Background of Mumbai carnage

8/14/2019 Background of Mumbai carnage

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THE STORY: UNTOLD

In 2 0 0 2 , intelligence informantsfirst began reporting that Lashkaroperatives were being trained inmarine commando techniques. Itsoon became clear that the I ashkar

.was hoping to open new rO\ltesacross the Indian Ocean.

IN October, the Lashkar-e-Taiba's supreme religious an d political head, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, ina signal speech to top functionaries of the organisation, said: "The only language India understands

is that of force, and that is the language it must betalked to in."

I f India's strategic establishment ha d been listening, all those people who made the mistake ofbeing in th e wrong places in Mumbai on November

26 would still be alive.I f

more carnageis

to beprevented, it is imperative to correct the culture ofstrategic deafness that facilitated the murderousattacks.

From the testimony of the arrestedfidayeen, Ajmal Amin Kasab, Maharashtra Police investigatorshave garnered their first insights into the role of theLahore- and Karachi-based Lashkar commanders inorganising the attacks. Both the State Police and theIndian intelligence services appear to be confidentthat they will succeed in demonstrating that th etrigger of the Mumbai terror squad's guns were

pulled by their commanders in Pakistan.But even as India debates what the authorship of

the attacks will mean for India-Pakistan relations,commentators are scrambling to contrast India's responses to terror to those of he United States. Whereas th e U.S. has succeeded in blocking successiveattempts to execute attacks on its soil since the tragicevents of September 11, 2001, the argument goes,India's failure has been dismal.

Politicians have been quick to blame the intelli-

gence services for failing to predict th e Mumbaiattack. However, available evidence suggests thatdespite credible intelligence that terrorists wereplanning attacks in Mumbai and elsewhere, India'spolitical leadership failed to act.

Back in 2002, Indian intelligence informantsfirst began reporting that Lashkar operatives werebeing trained in marine commando techniquesalong the Mangla dam, which straddles th e borderbetween Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (POK) an d theprovince of Punjab. I t soon became clear that theLashkar, which found it increasingly difficult to pen-etrate India's Line of Control defences, was hoping toopen new routes across th e Indian Ocean, routes thatwould give it easy access to key cities such asMumbai.

In 2006, Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil wasdisturbed when the covert services told him to make

THE BODY OF a suspected terrorist inside theNariman House building.


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ecific mention of the need to step upounter-terrorism defences. Amonge intelligence that Patil based hiseech on was the evolving story of

aisal Haroun , a top Lashkar operive who commanded th e terroroup's India-focussed operations ou t

Bangladesh. In September 2006,aroun was briefly held by the Banglaeshi authorities before being deportd, quietly. But a West Europeanovert service obtained transcripts ofs questioning by Bangladesh 's Direcrate-General of Field Intelligence,

vidence that shook e ven the Homeinister.

Haroun , it turned out, had beening a complex shipping network,ith merchan t ships an d small fishingoats, to move explosives to Lashkarnits operating in India. Among thend-users of these supplies was Ghum Yazdani, a Hyderabad residentho commanded a series of attacks,cluding the assassination of he Goda pogrom-complicit former Gujaratome Minister, Haren Pandya , an de June 2005 bombing of the Delhiatna Shramjeevi Express. Investigars probing th e Haroun story deterined his network ha d helped land aassive consignment of explosivesd assault rifles on the Maharashtra

oast for an abortive 2006 Lashkar-Iedtempt to bomb Gujarat.

DIAN OCEAN BASE

dia 's intelligence services deterined that Haroun ha d been attemptg to set up an Indian Ocean base fore Lashkar. Along with a Male-basedaldives resident , Ali Assham, Ha -un ha d studied th e prospect of using

deserted Indian Ocean island touild a Lashkar storehouse fromhere weapons an d explosives could moved to Kerala and then on to thest of India. In 2007, when evidenqe

merged of heightened Islamist activy in the Maldives, including theombing of tourists in Male 's Sultanark an d the setting up of a Sharia-runini-state on th e Island of Himand-

oo, the seriousness of the threat to

dia's western seaboard became evenore evident.

