Mumbai:21st century India and two dozen attackers

60 HOURS OF RAMPAGE IN MUMBAI.
Hotels, Railway Station,Cafe and Hospital attacked
Indiscriminate firing by AK47 Rifles aiming unarmed civilians and foreign nationals!
195 Killed 295 wounded, the death toll rising.
News and views from around the globe: ENB
So who are the terrorists?

That too is unclear. A group calling itself the Deccan Mujahideen sent an e-mail to news organizations early Thursday morning claiming responsibility for the attacks. Two of the terrorists spoke to a local news channel, India TV, to air their grievances: "When so many of us were killed, who did anything for us?" a man called Shadullah asked, referring to anti-Muslim riots in northern India in 1992 and '93. He said he was among seven people holding hostages at the Oberoi but didn't make any specific demands other than for the release of other mujahedin jailed in India and for an end to the persecution of Muslims. He did not reveal where the group comes from, though the Deccan in its name presumably refers to the plateau that stretches across southern India.

By Jyoti Thottam and Madhur Singh / Mumbai

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Mumbai Attacked

Mumbai siege ends as death toll rises to more than 195.

ByJames Lamont in New Delhi, Joe Leahy in Mumbai and Reuters FT UK
Published: November 28 2008 19:10 Last updated: November 29 2008 11:02
Commandos killed the last Islamist gunmen holed up at Mumbai’s Taj Mahal hotel on Saturday, ending a three-day rampage and siege that killed at least 195 people and is already being described as India’s 9/11.
The gunmen had set parts of the hotel ablaze as they played cat and mouse with scores of India’s best-trained commandos, known as the Black Cats.
Nine of the attackers were killed, a tenth caught alive. He told interrogators they wanted to go down in history for an Indian 9/11, and were also inspired by the bombing of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad in September, Times Now TV said, quoting an unidentified defence ministry official.
Mumbai disaster authorities said at least 195 people had been killed and 295 wounded, the death toll rising as bodies were collected from the luxury Taj and nearby Trident-Oberoi hotels, scene of another siege that ended on Friday.
Nine gunmen and at least 17 foreigners were among the dead in the attacks on the city.
A day-long effort to regain control of the Jewish community centre, Nariman House, ended with the news that at least five hostages, all believed to be Israeli and including a young rabbi and his wife, had been killed. Later a series of explosions was heard at the centre as security forces set off booby traps laid by the gunmen before they were killed.
The attempt to storm the building had seen gun battles through the day and commandos sliding down ropes from helicopters hovering above the centre’s roof.
Indian media reported that Vilasrao Deshmukh, the chief minister of Maharashtra, had said that two UK-born Pakistanis were among gunmen seized by Indian commandos.
But this was later denied by the state government. UK home secretary, Jacqui Smith, said that the authorities there had no knowledge of any British links with the attacks.
Two Australians, a father and daughter from the US, a German, an Italian and Canadians were among the foreign victims, according to Dow Jones.
Elite Indian commandos spoke of fierce battles through the maze of corridors and rooms of the 100-year-old Taj Mahal hotel in which the terrorists had a better knowledge of the building’s layout than security forces.
A senior commando officer, dressed in a balaclava to obscure his identity, said the “very determined and remorseless” militants were well armed and had smuggled weapons into the hotels ahead of their attacks.
“There is blood all over, bodies all over. We are not looking at those who have been killed, just looking at who is exchanging fire,” he said. “They can go on and on [resisting].”
Earlier on Friday, 143 people were freed from the Oberoi Hotel after Indian forces regained control. Police confirmed at least 30 guests and two others had died in the attack. Analysts said the terrorists had achieved a “significant success” by managing to keep the Indian security forces at bay for so long.
“The attackers received as much attention as they could possibly have hoped for, and the Mumbai outrage can only be described as a very significant terrorist success,” said Paul Cornish, head of the international security programme at Chatham House in London.
Ashok Mehta, a retired army commander, said the casualty count in Mumbai could have been halved if the elite National Security Guard had arrived earlier from its Delhi base. A little-known group calling itself the Deccan Mujahideen claimed responsibility for the attacks.
A militant claiming to be one of those holding the Jewish family earlier rang an Indian television channel to offer talks on the release of the hostages
while complaining about India’s actions in Kashmir. India and Pakistan are at odds over the disputed territory.
Condemnation has flooded in over the attacks, which have brought India’s financial capital to a halt, with most businesses closed on Friday.
Those killed included Ashok Kapur, chairman of India’s YES Bank, and Loumia Hiridjee and Mourad Amarsy, founders of Princess Tam Tam, a French lingerie
label. The Indian government increased its pressure on Pakistan as the suspected source of the attacks.
Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, summoned the head of Pakistan’s military spy agency to help assist with the investigation.
Pranab Mukherjee, India’s external affairs minister, said a preliminary probe pointed towards Pakistani involvement, in spite of assertions by President Asif
Ali Zardari that land under Pakistani control would not be allowed to launch attacks on India. Pakistan denied involvement.
Senior Indian business chiefs have criticised the government for not taking heed of earlier attacks on the city in 1993 and 2006 to improve the city’s
infrastructure. (Additional reporting by James Fontanella-Khan in Mumbai)

