Mumbai Attacks Resulted from Home-grown Terrorism
Sounds of gunshots and explosions accompanied chaotic scenes in Mumbai as the world media focused their attention on the tragic results of the terrorist attacks. While the scope and scale of the Mumbai attacks took India's internal security and intelligence establishment by surprise, there were conflicting reports about the numbers and identity of the attackers and how they were able to paralyze normal life in a major world metropolis. The terrible carnage claimed more than one hundred lives, including Americans and Israelis, and several hundred wereinjured. There are many who believe that such an attack wouldn't be possible without a strong homegrown element participating in the attacks.
While such acts of murder should not be justified, it is important to understand that the seeds for such support for terror can be found in the anger at America's "global war on terror". This "war" has provided a convenient cover to the Hindutva groups and to fiercely anti-Muslim elements within the Indian government apparatus to launch a concerted campaign of terror against Muslims. As expected, however, the finger of blame in India is being pointed at neighboring Pakistan. Pakistan, which has itself been at the receiving end of terror, has strongly condemned the attacks and offered to cooperate with the Indian government to track down the perpetrators of Mumbai.
The apparently slow and seemingly disorganized response to Mumbai attacks by the Indian authorities has come under criticism by British and Israeli officials, according to the British newspaper Telegraph. The paper quotes a senior British official as saying he was "surprised" by the Indian failure to regain control of the commercial capital almost two days after the attacks began. Israeli officials told the Jerusalem Post that India's refusal of its offer to send commandos had put the lives of a rabbi and his family in danger.
Here are some of the early world media reactions to the events in Mumbai:
Aryn Baker writes in Time Magazine: The disembodied voice was chilling in its rage. A gunman, holed up in Mumbai's Oberoi Trident hotel where some 40 people had been taken hostage, told an Indian news channel that the attacks were revenge for the persecution of Muslims in India. "We love this as our country but when our mothers and sisters were being killed, where was everybody?" he asked via telephone. No answer came. But then he probably wasn't expecting one.
The Wall Street Journal reports on the "insidious" nature of the attacks as follows: The scale and sophistication of the Mumbai attacks, as well as the choice of targets, however, appeared to point to a more insidious threat that the Indian government has been reluctant to acknowledge so far -- the potential involvement of extremists within the country's own Muslim community, which, at 150 million, is the world's third-largest after Indonesia and Pakistan. It is also one of India's most economically and politically disadvantaged minorities.
In addition to being disproportionately targeted in outbreaks of religious violence, they (Muslims) are severely underrepresented in the country's government bureaucracy, universities and security services. On literacy scores, young Indian Muslims now lag behind even the country's historically most disadvantaged group, the Dalits, or Hinduism's "untouchables."
Pakistani columnist and blogger Ahmed Quraishi said: As a Pakistani, I too find it intriguing that only days ago, for the first time, the reach and influence of indigenous Indian terror groups was being registered for the first time, with the arrest of two serving senior Indian army officers with links to Hindu terror groups involved in major terrorism acts; acts that were blamed on Muslims. And now suddenly we have a spectacular incident, too sophisticated for any foreigner to execute without massive facilitation and support base, where allegedly-Muslim terrorists have left behind an ID card and a cell phone with a SIM card originating in a 'neighboring' country. How convenient. They should have checked better since they could have also found an ISI staff card on one of the dead terrorists. There are close to 100 groups in India, of all shades, fighting the Indian state and people, including Hindu terrorist groups. India should get its own house in order before blaming 'neighbors'. This coming from a country where close to 600 Christians were killed just a couple of months back by Hindu groups, and 2500 Indian Muslims were burned alive in the 21st century's first incident of genocide, in 2002 and where Kashmiri, Dalit, and other minority women are raped everyday as part of Hindu religious oppression.
As Tariq Ali's Counterpunch piece (below) concludes: The Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, has insisted that the terrorists were based outside the country. The Indian media has echoed this line of argument with Pakistan (via the Lashkar-e-Taiba) and al-Qaeda listed as the usual suspects. But this is a meditated edifice of official Indias political imagination. Its function is to deny that the terrorists could be a homegrown variety, a product of the radicalization of young Indian Muslims who have finally given up on the indigenous political system. To accept this view would imply that the countrys political physicians need to heal themselves.
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India's Leaders Need to Look Closer to Home
The terrorist assault on Mumbais five-star hotels was well planned, but did not require a great deal of logistic intelligence: all the targets were soft. The aim was to create mayhem by shining the spotlight on India and its problems and in that the terrorists were successful. The identity of the black-hooded group remains a mystery.
The Deccan Mujahedeen, which claimed the outrage in an e-mail press release, is certainly a new name probably chosen for this single act. But speculation is rife. A senior Indian naval officer has claimed that the attackers (who arrived in a ship, the M V Alpha) were linked to Somali pirates, implying that this was a revenge attack for the Indian Navys successful if bloody action against pirates in the Arabian Gulf that led to heavy casualties some weeks ago.
The Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, has insisted that the terrorists were based outside the country. The Indian media has echoed this line of argument with Pakistan (via the Lashkar-e-Taiba) and al-Qaeda listed as the usual suspects.
But this is a meditated edifice of official Indias political imagination. Its function is to deny that the terrorists could be a homegrown variety, a product of the radicalization of young Indian Muslims who have finally given up on the indigenous political system. To accept this view would imply that the countrys political physicians need to heal themselves.
Al Qaeda, as the CIA recently made clear, is a group on the decline. It has never come close to repeating anything vaguely resembling the hits of 9/11.
Its principal leader Osama bin Laden may well be dead (he certainly did not make his trademark video intervention in this years Presidential election in the United States) and his deputy has fallen back on threats and bravado.
What of Pakistan? The countrys military is heavily involved in actions on its Northwest frontier where the spillage from the Afghan war has destabilized the region. The politicians currently in power are making repeated overtures to India. The Lashkar-e-Taiba, not usually shy of claiming its hits, has strongly denied any involvement with the Mumbai attacks.
Why should it be such a surprise if the perpetrators are themselves Indian Muslims? Its hardly a secret that there has been much anger within the poorest sections of the Muslim community against the systematic discrimination and acts of violence carried out against them of which the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in shining Gujarat was only the most blatant and the most investigated episode, supported by the Chief Minister of the State and the local state apparatuses.
Add to this the continuing sore of Kashmir which has for decades been treated as a colony by Indian troops with random arrests, torture and rape of Kashmiris an everyday occurrence. Conditions have been much worse than in Tibet, but have aroused little sympathy in the West where the defense of human rights is heavily instrumentalised.
Indian intelligence outfits are well aware of all this and they should not encourage the fantasies of their political leaders. Its best to come out and accept that there are severe problems inside the country. A billion Indians: 80 percent Hindus and 14 percent Muslims. A very large minority that cannot be ethnically cleansed without provoking a wider conflict.
This should, at the very least, force Indias rulers to direct their gaze on their own country and the conditions that prevail. Economic disparities are profound. The absurd notion that the trickle-down effects of global capitalism would solve most problems can now be seen for what it always was: a fig leaf to conceal new modes of exploitation.
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