28 Nov 2008
Miami Herald
The brutal, tactical attack in Mumbai comes at a time when India is flexing its economic muscle worldwide and when tensions between India and Pakistan -- always haunted by the tacit presence of nuclear weapons on both sides of the border -- seemed to have ratcheted down.
As police and military authorities continue to piece together who was behind the attacks and what their goals were, the assault that some are calling India's version of Sept. 11 could threaten the country's financial, political and foreign policy standing.
After past terrorist attacks, Indian leaders have pointed the finger at Pakistani Islamic extremists or intelligence operatives, two forces that often team up for operations in South Asia. Pakistan's defense minister on Thursday condemned the Mumbai attacks and warned India to refrain from blaming Pakistan, a longtime rival.
Those who are raising the specter of ''India's 9/11,'' comparing the targeting of India's business elite and foreign investors to the 2001 attacks in the United States, point to the targets: Mumbai is South Asia's financial hub and an entertainment capital, and many of the glitzy targets symbolize the new cosmopolitan face of the world's largest democracy.
Western counterterrorism officials are watching for answers to the key issue: possible connections to foreign terrorism networks.
The timing and dimensions of the Thanksgiving eve assault on multiple Western targets suggest the involvement of al Qaeda or one of its Pakistani allies, according to two senior European counterterrorism officials.
But officials warned against speculation because the evidence remains limited and the incident is not resolved. Most al-Qaeda-linked attacks involve bombs and suicide attackers rather than well-trained, commando-style gunmen using automatic weapons and grenades to take hostages.
''The [modus operandi] is different than previous mass-casualty attacks,'' said a senior European counterterrorism official.
"It's too early to tell. We are not drawing any definitive conclusions.''
Many analysts said the attacks were more likely to have been carried out by indigenous, Indian extremist groups blamed for a series of bombings this year rather than Pakistani-linked ones.
They also noted that India's government stood to benefit politically for hinting at the involvement of its old rival -- rather than admitting some of its own 145 million Muslims had become radicalized.
''It will always want to label this militancy as foreign rather than to accept it has its own problem,'' said Shaun Gregory, an expert on South Asian terrorism at the University of Bradford in Britain. ``That sells much more easily to the Indian public than admitting serious grievances within its Muslims.''
Relations between India and Pakistan have improved in recent years, helped by a reduction in the flow of militants into Kashmir, the divided and violence-torn territory at the core of their dispute.
EXTREMIST GROUP
In fact, an Indian extremist group could have pulled off the attacks to advance al Qaeda's war on the West, some experts said. Precedents would be the train bombings in 2004 in Madrid, Spain, or the Bali bombings in 2002, major strikes executed by local militants with only indirect ties -- training, ideological contacts -- to the core leaders of al Qaeda, said Louis Caprioli, a former counterterrorism chief in France.
In either scenario, the masterminds might have intended to send ''a challenge to the new president of the United States,'' said Louis Caprioli, a former counterterrorism chief in France.
Christine Fair, senior political scientist and a South Asia expert at the RAND Corporation, said, "
There are a lot of very, very angry Muslims in India. 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 that's not true. India's Muslim communities are being sucked into the global landscape of Islamist jihad.''
DOMESTIC ISSUE
"Indians will have a strong incentive to link this to al Qaeda. But this is a domestic issue. This is not India's 9/11."
In the short term, the terror attacks likely will depress stocks, dampen tourism and slow new investment, but are unlikely to inflict long-term damage on the nation's economy, analysts and business people said.
''This is a challenge for the government to maintain law and order in the country,'' said Takahira Ogawa, director of sovereign ratings at Standard & Poor's in Singapore. ``At this stage, I don't think there will be any major impact on the macroeconomic or fiscal position of the government.''