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Friday, Nov. 28, 2008

Inside the Taj: Tracking Down the Terrorists

By Jyoti Thottam and Madhur Singh / Mumbai
As Mumbai's hostage drama stretched toward the end of its second full day, TIME got an exclusive look at what is happening inside the Taj hotel, where it appears that the confrontation is drawing to a close. At 3:15 p.m. local time on Friday, a massive blast went off inside the hotel, loud enough to startle the
hundreds of journalists gathered at the security cordon hundreds of yards behind the hotel. An officer who ran out of the hotel, carrying a pistol, said, "Now everything is burned. The stairs are burned. The woodwork is all spoiled." What did this blast mean? "They are getting desperate," he said. "You can tell by their actions."
The officer reported that commandos had trapped three terrorists on the top floor of the hotel. The rest of the suspects were on the ground floor, but he was not sure how many were in the building altogether, estimating between seven and 10. When asked whether they were trying to take any of the suspects alive, he almost smiled at the question. "If they're alive, it's just coincidence," he said.
The Taj is a beloved landmark in this city, and its residents will have to get used to the idea that the Taj will never be the same. Disbelieving Mumbaikars have been watching as their city of 12 million has been paralyzed — shops closed, streets emptied — by just two dozen attackers in the past two days.
How could this happen? The unwelcome truth is that this grand cosmopolitan city, one that has survived two even deadlier terrorists bombings in 2003 and 2006, was caught completely unprepared.
The scale and sophistication of the attacks, which began at about 9:30 p.m. local time on Wednesday as gunmen stormed hotels with AK-47s and grenades,
became clear on Thursday and Friday: over 155 people are reported dead, and more than 300 are injured. The injured were brought to local hospitals from the sites of the attacks, which included the Taj and another luxury hotel, the main railway terminus, a café and two hospitals. Among the police, 14 were killed and 25 injured. The Maharashtra chief minister, Vilasrao Deshmukh, estimates that there were 20 to 25 terrorists involved, seven of them now dead.
Unlike most of the recent simultaneous bomb attacks in India, this one continued to do its damage after the initial shock wore off, gathering strength and
changing form as the smoke and noise from the blasts cleared. In this case, the attackers turned hostage takers at three of the sites: the two hotels and a residential building called Nariman House.
Those stranded in hotels might have had a shorter ordeal if the hotel management had put into place at least some kind of emergency plan in case of a terrorist attack. About 100 people, including one man with a gunshot wound, took refuge in a conference center at the Taj when they heard shooting but were left there all night, with no communication from anyone, let alone any instructions on how to exit the building safely.
Hotel managers at the Taj are given some crisis-management training, but nothing that would prepare them for a situation in which the attackers were running "free and loose" inside the hotel, says Anupam Amrohi, 23, an employee of Taj hotels in Bangalore. Amrohi was on the phone with his friends trapped inside the conference center all night. "They should have pulled the alarm," he says. Instead, hotel staff advised people already inside to stay where they
were. People in their rooms were told to stay put even after the firing between the police and the suspects began. Hotel operators would call them periodically to remind them to keep the lights off and the volume on the TV down.
The lack of any prior local police intelligence about the attacks — a complaint voiced by many Mumbaikars today — is particularly alarming given the meticulous planning and unusual modus operandi of the attackers. For example, an Indian navy spokesman confirmed that the terrorists entered Mumbai without detection by taking a sea route. Starting from a base in Gujarat to the north of Mumbai, they made their way to the Gateway of India at Mumbai's
southern tip and another landing point on the peninsula 14 nautical miles away; they killed one boatman in the process.
The attack on the Leopold Café and Restaurant also shows intimate local knowledge. Like the Oberoi and Taj hotels, it is a favorite of foreigners, mostly backpackers and fans of the best-selling novel Shantaram, in which the Leopold is a key setting. As you come out from the Leopold, a hard right takes you
into a narrow lane, which leads directly to the back entrance of the Taj. Several people in the Apna Bidi shop, around the corner from the Leopold, reported
that at about 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, immediately after the blasts, they saw two of the attackers with AK-47s running from the Leopold into the narrow lane
that leads to the Taj. Either the terrorists were natives to the city or they had time to practice, prepare and carefully plot their targets and the path they would take between them.
As the three simultaneous hostage dramas began to unfold, onlookers gathered. "It's like watching 24 in slow motion," said Vineet Pandit, 22, who lives near the Oberoi. What they would see at each of these sites was a parade of hundreds of uniformed troops over the course of several hours: the Mumbai police, the Indian army and paramilitary groups including the Rapid Action Force and the National Security Guard's élite "Black Cat" commandos, distinctive in
their all-black uniforms. It was not always clear who was in charge. On Thursday at the Taj, police officers waited idly in their jeeps as 100 army personnel tried to take control of the hotel. At the Oberoi, the police commissioner appeared to be taking the lead.

In Colaba market, a handful of terrorists stormed one of the apartment buildings at about 10 p.m. on Wednesday and then began randomly shooting and lobbing grenades into the street and at neighboring buildings, according to residents of the area. From the vantage point of three Black Cat snipers watching the building, I could see Nariman House's shattered windows. The couple who own the building are Jewish, giving rise to rumors throughout the day
that "Israelis" were somehow involved in the attacks. The other people in the building, including an infant wearing a pink bonnet and green blanket, were held as hostages but released early Thursday. The last person to leave, a young woman, told authorities that the only remaining hostages were the couple, who had made no sound or movement since the night before. By 5 p.m., they were presumed to be dead, and the Black Cat commandos moved in half an hour
later, unleashing a volley of gunshots into the building. By 9:30 p.m. local time, the firing was still going on, and it was not clear whether the four to five suspects inside had been killed or captured. So who are the terrorists? That too is unclear. A group calling itself the Deccan Mujahideen sent an e-mail to news organizations early Thursday morning
claiming responsibility for the attacks. Two of the terrorists spoke to a local news channel, India TV, to air their grievances: "When so many of us were
killed, who did anything for us?" a man called Shadullah asked, referring to anti-Muslim riots in northern India in 1992 and '93. He said he was among seven
people holding hostages at the Oberoi but didn't make any specific demands other than for the release of other mujahedin jailed in India and for an end to the persecution of Muslims. He did not reveal where the group comes from, though the Deccan in its name presumably refers to the plateau that stretches across southern India.
Officals have suggested that there may have been a foreign power involved, rejecting the widespread belief among defense and political analysts that there is an able network of homegrown terrorists in India. (Major General R.K. Hooda, an army officer who was the commander for today's military operations, hinted that their accents might have been Pakistani.) So far, there have been little more than hints and platitudes from the steady stream of high-profile visitors to south Mumbai: the local strongman Raj Thackeray, Maharashtra state chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, Member of Parliament Murli Deora. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi are said to be on their way to the city, as is opposition BJP leader L.K. Advani. The question is, Will they do anything to better prepare this city, and the rest of India, for the next time?

