After 48 hours sporadic combat is still taking place in Mumbai so it is way too early to try to analyze what happened. Still, there are some questions which come to my mind which I would like to share with you and, if you have any clues as to what the answers to these questions might be, I ask you to share them with me. My questions are:
a) how it is possible that the Indian intelligence community was, apparently, caught totally off-guard by these attack?! After all, in terms of size this is a far bigger operation that 9/11 and, unlike 9/11, this was a very predictable development (I am referring to the official version of 9/11 here, for the sake of comparison, not as an endorsement of the official version). And it’s not like the Indians did not know from which circles such an attack might come. The fact that such a major operation was totally missed seems to point to a total, unforgivable, intelligence failure on the part of the Indian intelligence community.
b) why did negotiations not take place? after all, news reports seem to indicate that the attackers took hostages, which implies some desire to negotiate. The Indian security forces were involved in what appear to be pitch battles almost immediately after the attack was discovered. Who gave the order to immediately attack the hostage takers?
c) what kind of forces does India have specifically trained for anti-terrorist hostage/rescue operations? From what I have seen in the various news reports, a mix of so-called “commando” forces were used, which is probably the single worst option in such a situation and, moreover, none of these forces seem to be of a dedicated anti-terrorist hostage-rescue profile like, say, the Russian “Gruppa A”. Does India have real, specialized, anti-terrorist hostage-rescue forces and, if yes, how many would be available for a major city like Mumbai?
As I said, these are questions to which I have found no answers so far. All I can say is that so far my impression of the Indian response is very bad and I fear that this entire situation was grossly mismanaged.
VS..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Guards
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARCOS
http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/NAVY/Marines.html
My guess is it has something to do with Pakistan. To accuse it of providing shelter to the terrorists, and to act “appropriately” then. We’ll see!
Read larouchepac.com for an angle. True or not, I do not know but it blames the British Secret Service.
VS negotiations and saving hostages wouldn’t make sensational news. On the other hand, isn’t it interesting that a brand spanking new organization can come up with such a superbly orchestrated act. You need to stop a think that not everyone can just enter Taj Mahal through the doors and according to guesses the actors knew the outlay pretty well. By the way “we will never negotiate with terrorists” seems like pushed down to india’s throat as well, eh? I will let you draw your own conclusions. must ~Anonymust ;)
VS.. please do remember that most of the people were killed before the hostage situation even began. VT is one of the largest train stations and is extremely crowded. So was the Taj hotels when the firing began. By the time Taj, Oberoi and Nariman house were under siege the death toll was way past 100.
Also the terrorists started killing people indiscriminately instead of taking them hostage first. There was even a ‘call’ with one of them asking for their demands. They wanted an independent Hyderabad. (I think you would know about the Hyderabad independence, police action etc). They did not have any demands. They had only objectives.
One of the things that the ATS does is negotiate in hostage situations. Well.. it lost its chief due to firing.
It’s not like India never negotiates, i am referring to the Kandahar episode. In that case, they highjacked an airplane and then made their demands.. not kill everyone on board. Each situation is different I believe and Indian response was good. The only thing that is bothering me is why it took more than 10 hrs to call up the NSG Commandos.
In all the hostage crises that I have seen (and there are quite a few), I think in every one of them, the terrorists gathered the hostages into one single place and had someone watching over them. They never left the hostages back in their own rooms as far as I know. Obviously you have much much more advanced knowledge than me, but I have never seen people holed up in their own rooms and the terrorists somewhere else, and the people being called ‘hostages’. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Most of the people from the Taj, Oberoi and Nariman house were able to come out by back doors etc and from their own rooms which is not usually the case when terrorist take hostage.
There has been only one eye-witness account of hostages being taken and we haven’t heard anything about them yet. This was when the attack first started and in Taj. And those were all Taj employees.
So my question really is how can you negotiate when they don’t have any hostages? And when they have some really absurd demands?
IMHO they wanted to tell to the world that Bombay (and India) were unsafe for investments and even the 7 star 5 star hotels were unsafe. They wanted to destroy India’s and Bombay’s credibility.
@Shashank: you make a lot of highly pertinent points, thanks a lot for your comments! As I said, I personally lack a lot of basic info which would allow me to go beyond the “questions asking” stage, at least at this point. For one thing, if it turns out that, as usual, the corporate media mis-reported the situation then I will have to wait until some “reality based facts” start coming in.
Everything you write makes a lot of sense and, in particular, when you say that there was no hostages or any plans to negotiate and that the sole purpose of the operation was to “destroy India’s and Bombay’s credibility“. If that is the case, then we are dealing with a situation in which there was no single decision to launch an assault, at least not from the Indian side, but only a response to a chaotic behavior by the terrorists (this is what actually happened in the school in Beslan in southern Russia).
Still, the question of how such a major attack went totally undetected by the Indian intelligence community is one which will require some solid answers. One of my readers even raised the question of a false flag operation in a private email to me. He has got a point, I think. The question, at least, is legit (although in practical terms “false flagging” here could only mean knowing about the impending attack and doing nothing about it).
Veterinarians have a saying which I like. It goes like this: “when you hear hoofs, first think of horses, but don’t forget about the possibility of zebras“. Same here, we should look at the simple explanations first, but in the back of our minds we should keep an eye on more exotic scenarios.
Please keep posting here if you see anything of interest.
Thanks!
The Saker
VS- “although in practical terms “false flagging” here could only mean knowing about the impending attack and doing nothing about it”
I am not 100% sure we can call this as false flagging.. maybe something on the lines of lethargy, politics, vote banks but not false flag. The thing that boggles me and makes my blood boil is that we have had like 6 attacks this year and the govt did NOTHING to stop the next one.
I believe false flag is done for militaristic or gathering power reasons. The present Indian govt has none. It is pretty weak both in mind and in spirit. The intelligence, politicians are wholly responsible for this IMHO. I hope the Indian people never forget this and vote properly next year.
VS – here’s the answer why India probably never got to negotiate.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2008/11/29/smiling-assassin-tells-of-mumbai-plot-as-full-horror-is-revealed-115875-20934502/
“The only terrorist to be captured alive in the Mumbai massacre has revealed how he was ordered to: “Kill until your last breath.””
and this .. http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/nov/30mumterror-doctors-shocked-at-hostagess-torture.htm