A TV GRAB of the body of AmarsinhSolanki, captain of the fishing boat ."Kuber", which the terrorists usedto reach the shore.

Last year, the Lashkar's maritimecapabilities were underlined onceagain, when a group of eightfiday eenlanded off Mumbai 's coast. On thatoccasion, a superbly crafted intelligence operation allowed the landing tobe tracked by Coast Guard ships. Thepolice in Maharashtra an d Jammu an dKashmir, acting on in f ormation pro- vided by the Intelligence Bureau (I.B.),were able to arrest thefidayeen. However, it was clear the networks Harounwas able to build were up and running.

On the basis of these warnings ,New Delhi moved to step up coastalcounter-infiltration measures. In itsAnnual Report for 2007-08 , th e HomeMinistry detailed th e measures put inplace for "strengthening coastal security arrangements, to check infiltration ". In liaison with th e nine coastalStates an d Union Territories, it said,

funds ha d been earmarked to set up"73 coastal police stations which willbe equipped with 20 4 boats, 153 jeepsan d 312 motorcycles for mobility oncoast an d in close coastal waters. Thecoastal police stations will also have amarine police with personnel trainedin maritime activities ".

Precise figures are unavailable, bu tofficials in three States told this corre .spondent that progress in realising the

scheme ha d been painfully slow. Maharashtra and Gujarat both inaugurat-

ed over a dozen coastal police stationsover the last year, but neither State sup a trained marine police . Fewer tha dozen new boats were made availableto th e two police forces; without sophisticated surveillance equipment fitte d on board, their use fcounter-infiltration work was at brudimentary. And while th e I.B .ceived sanction for hir ing small nubers of personnel to man new coassurveillance stations last year, itneither boats nor observationequipment.

Early this year, more intelligencebecame available that the Lashkar hMumbai in its sights. Investigatorsprobing a New Year's Eve attack oCentral Reserve Police Force (CRPF)camp in Rampur found that th e Laka r unit responsible for the attack ahad plans to hi t the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) , th e Gateway of Inan d th e Oberoi hotel. Uttar Praderesident Fahim Ahmed Ansari was arrested in February along with two specfally trained Pakistani nationalImran Shehzad from Bhimber in POand Mohammad Farooq Bhatti froGujranwala in Punjab. .

Ansari 's interrogation recordwhich were accessed by Frontlinshow he waS recruited by the Lashkawhen on a visit to Dubai in 20 0 3. Towner of a small paper envelope maufacturing business an d a one time ativist -of the Students IslamMovement of India (SIMI), Ansame t top Lashkar commanders inkistan in 2007 . He returned to Inthrough Kathmandu late that yeBack in M umbai, Ansari stayed at Slight Guest House from November 28

to December 10 before renting it rooff Falkland Road. He then securedriving licence under the ,alias SamSheikh an d enrolled himself as a student at a computer institute near thBSE.

All three BSE assault-team volunteers held Pakistani passports, whichthey presumably hoped would enablethem to escape by catching flightthrough Nepal. Shehzad carried pass

port number EKs149331 , issuedMarch 14, 2007, while Bhatti use


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ssport number AW3177021, issuedday earlier. Ansari's Pakistani passrt, BM 6809341 , issued on Novemr 1, 2007, bears the pseudonymammad Hassan .

S T- M I N U T E ALERTS

n th e eve of the Mumbai attacks ,arnings continued to flow in . In lateptember, I.B. informants issued

arnings that the Taj Mahal Palace &wer hotel was on th e list of a smallt of high-profile targets selected b ye Lashkar for a suicide-squad attack.he Research an d Analysis WingA W), too, on the 'basis of communitions intelllgence , learned that th e

ashkar ha d carried out reconnaisnce on targets in Mumbai's Wasanjioad, including th e Leela Kempinskitel.

Finally, on November 18, the RAWtercepted a satellite phone conversaon originating in th e Indian Oceanom a ship bound for India 's westernast. In the conversation, a still-unintified Punjabi-speaking individualtified a contact in Lahore that hisargo" would soon land in Mumbai.AW communications experts deterined that the Pakistani landlinember was one sometimes used by ap Lashkar commander for operons directed against India, who is so

r known only by th e aliases "M uzaml" and "Abu Hurrera ". Indian Coast

uard ships were scrambled towardse location of th e ship.