Militants can't defeat India's 'great democracy': Obama

Posted: Nov 29, 2008 at 0752 hrs IST
3 terrorists including a Pakistani arrested from Taj

Washington, November 29::

US President-elect Barack Obama has expressed sorrow for the victims of the attacks on Mumbai and said the militants who staged the assault would not defeat India's ‘great democracy’ or the global coalition arrayed against them.
"Michelle and I send our deepest condolences to the loved ones of the American citizens who lost their lives in the outrageous terrorist attacks in Mumbai,"
Obama said in a statement yesterday, following reports that a Virginia man and his daughter had been killed as well as a rabbi from New York.
"Our thoughts and prayers are with them, and with all who have been touched by this terrible tragedy," Obama said.
"These terrorists who targeted innocent civilians will not defeat India's great democracy, nor shake the will of a global coalition to defeat them. The United States must stand with India and all nations and people who are committed to destroying terrorist networks, and defeating their hate-filled ideology."
In a phrase he has used repeatedly since his electoral victory on November 4, Obama said there was only "one president at a time," saying he was receiving regular updates from President George W Bush's administration.
"I will continue to closely monitor the situation on the ground in Mumbai, and am grateful for the cooperation of the Bush administration in keeping me and my staff updated.
"We fully support the Bush administration's efforts to protect American citizens and assist the Government of India during this tragic time."
The State Department earlier said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has called Obama twice to brief him on the series of attacks in Mumbai.
Rice was at the presidential retreat of Camp David providing updates to Bush.

Indian forces kill last gunmen in Mumbai

By JENNY BARCHFIELD and RAMOLA TALWAR BADAM,
Associated Press Writer Jenny Barchfield And Ramola Talwar Badam, Associated Press Writer – 22 mins ago Play Video AP – India Siege Ends, Death
Toll Rises Slideshow: Mumbai Terror Attacks Play Video Video: NY rabbi, wife among dead in Mumbai raid AP Play Video Video: Commandos enter Mumbai building
BBC AP – Indian police officers run to a new position around the landmark Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai, India, Saturday, … MUMBAI, India – Indian
commandos killed the last remaining gunmen holed up at a luxury Mumbai hotel Saturday, ending a 60-hour rampage that killed 195 people in India's financial capital, as authorities shifted their focus to who was behind the attacks.
A previously unknown Muslim group claimed responsibility for the attack, which killed 18 foreigners including six Americans. Indian officials said the sole surviving gunman was from Pakistan and pointed a finger of blame at their neighbor. Islamabad denied involvement and promised to help in the investigation. A team of FBI agents was on its way to India to lend assistance.
Some 295 people also were wounded in the violence that started when at least a dozen heavily armed assailants attacked 10 sites across Mumbai on Wednesday night. At least 20 soldiers and police were among the dead.
Orange flames and black smoke engulfed the landmark 565-room Taj Mahal hotel after dawn Saturday as Indian forces ended the siege there in a hail of gunfire, just hours after elite commandos stormed a Jewish center and found nine hostages dead.
"There were three terrorists, we have killed them," said J.K. Dutt, director general of India's elite National Security Guard commando unit.
Some hotel guests were still believed to be in their rooms. "They are still scared, so even when we request them to come out and identify ourselves, they are naturally afraid," Dutt said.
With the end of one of the most brazen terror attacks in India's history, attention turned from the military operation to questions of who was behind the attack and the heavy toll on human life.
The bodies of New York Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg and his wife, Rivkah, were found at the Jewish center. Their son, Moshe, who turned 2 on Saturday,
was scooped up by an employee Thursday as she fled the building. Two Israelis and another American were also killed in the house, said Rabbi Zalman Schmotkin, a spokesman for the Chabad Lubavitch movement, which ran the center.
Among the foreigners killed were six Americans, according to the U.S. Embassy. The dead also included Germans, Canadians, Israelis and nationals from Britain, Italy, Japan, China, Thailand, Australia and Singapore.
By Saturday morning the death toll was at 195, the deadliest attack in India since 1993 serial bombings in Mumbai killed 257 people. But officials said the toll from the three days of carnage was likely to rise as more bodies were brought out of the hotels.
"There is a limit a city can take. This is a very, very different kind of fear. It will be some time before things get back to normal," said Ayesha Dar, a 33- year-old homemaker.
Indians began burying their dead, many of them security force members killed fighting the gunmen. In the southern city of Bangalore, black clad commandos formed an honor guard for the flag-draped coffin of Maj. Sandeep Unnikrishnan, who was killed in the fighting at the Taj Mahal hotel.
"He gave up his own life to save the others," Dutt said from Mumbai.
Bhushan Gagrani, the Maharashtra state government spokesman, told The Associated Press that at least 11 gunmen had been killed and one captured alive.
On Saturday the Indian navy said it was investigating whether a trawler found drifting off the coast of Mumbai, with a bound corpse on board, was used in the attack.
Navy spokesman Capt. Manohar Nambiar said the trawler, named Kuber, had been found Thursday and was brought to Mumbai. Officials said they believe the boat had sailed from a port in the neighboring state of Gujarat.
Indian security officers believe many of the gunmen may have reached the city using a black and yellow rubber dinghy found near the site of the attacks.
Responsibility for the attack was claimed by a previously unknown group calling itself the Deccan Mujahideen, which sounds like it could be a homegrown Indian group, but Indian officials pointed the finger at neighboring Pakistan.
Jaiprakash Jaiswal, India's home minister, said the captured gunman had been identified as a Pakistani.
"According to preliminary information, some elements in Pakistan are responsible for the Mumbai terror attacks," India's foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, told reporters.
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani insisted his country was not involved. His government was sending an intelligence official to assist in the probe.
In the U.S., President-elect Barack Obama said he was closely monitoring the situation. "These terrorists who targeted innocent civilians will not defeat India's great democracy, nor shake the will of a global coalition to defeat them," he said in a statement.
On Friday, commandos killed the last two gunmen inside the luxury Oberoi hotel, where 24 bodies had been found, authorities said.
But in the most dramatic of the counterstrikes Friday, masked Indian commandos rappelled from a helicopter to the rooftop of the Chabad Lubavitch Jewish center.
For nearly 12 hours, explosions and gunfire erupted from the five-story building as the commandos fought their way downward, while thousands of people
gathered behind barricades in the streets to watch. At one point, Indian forces fired a rocket at the building.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Israel's Channel 1 TV that the bodies of three women and three men were found at the center. Some of the victims had been bound, Barak said.
The attackers were well-prepared, carrying large bags of almonds to keep up their energy during a long siege. One backpack found contained 400 rounds of ammunition.
India has been shaken repeatedly by terror attacks blamed on Muslim militants in recent years, but most were bombings striking crowded places: markets, street corners, parks. Mumbai — one of the most highly populated cities in the world with some 18 million people — was hit by a series of bombings in July 2006 that killed 187 people.
The latest attacks began Wednesday at about 9:20 p.m. with shooters spraying gunfire across the Chhatrapati Shivaji railroad station, one of the world's busiest terminals. For the next two hours, there was an attack roughly every 15 minutes — the Jewish center, a tourist restaurant, one hotel, then another, and two attacks on hospitals.
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(Associated Press writers Ravi, Nessman, Erika Kinetz and Anita Chang contributed to this report from Mumbai, and Foster Klug and Lara Jakes Jordan
contributed from Washington.)

