Mumbai Mourns and World Wonders What Is Next

Indian authorities are still trying to determine just how many were murdered in the heinous terrorist attacks that spanned over four days of bombings, shootings, and hostage incidents spread across the city at 10 different locations and involving what appears to be 20-40 terrorists. While the official death toll is 195 and 26 foreigners were among that tally, the death toll is expected to rise significantly as those murdered in the hotels have yet to be included in the counts. Nine terrorists and 20 police and soldiers were also killed. A tenth terrorist was caught alive.

Bill Roggio notes the tactical picture and how the terrorists swept into Mumbai to carry out their deadly attacks. Of particular interest is that it's believed that there were perhaps two to three teams of 8-10 men involved, including a team of eight men who entered the city via boat, including the one terrorist, a purported Lashkar-e-Taiba operative named Ajmal Amir Kasab, who was captured after being injured in gun battles with police.

According to Kasab, his group departed the Pakistani port city of Karachi unarmed and linked up with the freighter MV Alpha. The assault team picked up their weapons and explosives on the freighter.

The group then ran across the Indian Fishing boat Kuber and hijacked it. The terrorists killed four crew members and kept the captain alive. He piloted the ship for one day, and then was killed. A trained seaman in Kasab's group guided the Kubar to a point off of Mumbai. From there, the assault teams boarded two inflatable rafts and landed in southern Mumbai and began their attack.

Kasab's team may not have acted alone, a senior US military intelligence official told The Long War Journal. "Kasab only knew about his portion of the operation, what his team did" the official said. "There appears to have been one or two eight-man teams operating on the ground."

India's top security official has offered up his resignation. It's a situation that has been brewing for some time as a series of terror attacks has undermined faith in his abilities:

India's top security official offered his resignation Sunday, a senior aide said, as the government struggled under growing accusations of security failures following the Mumbai attacks that left at least 174 people dead.

Home Minister Shivraj Patil submitted his resignation letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh but has not received a response, aide R.K. Kumar said.

Patil has become highly unpopular during a long series of terror attacks and his ouster has long been predicted in political circles.

Foreign SIM and fake ID cards from Bangladesh were found on some of the terrorists.

Apparently, the Taj Hotel received some kind of terror warning before the attacks and had briefly stepped up security protocols, but they had been relaxed by the time that the terrorists stormed the building complex. I have to believe that the hospitality industry will learn from that mistake and expand their security protocols in light of the devastating attacks in Mumbai.

Far more important, Pakistan is threatening to send 100,000 troops to the India-Pakistan border if India continues to intimate that Pakistan was behind the terror attacks. Those troops would be coming from the frontier provinces where they've been dealing with the Taliban/Al Qaeda threat. As I have been noting since the outset of this crisis, the terrorists may have sought to destabilize relations between India and Pakistan and relieve pressure on the Islamists in Pakistan by creating a conflict between India and Pakistan at a time when both countries were actually moving towards rapprochement.

The terrorist attacks not only threaten to create a conflict between India and Pakistan, but it threatens to derail Pakistan's efforts against the terrorists inside the frontier provinces (NWFP and Waziristan).

Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) is seen as one of the leading candidates for being behind the attacks, and that has many Indians up in arms about Pakistan's role, since LeT is seen as little more than a creation of the Pakistani ISI - Pakistan's intel services. LeT is also known to have ties to al Qaeda.

Both the US and Israel are sending teams to India to help investigate the attacks. President Bush has offered whatever assistance is deemed necessary and the FBI was en route. Israel was sending forensic and defense teams to assist.

At the same time, life is starting to return to normal in some parts of Mumbai, as Leopold Cafe reopened, although it was shut down a short time later because of security concerns. It was the target of one of the terror attacks.

UPDATE:
Neo-neocon writes about the reluctance of the Mumbai police to engage the terrorists in gun fights, even when they had the ability to do so. An incident a month ago suggests that the police were hesitant to act because of condemnation over how they killed a deranged man who was firing indiscriminately in the air after taking over a bus.

UPDATE:
Here's a timeline of the Indian response as they appear to have played out. Among the problems is that an aircraft needed to transport the NSG wasn't in the right place and ready to go. That delay, coupled with a delay recognizing the scope and severity of the attacks, gave the terrorists additional time to consolidate their positions and kill many more people.