Luck favoured the Lashkar. Eventhefidayeen squad bound for Mumi panicked at th e heightened Indianval presence in th e area, an opportuty presented itself. On November 15 ,Porbandar-registered fishing boat,

uber, was blown off course by badeather. From the account of Ajmalmin Kasab, investigators have deterined that the boat was hijacked one night of November 18. Later, th e 10ayeen on th e Kuber are thought tove shot dead four of the five crewembers. After finally landing inumbai, the fidaye en broke up in t 9e groups and headed towards tarts they ha d previously tra ined to lote on high-resolution satellite maps.

Despite the mass of credible intelligence that was available, no syste m was pu t in place to guard againstthe attacks: Mumbai simply did nothave the resources to do so. Less than aweek before the attacks, additional security stationed in south Mumbai waswithdrawn. Maharashtra - with at just147 policemen for every 100,000 population or, expressed in another way,49.9 policemen to guard every 100square kilometres , falls well short ofglobal norms - simply did not have th eresources to keep men tied up guarding every potentia l target.

Hotels and businesses, for theirpart, failed to enhance their own internal security systems . Neither th eTrident hotel nor th e Taj , for example,had access control systems or a systemto deal with a terrorist attack or bombing. For weeks before th e attacks, police sources tolq Frontline,Maharashtra Police officials me t withtop corporate security heads in an attempt to convince them of the need toinvest in defending their facilities.Noth ing was done.

Even if police personnel ha d beenstationed near th e terrorist targets , it isimprobable that they could have intervened effectively. Mumbai, unlikeany Western city of scale, has nei ther aspecially trained emergency responseteam nor a crisis-management centrewith an established drill to deal with aterrorist assault. In this , it is not exceptional: no Indian city has any crisismanagement protocols in place . "People contrast the post-9 / 11 successes ofthe U .S. with our failures ," notes oneMaharashtra Police officer, "but theyshould also be contrasting th e billionsspent by that country with the peanutswe have invested in ou r own security."

"The whole system is premised onth e assumption that ou r intelligenceservices will get a hundred per centheads-up on the precise timing of aterrorist attack," one intelligence official says, ''but nowhere in the worlddoes this happen. Intelligence is onlyan aid to on-ground policing, not asubstitute. "

India's strategic responses were nobetter. Prime Minister Manmohan

Singh and his foreign policy advisersfailed to read the signs that jehadgroups in Pakistan were sharpenintheir swords.

E X I S T E N T I A L THREAT

In a speech delivered on Octoberbefore an audience of key Lashkleaders such as Maulana Amir Hamza,Qari Muhammad Yaqoob Sheikh aMuhammad Yahya Mujahid at theganisation's headquarters in Lahorethe Lashkar chief made it clear thatsaw India as an existential threat. India , he claimed, was building damsJammu and Kashmir to choke Pakista n 's water supplies an d cripple agriculture.

Earlier, in a speech on OctoberSaeed claimed India had "made a dewith th e United States to send 150,0Indian troops to Mghanistan".claimed India ha d agreed to suppthe U.S. in an existential war againIslam. Finally, in a sermon to a rgious congregation at the J amia Mji d al-Qudsia in Lahore at the endOctober, Saeed proclaimed that thwas an "ongoing war in the world btween Islam and its enemies". He sthat "crusaders of the East and Whave united in a cohesive onslaughagainst Muslims".

India has learned that not all terrism stems from Pakistan: th e counhas faced attacks from Indian Islamists , Hindutva groups and ethnchauvinist organisations in th e noreastern States. Each form of hate hfed and legitimised th e other. But thcircle of hate has been driven, too, borganisations based in Pakistan, jehdist groups that have demonstratethat they, while being friends of Pakta n 's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, are enemies of th e peoplePakistan.

In his recent address to the natioManmohan Singh warned that he tended to "raise th e costs" for thowaging a war against India. He costart by demanding that PakisPresident Asif Ali Zardari act againstsuch groups and then consider wcan be done, if need be, to compel hto do so.

Documents

Background of Mumbai carnage