Taj hotel cleared of militants, war continues

Mumbai (IANS/PTI): Acting swiftly and decisively, Indian commandos launched a clinical operation Saturday to eliminate two militants holed up in the iconic Taj hotel here to end a 59-hour terror drama, the country's longest, which claimed 148 lives and soured ties with Pakistan.
We cannot declare operation complete till we check the hotel thoroughly, says NSG Director General J K Dutt.
The militants had attempted to create a diversion by torching two ground floor shops in the hotel's northern wing, hoping the thick black smoke would conceal their movements but this didn't work as the security forces required just over 20 minutes to eliminate them.
"The operation is over," an extremely pleased Mumbai Police Commissioner Hasan Gafoor told reporters at the hotel, even as cleanup operations were underway.
Five large explosions were heard from inside Taj Mahal hotel's heritage building early Saturday which was followed by intense gunfire between NSG commandos and the terrorists holed-up in the complex.
The first explosion was heard at around 03:40 a.m. from inside the old building of the hotel and within 30 minutes four more large explosions were heard from the same area.

India’s strategic deafness & the massacre in Mumbai
Praveen Swami

Had our political establishment acted on intelligence warnings, at least 127 people who made the mistake of being in Mumbai on November 26 would still have been alive.
Last month, the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s supreme religious and political head, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, made a signal speech to top functionaries: “The only language India understands is that of force, and that is the language it must be talked to in.”
Had India’s strategic establishment listened, at least 127 people who made the mistake of being in Mumbai on November 26 would still have been alive.
If more carnage is to be prevented, it is imperative to understand the culture of strategic deafness that facilitated the murderous attacks.
From the testimony of the arrested fidayeen Ajmal Amin Kamal, the Maharashtra police have got their first insight into the role of Lahore and Karachi-
based Lashkar commanders in organising the attacks. Both the Maharashtra police and other intelligence services of the nation seem confident that they will succeed in demonstrating that the guns in the hands of Kamal and his terror squad were directed by commanders in Pakistan.
Comparison with U.S.
But even as India debates what the authorship of the attacks will mean to Pakistan-India relations, commentators have been scrambling to contrast India’s responses to terror with that of the United States. While the U.S. has succeeded in blocking successive attempts to execute attacks on its soil since the tragic events of September 11, 2001, the argument goes, India’s failure has been dismal.
Politicians have been quick to agree, blaming India’s intelligence services for failing to predict the Mumbai terror attack. In fact, the available evidence suggests that the boot is on the other foot: despite credible intelligence that terrorists were planning attacks in Mumbai and elsewhere, India’s political leadership failed to act.

