Sophisticated Attacks, but Al Qaeda Link Disputed
By MARK McDONALD and ALAN COWELL
Published: November 27, 2008
HONG KONG They came wearing black hoods, firing automatic weapons and throwing grenades. They took hostages and attacked two hotels, a movie theater, a café, a train station and other popular and undefended soft targets.
Who are they? The answer to that question remained in dispute Thursday as security officials and experts attempted to untangle the few clues as to the attackers likely identity.
An e-mail message to Indian media outlets that claimed responsibility for the bloody attacks in Mumbai on Wednesday night said the militants were from the Deccan Mujahedeen. Almost universally, experts and intelligence officials said that name was unknown.
Deccan is a neighborhood of the Indian city of Hyderabad. The word also describes the middle and south of India, which is dominated by the Deccan Plateau. Mujahedeen is the commonly used Arabic word for holy fighters. But the combination of the two, said Sajjan Gohel, a security analyst in London, is a front name. This group is nonexistent.
Some global terrorism experts with experience in South Asia said that, based on the tactics used in the attacks, the group was probably not linked to Al Qaeda although that assertion was challenged by other experts.
Its even unclear whether its a real group or not, said Bruce Hoffman, a professor at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and the author of the book Inside Terrorism.
It could be a cover name for another group, or a name adopted just for this particular incident, he said.
That theory was echoed by an Indian security official who spoke in return for anonymity because he was not authorized to be identified and who said the name suggested a link to a group called Indian Mujahedeen implicated in a string of bombing attacks in India killing around 200 people this year alone.
Indeed, on Sept. 15, an e-mail published in Indian newspapers and said to have been sent by representatives of Indian Muhajedeen threatened potential deadly attacks in Mumbai. The message warned counter-terrorism officials in the city that you are already on our hit-list and this time very, very seriously.
Christine Fair, senior political scientist and a South Asia expert at the RAND Corporation, was careful to say that the identity of the terrorists could not yet be known. But she insisted the style of the attacks and the targets in Mumbai suggested the militants were likely to be Indian Muslims and not linked to Al Qaeda or Lashkar-e-Taiba, another violent South Asian terrorist group.
Theres absolutely nothing Al Qaeda-like about it, she said of the attack. Did you see any suicide bombers? And there are no fingerprints of Lashkar. They dont do hostage-taking and they dont do grenades.
Mr. Hoffman agreed that the assault was
not exactly Al Qaedas modus operandi, which is suicide attacks.
But he said the attacks, which he called
tactical, sophisticated and coordinated, perhaps pointed to a broader organization behind the perpetrators. In London, Mr. Gohel also said the attackers may have been recruited by a relatively experienced militant group.
The Indian security official, moreover, said the attackers likely had ties to Lashkar-e-Taiba, a guerrilla group run by Pakistani intelligence for the war against India in the disputed territory of Kashmir.
The official also suggested the attackers might have emerged from an outlawed militant group of Islamic students. Photographs from security cameras showed some youthful attackers carrying assault rifles and smiling as they launched the operation.
Ms. Fair said one incident
a watershed event that continues to anger Muslims were the riots that swept Gujarat State near Mumbai in 2002. The violence killed between 1,000 and 2,000 people, most of them Muslims.
There are a lot of very, very angry Muslims in India, she said, The economic disparities are startling and India has been very slow to publicly embrace its rising Muslim problem. You cannot put lipstick on this pig. This is a major domestic political challenge for India.
The public political face of India says, Our Muslims have not been radicalized. But the Indian intelligence apparatus knows thats not true. Indias Muslim communities are being sucked into the global landscape of Islamist jihad, she said. Indians will have a strong incentive to link this to Al Qaeda. Al Qaedas in your toilet! But this is a domestic issue. This is not Indias 9/11.
That, too, was disputed by the Indian official. This was Mumbais 9/11, the official said. The consequences of the attack, the official said, may be to disrupt any overtures to Pakistan and to ignite a backlash against Indian Muslims.
Reflecting a widespread assessment in Pakistan, Moonis Ahmar, a professor of international relations at Karachi University, called the attacks a well-thought out conspiracy designed to destabilize relations between India and Pakistan and sabotage efforts at reconciliation.
Hindus make up about 80 percent of Indias 1.13 billion population and Muslims 13.4 percent. Experts disputed the complexity of the operation.
In London, Mr. Gohel said in a telephone interview that the attack in Mumbai was uniquely disturbing because it seemed a departure from cruder, earlier terrorist attacks in India using timed explosive devices against local populations, was directed at foreigners and involved hostage-taking.
The fingerprints point to an Islamic Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group, he said. The attack involved soft, symbolic targets and multiple coordinated attacks aimed to create maximum terror and human carnage and damage the economy.
Mr. Hoffman said: You dont see these types of terrorist operations very often, if at all. These arent just a bunch of radical guys coming together to cause mayhem.
This takes a different skill set. It doesnt take much skill to make a bomb. This is not just pressing a button as a suicide bomber and dying. You dont learn this over the Internet.
But Ms. Fair did not agree that the attacks on Wednesday necessarily required deep planning and training.
This wasnt something that required a logistical mastermind, she said. These were not hardened targets. A huge train station with zero security. Two hotels with no security, both owned by Indians. Leopolds Café. How hard is it, really? Its not rocket science.
Mark McDonald reported from Hong Kong; Alan Cowell from Paris; Souad Mekhennet from Frankfurt, Germany; and Salman Masood from Islamabad.
