INDIA’S DAY OF INFAMY – MUMBAI TERROR ANALYSIS BY B RAMAN

The war of civilisation between the Muslims and the infidels has begun in


Indian territory


.

2.So said the first statement issued in the name of the so-called Indian
Mujahideen (IM) in November,2007, after the three orchestrated explosions in
three towns of Uttar Pradesh outside local courts.

3.We saw the latest round of this war in Mumbai on the night of November 26,
2008, as an unestimated number of terrorists—-divided into small groups and
wielding hand-held weapons and improvised explosive devices (IEDs)— literally
took control of Mumbai and targeted with frightening precision famous hotels
preferred by the rich of the country and foreign tourists, railway stations, a
hospital and many other places scattered across this business capital of India.

4. It is not just 9/11. It is not just


Madrid


,March,2004.
It is not just


London


,2006.

5.It is — I am using the present tense because the situation is still not
under control at 5-30 AM despite the Army’s assistance being sought— an act
of terrorism, the like of which the world has not seen before. Mind boggles as
one tries to think and figure out how the terrorists could have planned and
carried out terrorist strikes of such magnitude, territorial spread and
ferocity without our intelligence and police having been able to get scent of
it. Like what the Vietcong did during the Tet offensive

6.The iceberg of jihadi terrorism to which I have been drawing attention since
November,2007, in article after article, in interview after interview , in
discussion after discussion has struck not only Mumbai, but the Indian State.

7. The iceberg moved from UP to Jaipur. From Jaipur to


Bangalore


. From


Bangalore



to Ahmedabad and


Surat


.
From there to


Delhi


.
From


Delhi


to


Assam


. From


Assam


to Mumbai
now—–despite the claims made by the Mumbai Police some weeks ago of having
discovered and crushed a plot of the IM to carry out strikes in Mumbai.

8.The Government of Manmohan Singh reacted to the repeated warning signals of
the moving iceberg since November 2007, in the same way as the Bush
Administration reacted to reports about the plans of the Al Qaeda for an of
aviation terrorism in the US; in the same way Megawati Sukarnoputri reacted to
reports of the activities of the Jemmah Islamiyah; and in the same way Khalida
Zia reacted to reports of the plans of the Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen .

9. Bovine. It just did no react. It was in a total denial mode.I wrote and said
again and again —-hand over all the investigation about the IM to a central
investigating agency for a co-ordinated investigation instead of their being
investigated by the police in a piecemeal manner in different States ruled by
different political parties. No reaction.

10.From a localised threat, jihadi terrorism has become a pan-Indian threat
with a pan-Islamic ideology. Deal with it with a pan-Indian strategy, I said.
No reaction.

11.The terrorists arrested some weeks ago in Mumbai, three of whom were IT
experts well-placed in trans-national companies, pose a new dimension of the
threat. Seek the help of the


US


,
I said. No reaction.

12.I drew attention to an article of Hamid Mir, a journalist of Pakistan, which
spoke of Indian Muslims going to Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban against
the US and which also said that India is one of the routes being used by
foreign jihadis going to Afghanistan.No reaction just as Rajiv Gandhi did not
react to repeated wake-up calls from the then Afghan President Najibullah that
Muslims from Kashmir were being trained by the Afghan Mujahideen.

13.In October, when I had come to Delhi for a seminar two diplomats from the EU
countries sought an appointment with me for a discussion on the IM.They
expressed their surprise and concern over the fact that the Indian intelligence
and police seemed to know so little about the IM despite their having arrested
many perpetrators of the previous blasts and interrogated them.

14.Is the IM the name of an organisation or of a movement? Is it one or many
organisations in different States acting, like the International Islamic Front
(IIF) of Osama bin Laden, as a united front—–autonomously where they can and
unitedly where they should? Who constitute its command and control? Where are
they? In


India



or outside? Nobody knows for certain.

15.I could not sleep the whole of last night. One question, which kept
bothering me again and again was: how safe are our nuclear establishments and
material?

16. Till now, we were greeting with glee Pakistan’s incompetence in dealing
with terrorism. We can no longer do so. We have become as clueless as Pakistan.

17. I wanted to write much more, but my mind doesn’t work.As I watch on the TV
what is happening in Mumbai, I shiver and sweat at the thought of what is
waiting to happen tomorrow and where. (27-11-08)

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of
India, New Delhi,and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies,
Chennai. E-mail:



 





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