Back in 2002, Indian intelligence informants began reporting that Lashkar operatives were being trained in marine commando techniques along the Mangla Dam, which straddles the border between Pakistan-administered Kashmir and the province of Punjab. It soon became clear that the Lashkar, which found it increasingly difficult to penetrate India’s Line of Control defences, was hoping to open new routes across the Indian Ocean — routes which would give it
easy access to key cities like Mumbai.
In 2006, Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil was disturbed enough by what India’s covert services were telling him to make a specific mention of the need to step up counter-terrorism defences. Among the intelligence that Mr. Patil based his speech on was the evolving story of Faisal Haroun, a top Lashkar operative who commanded the terror group’s India-focussed operations out of Bangladesh. In September 2006, Haroun was briefly held by Bangladesh
authorities before he was quietly deported. But a west European covert service obtained transcripts of his questioning by Bangladesh’s Directorate-
General of Field Intelligence — evidence which shook up even India’s Home Minister.
Haroun, it turned out, had been using a complex shipping network, and merchant ships and small fishing boats, to move explosives to the Lashkar units
operating in India. Among the end-users of these supplies was Ghulam Yazdani, a Hyderabad resident who commanded a series of attacks, including the
assassination of Gujarat pogrom-complicit former Home Minister Haren Pandya and the June 2005 bombing of the Delhi-Patna Shramjeevi Express.
Investigators probing the Haroun story determined that his network had helped to land a giant consignment of explosives and assault rifles on the
Maharashtra coast for an abortive 2006 Lashkar-led attempt to bomb Gujarat.
India’s intelligence services determined that Haroun had been attempting to set up an Indian Ocean base for the Lashkar. Along with a Male-based Maldives resident, Ali Assham, Haroun had studied the prospect of using a deserted island for building a Lashkar storehouse, from where weapons and explosives could be moved to Kerala and then to the rest of India. In 2007, when evidence emerged of heightened Islamist activity in Maldives — including
the bombing of tourists in Male’s Sultan Park and the setting up of a Sharia-run mini-state on the Island of Himandhoo — the seriousness of the threat to India’s western seaboard became even more evident.
Last year, the Lashkar’s maritime capabilities were underlined once again, when a group of eight fidayeen landed off Mumbai’s coast. On that occasion, a superbly crafted intelligence operation enabled Coast Guard ships to track the landing. Police in Maharashtra and Jammu and Kashmir, acting on information provided by the Intelligence Bureau, arrested the fidayeen. However, it was clear that the networks Haroun was able to build were up and running.
Based on these warnings, New Delhi moved to step up coastal counter-infiltration measures. In its 2007-2008 Annual Report, the Union Ministry of Home
Affairs detailed the measures put in place for “strengthening coastal security arrangements, to check infiltration.” In liaison with the nine coastal States and Union Territories, it said, funds had been earmarked to set up “73 coastal police stations which will be equipped with 204 boats, 153 jeeps and 312 motorcycles for mobility on coast and in close coastal waters. The coastal police stations will also have a marine police with personnel trained in maritime activities.”
Painfully slow
Precise figures are unavailable, but officials in three States told The Hindu that progress in realising the scheme was painfully slow. Both Maharashtra and Gujarat inaugurated over a dozen coastal police stations over the last year, but neither State set up a trained marine police. Fewer than a dozen new boats were made available to the two police forces. Without sophisticated surveillance equipment fitted on board, their use for counter-infiltration work was at best rudimentary. And while the Intelligence Bureau received sanction for hiring small numbers of new personnel to man new costal surveillance stations last year, it got neither boats nor observation equipment.
Despite credible intelligence of an imminent fidayeen assault, emerging from the interrogation of Lashkar operative Fahim Ansari, hotels and businesses failed to enhance their internal security systems. Neither the Trident Hotel nor the Taj Mahal Hotel, for example, had access control systems or a system to deal with a terrorist attack or bombing. For weeks before the attacks, police sources told The Hindu, Maharashtra police officials met with top corporate
security heads, attempting to convince them of the need to invest in defending their facilities. Nothing was done.
Less than a week before the attacks, additional security stationed in south Mumbai was withdrawn. Maharashtra — which at just 147 policemen for every 1,00,000 population or, expressed another way, 49.9 to guard every 100 square kilometres, falls well short of global norms — simply did not have the resources to keep men tied up to guard every potential target.
Even if police personnel had been stationed near the terrorist targets, it is improbable that they could have intervened effectively. Mumbai, unlike any western city of scale, had no specially-trained emergency response team or a crisis-management centre with an established drill to deal with a catastrophic terrorist assault. In this, it was not exceptional: no Indian city has any crisis management protocol in place. “People contrast the United States’ post-9/11 successes with our failures,” notes a Maharashtra police officer, “but they should also be contrasting the billions spent by that country with the peanuts we have invested in our own security.”
“The whole system is premised on the assumption that our Intelligence Services will get a hundred per cent heads-up on the precise timing of a terrorist attack,” one intelligence official says, “but nowhere in the world does this happen. Intelligence is only an aid to on-ground policing, not a substitute”.
India’s strategic responses were no better. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his foreign policy advisers failed to read the sign that the jihadist groups in Pakistan were sharpening their swords.
In Saeed’s October 19 speech, delivered before an audience of key Lashkar leaders including Maulana Amir Hamza, Qari Muhammad Yaqoob Sheikh and Muhammad Yahya Mujahid at the organisation’s headquarters in Lahore, he made it clear that he saw India as an existential threat. India, he claimed, was building dams in Jammu and Kashmir to choke Pakistan’s water supplies and cripple its agriculture.
‘Ongoing war’
Earlier, in an October 6 speech, Saeed claimed that India had “made a deal with the United States to send 1,50,000 Indian troops to Afghanistan,” and that it agreed to support the U.S. in an existential war against Islam. Finally, in a sermon to a congregation at the Jamia Masjid al-Qudsia in Lahore at the end of October, Saeed proclaimed that there was an “ongoing war in the world between Islam and its enemies.” He claimed “that crusaders of the east
and west have united in a cohesive onslaught against Muslims.”
India has learnt that not all terrorism stems from Pakistan: the country has faced attacks from Indian Islamists, Hindutva groups, and ethnic-chauvinist organisations in the northeast. Each form of hate has fed and legitimised the other. But this circle of hate has been driven by organisations based in Pakistan too — jihadist groups which have demonstrated that while they are friends of the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, they are enemies of the
people of Pakistan. In his recent address to the nation, Prime Minister Singh warned that he intends to “raise the costs” for those waging war against India. He could start by demanding that Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari act against such groups — and then consider what can be done, if need be, to compel him to do so. A monument to love – Mumbai’s Taj Mahal
Russi M. Lala
A horrific terrorist attack has ravaged one of Mumbai’s most-loved symbols and taken the lives of many of its dedicated staff. This heritage hotel was not started as a commercial venture. It was Jamsetji Tata’s gift to the city he loved — as the Taj Mahal of Agra was Shah Jahan’s memorial to the woman he loved.