UPDATE:
It's also reported that the terrorists were meticulously trained and prepared for the attacks, and one of the NSG interviewed claimed that the terrorists were the best prepared they had ever encountered.

Major General RK Hooda, the senior Indian commander, acknowledged the group, the Deccan Mujadeen, were better equipped and had a better knowledge of the battleground than India's soldiers.

After the battle, one member of India's National Security Guard, who led one of the assault groups against the terrorists occupying the Taj Mahal hotel, said they were the "best fighters" he had ever encountered.

He said: "They were obviously trained by professionals in urban guerrilla fighting. They used their environment and situation brilliantly, leading us (the NSG) on a dangerous chase through various tiers of the hotel which they obviously knew well. Their fire discipline too was excellent and they used their ammunition judiciously, mostly to draw us out.

"It was amply clear they came to kill a large number of people and to eventually perish in their horrific endeavour," he said. "Negotiating with the Indian authorities or escaping was not an option for them."

At this point, it's still not clear that the Deccan Mujahadin were even behind the attack or whether it was simply a throwaway name for one of the more well known groups like LeT or HuJI or even al Qaeda. Whatever the case, the terrorists were clearly preparing for the attacks and caught the Indian government and Mumbai law enforcement ill prepared to handle the attacks of this scope.

UPDATE:
Even though there are concerns that some Indian police were reluctant to open fire on the terrorists, at least one police commander on the scene took the initiative and sought to pin down the terrorists in the old wing of the Taj Hotel, making it appear that there were larger numbers of police present than there were at that time.

The Indian government is moving with surprising speed to address shortcomings with the response. They are calling for the creation of a new security agency, and to set up four regional hubs for an expanded NSG counter-terror strike force. The NSG (Black Cats) went into the Taj Hotel blind to the layout and that slowed down their response. That too is a situation that must be resolved - better intel and operational details that improve the ability of the security forces to respond and deal with developing situations; floor plans are critical to improving the chances of any rescue operation.

Meanwhile, a Russian military expert is trying to suggest that the training and tactics may have been the result of training obtained from US intel operations in Pakistan prior to the Russian withdrawal from Afghanistan.

"The handwriting and character of the Mumbai events demonstrates that they were not ordinary terrorists," said Vladimir Klyukin, an Afghan war veteran.

"Behind this terrorist attack there are 'Green Flag' special operations forces, which were created by the Americans in Pakistan, just an year before the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, and in the initial period were under full US control," stressed Klyukin, a veteran of the special "Vympel" commando group of the former Soviet KGB.

He said for such guerrilla operations at least two-three years of preparatory work with the involvement of experienced instructors is required.

Klyukin did not rule out that the Mumbai attackers could have taken part in similar attacks in other regions.

"People from the streets, without any planning and training are simply not able to hold four big complexes in a city so long," Soviet special services veteran was quoted as saying by largest Russian Interfax news agency.

It's in Russia's interest to try and somehow pin the blame on the US, which is working to engage in closer ties with India. Blaming the US for the origination of the training and tactics could undermine efforts to improve ties between the US and India, all while straining relations between Pakistan and India.

While earlier reports suggested that the taxi bombings were meant for other locations, including the airport, new evidence seems to point to the possibility that the terrorists sought to cover their movements by killing the people who were best able to identify them.

UPDATE:
Law enforcement and rapid reaction to terror attacks in Mumbai were sorely lacking, but the scope of the failure is just astounding. Mumbai doesn't even have a SWAT team of its own, which means that Mumbai law enforcement had to wait on the NSG to arrive, and even then there were multiple delays due to the lack of aircraft prepared to deliver the troops in a timely fashion.

It's simply mind boggling to believe that the city of Mumbai, with a population larger than that of New York City, doesn't have a SWAT/ESU team available at a moment's notice 24/7/365. New York City has multiple units spread out across the city to handle all manner of emergency situation that call upon special tactics or terrorist incidents with the necessary manpower and weapons to handle just about any threat. Each minute of delay can have deadly consequences, and the Indian authorities had a delay of hours. That's simply unacceptable and Mumbai residents must demand better.