Thursday, November 27, 2008

From India    [Jonathan Foreman]

New Delhi —  The first reports of the terrorist attacks in Bombay reached New Delhi late last night as most of its inhabitants were going to bed. Their real scope only became clear this morning and the Indian capital is in shock. The streets, normally jammed by 9 A.M., are strangely quiet as if the whole city is at home watching the TV or listening to the radio. Delhi itself suffered a day of Islamist terrorist bombings only six weeks ago but the Bombay attacks are on a greater scale and are still, at the time of writing, unresolved, with reports of ongoing hostage situations and gun battles with security forces.

Though the international media has been stressing the terrorists’ apparent focus on foreigners, the five-star hotels where hostages are being held are, like their equivalents in New Delhi, the favorite meeting places of the Indian business and political elites. Indians are also reeling at the news that Bombay’s top antiterrorist officer, and a senior policeman famous for killing more than 70 alleged criminals and terrorists in “encounters” or shootouts, have both been killed in the fighting. (It’s not clear if they were specifically targeted by the terrorists.) There are also rumors that many of the 100 or more so fatalities may have been caused by police firing wildly — as is all too common here — at the scene of terrorist attacks in the main railway station and the Cama hospital.

In recent weeks official India’s internal security focus has tended to be on Hindu fundamentalism terrorism —an army colonel with Hindu extremist leanings has been charged with involvement in a bomb attack in September that killed 5 people — and on the Maoist or “Naxalite” insurgency that plagues several key states and that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said is the greatest threat to the country’s peace and stability. With the Bombay attacks, that focus will change very dramatically, especially as they could well have a catastrophic effect on both tourism and the wider economy. Nor will it be sufficient to blame the outrage on Pakistan or her proxies — the Zardari government in Islamabad has been making particularly friendly noises in the last few weeks. Little is known as yet about the identity of the attackers, but it seems clear that the Indian government is going to have to confront with a new seriousness home-grown terrorism and the vulnerabilities of its booming but chaotic cities.

11/27 08:30 AMShare