MUMBAI'S PRIDE: Before the Gateway of India was built, the Taj Mahal offered the first view of the city of Bombay to ships sailing into the harbour. Even now, with many more tall buildings on the skyline, the hotel engages immediate attention.
The 1880s and 1890s were a time of great construction in Bombay. The Grand Victoria Terminus was built, and after it the Municipal Corporation building, another beautiful structure, followed by the Churchgate headquarters of the B.B. & C.I. Railways (now Western Railways). But there was no hotel worthy of the growing city.
Being an ardent fan of Mark Twain, Jamsetji Tata may have read of the writer’s fate in the so-called ‘best’ Watson’s Hotel: Mark Twain and his family were roused every morning at dawn by doors slamming, servants shouting, and “fiendish bursts of laughter, explosions of dynamite.” The Irish chef at the hotel was apparently more conversant with the French language that with French cooking, “serving up Irish stew on 14 occasions under 14 different
French names.” Sir Stanley Reed, Editor of The Times of India, said Jamsetji had an intense pride and affection for the city of his birth, and when a friend
protested against the intense discomforts of hotel life in Bombay, he growled: “I will build one.”
One day without consulting anybody, not even his sons or partners, he announced his plan to build a grand hotel. It was his personal contribution and money
he was putting in — not that of Tata & Sons. Along the present Yacht Club at Apollo Bunder was a little bay where yachts used to scull. The British were
reclaiming the land and he bought a substantial site of two-and-a-half acres on November 1, 1898 on a 99-year lease. There was no formal laying of a
foundation stone but a traditional coconut was broken and a Parsi diva (oil lamp) was lit, perhaps by the well or spring between the present swimming pool
and the lifts. This ceremony took place in 1900.
Many an interesting story is invented round the Taj being designed by an Italian/French architect who, after his exertions, went home and returned to find
the building was put the wrong way around — what should have been in the rear was in front and vise versa. Heartbroken he went to the top floor of the Taj
and flung himself out of the window. Dramatic! Touching! But not true. As anyone who stayed at the then-non-air-conditioned Taj in the summer would
attest, the late afternoon breezes that blow across Colaba do not spring up from the harbour but sweep in from across Back Bay. The U-shaped wings of
the hotel were positioned to trap this breeze and extract the most benefit.
Indeed, the necessity to draw whatever relief there might be from the torrid heat of western India was certainly the inspiration behind the hotel’s two
most original features. At the time, the clientele Jamsetji expected was from abroad and his endeavour was to make the hotel as cool as possible. Thus it
had high ceilings and wide corridors, which would be conducive to air circulation. Furthermore, the Wellington Mews — another property Jamsetji bought —
behind the hotel site was where the horses and carriages were housed and these could roll in directly from the west side.
One convincing explanation comes from the daughter of a Goan customs officer, Francis Xavier D’Mello, who was stationed in the customs shed at Apollo
Bunder and witnessed the Taj rising stone by stone: “Jamsetji Tata came regularly to watch his great hotel being built. The customs shed provided the
only shelter from the blazing sun, so Mr. Tata used to come there and have long chats with my father. Once my father asked him why he had put the
entrance to the Taj at the back, and Jamsetji told him that he wanted the majority of his hotel guests to have rooms overlooking the sea. Jamsetji surely
had some hand in his broad instructions to the architect.”
Sadly, having designed the Taj along with a Parsi architect under Jamsetji’s instructions, Sitaram died of malaria. The dome designed on the model of the
Victoria Terminus (now Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus) had not been built. W.A. Chambers was called to help. Khansahib Sorabji Contractor built the solid
structure.
The prospectus for the hotel to be underlined some salient features: “The Hotel, when completed, will be five storeys high, and will accommodate, beside
hotel boarders to the number of 500, a number of permanent residents. Immense cellars, below the ground floor level will contain the refrigeration plant,
which will cool the rooms of the inmates, and will also enable their food to be stored in a manner foreign to India. The ground floor will be occupied by the
offices, first-class restaurants, and shops for the sale of articles generally desired by travellers. The first floor will be mostly taken up with a grand dining
room, drawing room, reading rooms, billiard room, and a few grand suites, all provided with electric fans. The second, third, fourth and fifth floors will contain
bedrooms, mostly double and furnished in the Continental style with sofa, tables and chairs, and other furniture, and on each floor bathrooms and lavatories.
The kitchens etc., will be on the top of the house with a roof garden. The Hotel will be lighted throughout with electric lights, and many lifts, also worked
by electricity, will convey residents from floor to floor with comfort. A Turkish bath will also be fitted up in the Hotel.”
Jamsetji personally went to order the electrical machinery from Dusseldorf and chandeliers from Berlin. Furthermore, he made sure that if by chance
electricity failed, a back up system of gas lights was at hand. There was the in-house soda bottling plant, an electric laundry, fans from the USA — and
the first spun-steel pillars from the Paris Exhibition where the Eiffel Tower was then the latest wonder of the world. These pillars, a hundred years later,
hold up the ceiling of the Banquet Hall.
For all his projects Jamsetji got the costing done thoroughly but not for the Taj. It was his gift to the city he loved — as the Taj Mahal of Agra was Shah
Jahan’s memorial to the woman he loved. It cost about Rs. 25 lakh. When the hotel opened, it had a large staff of waiters but only seven guests. It was
Bombay’s first public building to be lit by electricity and when it happened, those present outside clapped as they saw it lit.
As if such a grand edifice was not enough, he purchased two small islands near Uran called Panjoo and Dongri so that the guests at the Taj could go on
picnics.
Jamsetji wanted to lease out the Taj to an experienced European hotelier. The plans fell through and finding the staff and running the hotel was to fall
initially on him in 1902 and later on his partners and colleagues. The Gateway of India came up only in 1924 to commemorate the visit of King Emperor
George V and Queen Mary in 1911. Before that at the Gateway site, sahibs used to sit at tables sipping burra and chotta pegs.
Perhaps, says Allen and Dwivedi (who have done research on the Taj), Jamsetji believed in starting a new venture on an auspicious date, Muhurat as it is
called. It was decided to open the hotel on December 16, 1903, before the building was complete. Only one wing was ready and the dome had not been
completed. A study of Jamsetji’s medical reports of the late-1903 shows his health was deteriorating. His sons and colleagues may have decided to
speed up the opening so he could have the satisfaction of seeing at least one of his dreams come true. Steel, the hydro-electric venture, and the Indian
Institute of Science came up after his death.
Five months after the Muhurat, when Jamsetji died, a leading journal of Calcutta, The Empress, wrote in the obituary: “The new hotel represented, to Mr.
Tata, something more than a mere commercial venture, and he had determined that the Taj Mahal Hotel should set an example, which should re-act
throughout India, in removing one of the greatest hindrances to agreeable travel in this country. The plans were drawn with the sole purpose of securing an
entirely worthy building, and he looked for no immediate financial returns. There is something peculiarly saddening in the coincidence that the fixing of the
key-stone of the noble dome should have preceded, but only a few days, the death of the man who inspired it.”
The lives of the clientele, which was mainly British, revolved round news from home. The P. & O. brought the mail every Friday morning and left every
Saturday evening. The London GPO’s largest single destination was mail for India. It was rushed from London, sorted out between Aden and Bombay and
special bags delivered within an hour of the arrival of the steamer. Saturday was spent in answering letters. The Sea Lounge at the Taj was created as a
letter-writing room and by special arrangement mail from the Taj was directly delivered to the ship.
In years to come, world-renowned personalities have stayed there, from Somerset Maugham and Duke Ellington to Lord Mountbatten and Bill Clinton. The
hotel was featured in a hundred books, including Louis Bromfield’s One Night in Bombay, which is centred on the Taj.
The maharajas become the great patrons of the Taj and invited the hotel to do special catering in their states. The Chamber of Princes was to meet there
regularly every January — hence the ‘Princes’ Room’ at the southern end of the Taj. The business maharajas were to follow next; today the Taj is the
most sought after venue for wedding receptions, and one can frequently see fire crackers being let off at the gate as the bridegroom’s party dances
merrily away.
As there was no Gateway of India for 20 years after the Taj came up, the hotel offered the first view of the city to ships sailing into the harbour until 1924.
Even now, with many more tall buildings on the skyline, the hotel engages immediate attention. It is a symbol of Mumbai.
(Russi M. Lala is the author of For the Love of India — The Life and Times of Jamsetji Tata. He lives near the Taj Mahal and even closer to Nariman House.)

