For almost over sixty hours, Mumbai, the financial capital of India, witnessed a series of terrorist attacks, multiple hostage crisis, mindless killings, fierce gun battles and at the end, a disrupted life. The terrorists have struck major targets including luxury hotels and a Jewish Center frequented by Westerners and elite Indian only to be holed up later inside these buildings with innocent civilians as hostage. Their demand was the safe release of Mujahideen held in Indian prisons. Prior to this, they also have targeted at least seven more places and went on a killing spree on that fateful 26/11 Wednesday evening.
An unknown outfit, Deccan Mujahideen claimed responsibility for the attacks. However, for quite some time now, this name game has been a part of Pakistan based terror groups desperate attempt to give a homegrown Indian flavor to this ongoing Jihadi terrorism in the region.
Of course a collusive local hand is quite possible in this sort of terror operations, primarily for logistical support. Looking at the whole incident, it is beyond doubt that these highly trained terrorists have undergone specialised terror training at various camps located somewhere in Pakistan administered Kashmir or Karachi.
It doesn't take any great wisdom to believe that Pakistan based and Kashmir centric terror tanzeems are behind most of the terrorist acts perpetrated on Indian soil. Among them, Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Muhammad and Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami have been leading from the front in the so called Islamic Jihad against India. With strong Saudi Wahabi link and proximity to the notorious ISI, LeT's activities are not always clandestine in Pakistan. It operates openly with its so called political wing Jamat- ud- Dawa, nurturing dreams for a "God's government" on the lines of Sharia laws in Pakistan and elsewhere. It preaches Armed Jihad as shortest route to reach god and heaven. LeT is the one which has introduced such type of Fidayeen missions in Jammu and Kashmir and intermittently striking India's heartlands with its tactics of indiscriminate shooting and grenade attacks.
Its nothing but a massive intelligence failure of our country as Indian security agencies were caught napping again when metropolises like Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi, country's political and financial centres have always been an obvious target for terrorists who want to cripple the country from all possible fronts.
Former Chief of Research and Analysis Wing B Raman said there was delay in commencing operations by NSG in Mumbai which were akin to what had happened during the Kandahar hijacking.
He said, "They (NSG) did not have the aircraft so they reached Mumbai late. The same thing happened in Kandahar where the response was also very late".
"The commando operations offer best results if taken within two hours of any seize operations NSG has the capability to move a contingent of commandos in minutes. Why that did not happen, I do not know," former Director General of NSG Ved Prakash Marwah said.
Besides delay, lack of coordination between various agencies was also glaring during the 60-hour anti-terror operation in Mumbai, according to experts.
"In Mumbai, nobody knew who is coordinating. There should be someone who should play the leadership role. Either in Mumbai or in Delhi. The person who gives orders to the Navy, Army, NSG, Police. That kind of leadership role was not there," Raman said.
Raman said such things were not happening for the first time. "Every time they are happeing, we are taken by surprise. But we did not have any inquiry. Whatever our mistakes were, we are not correcting them," said he.
At this hour of national crisis, many fear that it could escalate into an Indo-Pakistani crisis as blame game has already begun at the highest level. However, the Islamabad administration has quickly stepped up damage control exercise by promising support in the investigations.
And now the battle is over, the investigating agencies would piece things together to get a clear picture of what had happened and how to fight this menace again in future.
One thing is for sure that to outsmart terror groups, like LeT, it has to resort to proper investigations backed by human and technical intelligence.
