Today at 3:54 pm
Coordinated Terrorist Attacks in India
Big news out of Mumbai — several coordinated terrorist attacks around the city, apparently about 80 deaths and possibly a hostage situation. I don’t know anything beyond what I can see on TV and read in the papers.
65 Responses to “Coordinated Terrorist Attacks in India”
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November 26th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
Interesting the way they specifically targeted Anglo-Americans…
November 26th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
I don’t know anything beyond what I can see on TV and read in the papers.
So your sources at State and CIA haven’t returned your calls yet?
November 26th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Or the sources are getting all their information from the TV and internet. 50:50 which is the case.
November 26th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
One of my closest friends is out in India… I fucking hope he’s okay. Phones off… damn it.
November 26th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
Hopefully he’s not in Bombay.
November 26th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
Hopefully your friend is okay, Jack. He/she probably is. Mumbai is a huge city, so it’s hard to get caught up in any violence even if you’re there. Unless, of course, you happen to be in a hotel under siege. But traveling will be hard with the train stations closed. Then again, traveling is often hard in India. I had to delay a trip to Darjeeling last time because the town was on full lock-down due to rioting by Nepali separatists. And I’ve never made it to Mumbai. The time I tried, it was hit by the worst monsoon in Indian history. So I ended up in Hyderabad instead. But they still sent my luggage to Mumbai. That’s just the way things go in India.
My roommate is facing a different kind of problem. He’s supposed to land in Bangkok tomorrow, and the airport is still closed. That, and the protests are starting to get very violent. He’ll have an interesting vacation in Thailand if he ever gets in. But, hey, he lived in Cambodia in the early 90’s. And he’s fluent in Thai. I’m guessing he’ll be fine and come back with some really intense photographs of the violence.
November 26th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Matt: “I don’t know anything beyond what I can see on TV and read in the papers.”
That’s ’cause you don’t read your “spam” email, numbnuts.
Not that I’ve sent you anything on India – which doesn’t interest me except insofar as their increasing influence in Afghanistan to the detriment of Pakistan.
November 26th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
This is an act of war, and the Indian Army needs to undertake the sacred task of eliminating Al Qaeda and its Islamist hordes from the face of the earth, as long as it bloody well takes. There can be no quarter, and no compromise.
November 26th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Oh come on, Hector. You’re better than that. Terrorism comes from many groups in India, almost none of which are al Qaeda. There certainly is Islamic terrorism, but there’s also Hindu terrorism, Sikh terrorism, Tamil terrorism, Nepali terrorism, Maoist terrorism, Kasmiri terrorism, Pakistani ISI terrorism, and probably many more forms. We don’t know who did this yet. There’s a claim that’s not very credible from an unknown group. But such claims are often disproved. And the Indian government has often blamed Muslims first and then realized it was someone else. Before the Indian Army goes on any retaliation spree, they should be sure who did it. Retaliating against Muslims for Hindu terrorism will only make matters worse. And this might be a Hindu group. We don’t know yet.
November 26th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
I’m trying to get my head around who carried this horror out, but I think I have he idea:
A group calling itself the Deccan Mujahideen has claimed responsibility for the attacks, although it could be an alias or an off-shoot of the Indian Mujahideen (IM) — which, itself, at the least threatened the attack, and killed over 150 people in previous attacks this year.
The IM is suspected of being the reincarnation of the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) — which, it is feared in some government circles, has been penetrated by Al-Qaeda.
From this, is it a reasonable to conclude that the same organization behind 9/11 had a hand in today’s tragic events?
November 26th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
Four years ago there was a coordinated bombing that killed around fifty people and injured over a hundred. The perpetrators were Baptists. This is outside the normal range of the NLFT and probably isn’t them, but I’d keep the Christian outrage to yourself, Hector. It wouldn’t go over well in India.
November 26th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
Re Ed’s comment “but I’d keep the Christian outrage to yourself, Hector”
———–
Ah, Hector is just upholding the long and proud history of the Vatican.
Channeling Catholic Archbishop Arnaud Amalric from a former life — the papal legate who led the suppression of the Albigensian heresy in southern France circa 1209-1229. That massacre killed close to 1 million people — greatly depopulated southern France.
When a soldier asked Arnaud how one could distinguish innocent Christians from the heretics, Arnaud replied
“Tuez-les tous; Dieu reconnaitra les siens ”
(Kill them all –God will recognize his own.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Amalricus
November 26th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
80-some dead, who-knows-how-many held hostage.
You wonder if the Obama fellow will continue to tow the realist/internationalist party line.
Maybe you think Islamic terrorism is just another problem among problems.
Maybe it is.
But maybe it isn’t.
I’ve been reading Benjamin Tompson’s New England’s Crisis (written in the midst of King Philips’s War).
November 26th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
Now I’m seeing on CNN (granted, not the pinnacle of reliability) that (Indian?) officials say this has all the hallmarks of an Al Qaeda attack.
I’m guessing they’re referring to the coordinated simultaneous attacks. It’s also been reported that the perpetrators are sought out US and UK passport holders, and are holding them hostage — further evidence, it seems.