PM's terror stand comes back to haunt him

29 Nov 2008, 0308 hrs IST, TNN Print Email Discuss Share Save Comment Text: NEW DELHI: Of all his formulations, the one that has returned most often to haunt Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is the assertion that Pakistan too, like India, was a victim of terrorism. The macabre irony embedded in the peculiar hypenation plays itself out in a ghastly re-run with every terror strike.

The PM's remark, made before a meeting with Pakistan's former dictator Pervez Musharraf in September 2006, indicated a singular failure to appreciate the nature of the terror threat and Islamabad's role in ensuring India remains in a near-permanent state of fearful expectation. In a stroke, the wolf had been turned into a lamb.
Not only do wolves usually don't really change colours, what was remarkable about Singh's statement was it came barely two months after the 11/7 Mumbai
train bombings where the government saw a Pakistani hand. Yet, a yo-yo response — just a month earlier he said the peace process with Pakistan was
under threat — has marked the PM's approach to terror.
His tough-sounding words after the massive November 26 attack on Mumbai — that he would "take up" with neighbours the use of their territory for
launching strikes against India and that "individuals and organisations" behind the outrage would be hunted down — sound like a tinny, worn out record. Even
the PM's aides might find the cowboy act a little hard to swallow.
Politics can be an unforgiving line of work but the PM has chosen to ignore the perils of not learning from mistakes. Soon after serials blasts in Jaipur,
Ahmedabad and Delhi shook the country, Singh told a governors conference that he was not opposed to tightening anti-terror laws.
The point really is whether the government is flexible to the point of bending before every storm. Soon, after Congress's political calculations ruled out
special anti-terror laws, the PM developed an amnesia that afflicts politicians. Until the fidayeen struck Mumbai. "Existing laws will be tightened to ensure
there are no loopholes for terrorists to escape," the PM intoned on Thursday. Disbelief wrestled with incredulity.
No one really believes any laws will be added or changed. The promise of a federal investigative agency has been part of a file in PMO for many months now.
After having bought into the political argument that anti-terror laws "target" minorities, Congress has found it difficult to retrace its steps. Yet, with each
succeeding terrorist atrocity, the pressure to be seen to be doing something has increased. But the PM has sought to make concessions that Congress is not prepared to underwrite.
Apart from the India-US nuclear deal, the PM has tended to see peace with Pakistan as part of his legacy. But even as he built useful CBMs with Musharraf, the bid to de-militarise Siachen shocked the armed forces which felt the plan was ill considered. Today, the "mountain of peace" line seems more tacky than it ever did.

