and familiarity with the Indian political context to comment intelligently on the origins and ultimate aims of the shadowy Islamist group that carried out the Mumbai Massacre. I’d love to hear Olivier Roy speculate on the ideological aspect but in terms of organization, I’d bet heavily on a “modular” structure of transnational and indigenous personnel - a strategic alliance between groups or a hybrid operation.

And abu mugqawama set off a firestorm of comments with this short post.

It was "Gangsta Gangsta" at the top of the list, then I played my own s*** it went something like this

And a look at the Sunday headlines, as the postmortem of the Mumbai Massacre begins.

Mumbai Attacks: 300 Feared Dead as Full Horror of the Terrorist Attacks Emerges - Damien McElroy, Rahul Bedi and Andrew Alderson, Daily Telegraph

Indians Claim Terrorists Took Orders From Pakistan - Dean Nelson, The Times

India and Pakistan simmer over Mumbai attacks from Reuters

The Final Fight at the Taj from the New York Times

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UPDATES: From Understanding Each Other, Diversity and Dissent comes this description of the relations between Pakistan and India.

Pavocavalry begins:

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Only fools think that peace can be established in between Pakistan and India.

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The roots of this conflict are deep.Roots which go back 1300 years in history.Broad stages of this process are as following:--

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Read more....THE FUTURE OF INDO PAK CONFLICT-A.H AMIN

The Prisim of The Mumbai Attacks

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.

On the motives in Mumbai

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:

Some Answers… And a Few Burning Questions

And this:

Who is behind the Mumbai attacks?

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.