November 26th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
um.. wow anyone who seriously thinks this is not islamic terrorism doesnt know much about india or bombay. Simply shocking…
November 26th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Ed Marshall,
I’m Indian, genius, so I know who the National Liberation Front of Tripura are. They are nasty little creeps, sure, but they’re also small time creeps, and they don’t pose a threat to the very existence of India in the way that the Jihadist revanchists do. (Most of India was under Muslim rule at one time or another, so by the Salafist doctrine it must come under Muslim rule again). It;s hard to believe they would launch an attack in Bombay (not “Mumbai”, please).
I have no particular fondnness for the Baptist church, which I regard as a seriously problematic form of Christianity.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:46 pm
Here’s a clue…remember the Madrid bombings? How long did it take you to figure out that it couldn’t possibly be ETA? Or that 9/11 wasn’t caused by Bill Ayers? Or some eco-terrorists?
Sure, its early and you can urge caution, but don’t trot out that utterly implausible list of alternatives.
November 27th, 2008 at 12:08 am
Hector’s not Catholic. He goes through the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Queen, not the Pope.
Anyway, yes, Muslim groups are claiming responsibility for this.
November 27th, 2008 at 12:12 am
Re: So I ended up in Hyderabad instead. But they still sent my luggage to Mumbai. That’s just the way things go in India.
LOL. That’s the way it goes in America too! Talk to anyone who got diverted to St Louis because of a blizzard in Chicago. Chances are their luggage ended up in Cleveland instead.
November 27th, 2008 at 9:53 am
Here’s a clue…remember the Madrid bombings? How long did it take you to figure out that it couldn’t possibly be ETA?
That was easy because AQ has an MO of attacks that take the operative out with them. ETA might plant bombs but they aren’t going to go out with the explosion.
Whatever is going on is something new. AQ doesn’t take hostages and get arrested and all that.
November 27th, 2008 at 11:25 am
“Sure, its early and you can urge caution, but don’t trot out that utterly implausible list of alternatives.”
In Mumbai, nothing is really implausible except for the Tamil terrorism. They only work in the South. Although the Nepalis really have no beef there and aren’t likely to have done this. But Hindus have certainly done terrorist work there, so don’t count them out. Moaists are more common in the East and don’t have much money. And they aren’t very sophisticated. I doubt they could pull this off, but who knows? The Sikhs are pretty wealthy and have special rights. They usually only act in retaliation and haven’t had the normal problems recently. They certainly didn’t do this.
So what does that leave? Islamists, Kasmiris, and Pakistani ISI. The ISI is certainly sophisticated enough to pull this off. The Islamists really aren’t organized enough in India. Unless something has changed in the last year. As for the Kasmiris, enough ISI training would do the trick. So, I’m guessing Kasmiri nationalists trained by the Pakistani ISI. But I’ll put a hedge bet on Hindu extremists. They have usually tired to mask their efforts by pushing the blame on Muslims. And they often create Muslim-sounding front groups to mask their identity. Maybe this is some new Islamist group, but it’s hard to imagine that they would get so sophisticated without the Indian authorities noticing. The Indian authorities have more experience with terrorism than anyone in the world. They aren’t like the bullshit police you normally see in India. They understand this issue very well. Their only weakness is their propensity to blame Muslims for everything. That they haven’t done that yet should tell us something.
November 27th, 2008 at 11:27 am
“Here’s a clue…remember the Madrid bombings? How long did it take you to figure out that it couldn’t possibly be ETA?”
About ten seconds. It was obvious that the methods were not those of ETA.
November 27th, 2008 at 11:55 am
“LOL. That’s the way it goes in America too!”
Umm, no. There’s quite a bit of difference between traveling in India and traveling in America. For one thing, security is much lighter in America, but at least you can bribe the Indians. I’m so used to having AK-47s pointed in my face that it just doesn’t even concern me anymore. Americans would be a little freaked out about that. But the real difference is that in America, you expect to get there on time. In India, you expect to get there eventually and are happy if you’re only ten hours late. And that’s when things go well. Get a grip, Third World travel is quite a bit different than what you did backpacking in Europe. India may have the largest train system in the world, but Europe’s trains at least show up on the same day. And don’t even try to tell me India isn’t the Third World. Trust me, Cambodia functions better, and that’s not saying much, is it? And India will never catch up to Thailand. Thailand can and will go through a civil war, and they’ll still function better than India.
November 27th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
“I’m so used to having AK-47s pointed in my face”
I should note that those were airport and embassy police in India. The railway police carry what seems to be an Indian knockoff of the Enfield rifle. Seriously, we’re talking a .303 bolt action rifle. It’s too long to swing around in the hallways of an Indian train. It’s the stupidest weapon I’ve ever seen used by any police force. If you’re in close quarters, you want a handgun, preferably fully automatic, but semi would do. But a bolt action rifle? That’s just silly. If you hit me, I’ll come after you and kill you before you can reload. And then I might die. And if you miss me, you’re dead, and I’m alive. Fortunately, the Indian terrorism forces are much wiser than that. They do not f**k around. I’ve had the jailhouse style searches from those guys. And I won’t contest one bit. And that’s because I know damn well that they’ll kick my ass. Or just shoot me if they can’t.
November 27th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
But I’ll put a hedge bet on Hindu extremists. They have usually tired to mask their efforts by pushing the blame on Muslims. And they often create Muslim-sounding front groups to mask their identity. Maybe this is some new Islamist group, but it’s hard to imagine that they would get so sophisticated without the Indian authorities noticing.
And 9/11 was inside job, right?
Stop acting stupid.
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