US, UK, Israel ramp up intelligence aid to India

28 Nov 2008, 2320 hrs IST, Chidanand Rajghatta, TNN

WASHINGTON: Unprecedented intelligence cooperation involving investigating agencies and spy outfits of India, United States, United Kingdom and Israel has got underway to crack the method and motive behind the Mumbai terrorist massacre, now widely blamed on Islamist radicals who appeared to have all four countries on their hit list when they arrived on the shores of India.
Investigators, forensic analysts, counter-terrorism experts and spymasters from agencies the four countries are converging in New Delhi and Mumbai to put
their heads, resources, and skills together to understand the evolving nature of the beast. The spy chief of the Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence(ISI) is
also being summoned to India to help with the investigations because of the widely-held view that the terrorists' footprints go back to Pakistan. ( Watch )
The Bush administration has taken the lead to forge cooperation, partly out of concern that charges by India that the terror plot has Pakistani fingerprints
could setback fast-improving government-to-government and people-to-people ties between the two countries, officials said.
But there is an implicit recognition both in New Delhi and Washington, and also other world capitals, that Pakistan's hard-line Army and its spy agency are
spoilers of the honeymoon between the civilian governments and the people of India and Pakistan. Hence the summons to the country's chief spook, Ahmad
Shuja Pasha, an acolyte of the new Army Chief Pervez Kiyani, himself a former ISI chief.
President Bush, who spent Thanksgiving Thursday at Camp David, monitored the developments in Mumbai along with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice,
who joined him for dinner. Bush also spoke to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh offering all U.S help.
In fact, CNN reported that Washington suggested sending US Special Forces for on-the-ground operations in Mumbai but New Delhi declined the offer,
saying its own forces could take care of the situation. The report could not be separately verified although officials acknowledged cooperation in
investigations and intelligence sharing.
The Bush administration is also keeping President-elect Barack Obama up-to-speed on the fast moving developments. Obama spoke with Secretary Rice
by phone to get an update on the situation in Mumbai. Additionally, his transition office said, the President-elect received an intelligence briefing on the
attacks.
The President-elect is also receiving regular situational updates from the State Department Ops Center and the National Counter Terrorism Center (NCTC),
an Obama spokesperson added.
The multi-nation intelligence cooperation has been precipitated in part by the death of Americans, Britons, and Israelis, in the carnage. Thousands of Indians
have died in terror attacks in India in the previous two decades without the world getting exercised about it, but the manner in which the terrorists who
attacked Mumbai are reported to have singled out Americans and Britons, besides pointedly occupying a Jewish center, has revealed that their agenda was
wider than just domestic discontent or the Kashmir issue.
Some unconfirmed reports also speak of at least two of the terrorists being British nationals of Pakistani origin, of the kind who were involved in the London
underground bombing. Their attire (cargo pants and t-shirts), their heavy weaponry, and the sophisticated nature of their attack, certainly goes far beyond
anything local or indigenous terror groups have displayed so far.
More significantly, none of the local groups have targeted Americans, Britons, and Israelis with the kind of specific intent as the current set of terrorists
did. While US officials are concerned about the possibility of the new warmth in ties between India and Pakistan dissipating because of the gravity of the
charges from New Delhi, there is also a recognition and acknowledgment that India's anger is directed against the hard-line elements in the Pakistani Army
and its surrogates in the ISI, and not the civilian government or the people of Pakistan.
In fact, Washington itself has been trying to get Pakistan's civilian government to get a grip on the ISI, which many believe is now infiltrated by rogue
elements.
That joint effort by Washington and the civilian dispensation in Islamabad has been repeatedly thwarted by Pakistan's hard-line army which believes it is
the custodian and guarantor of the Islamist ideology that keep Pakistan intact and differentiates it from India, and which the ISI as its fighting arm for a
covert asymmetrical war against India. Pakistan's new President Asif Ali Zardari recently attracted the wrath of the hardliners by saying "there is a little
bit of India inside every Pakistani" and presenting a no-first-use of nuclear weapons proposal to India.
The Bush administration has only lately begun to realise that the ISI is a different beast from the one which helped it defeat the Soviet Union in
Afghanistan to end the Cold War. The first sign that the ISI had turned rogue came during 9/11 when Pakistan's spy chief who was tasked to go and ask the
Taliban to surrender did exactly the opposite. India's mistrust of ISI has a longer history, with the nadir coming during the Kargil war.
But under withering scrutiny from the international community, Pakistan, which is desperately broke and begging for international aid and loans, has agreed
to send the ISI chief to New Delhi with promise of cooperation. That promise will be tested in the coming days and weeks .