Hunt on for perpetrators of Mumbai attacks
Updated
Mujahideen, criminal elements and foreign infiltrators are all under suspicion as Indian police continue their operations in the financial centre of Mumbai in the wake of Wednesday's bomb and gun attacks.
Presenter: Sen Lam
Speaker: Security specialist MJ Gohel, chief executive officer of the Asia-Pacific Foundation in London
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MJ GOHEL: I think there is no doubt that this was an atrocity perpetrated by an Islamic extremist group affiliated or with links to al-Qaeda in some shape or form because of the modus operandi of the attack. They chose a couple of hotels with very soft targets; they orchestrated multiple coordinated attacks; the aim was to create maximum terror, bring the city to a halt and to hit the economy of the country. The killing was very brutal, very random and the brutality was such that this is the work, definitely, of one of the groups within bin Laden's global jihad movement. But, of course, there are new, unprecedented issues here, such as separating American and British citizens and the fact that these terrorists came in on boats apparently from a ship which was anchored in the harbour. So, these are new issues for India's security services to confront.
SEN LAM: Indeed, you mentioned the boats and, overnight, two Pakistani merchant ships were seized off the Gujarat Coast in an effort to find possible terrorists. Is that a new frontier for the south Asian militants: the sea?
MJ GOHEL: Well, it could well be. India has a very long coastal line on both sides. It's quite a rare thing for a country to have that, and it's a very difficult area to guard and protect against smugglers as well as terrorists, and there is no doubt about it that there may be some local indigenous elements involved which may have provided logistical help, as we've seen happening in Europe and in the UK, but there's also no doubt that there will be transnational linkages going back to one of the extremist terrorist groups operating out of Pakistan, such as either al-Qaeda or Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Harkat-ul Mujahideen - there are so many that have established their headquarters in Pakistan.
SEN LAM: Well, the PTI newsagency says Indian officials blamed Lashkar-e-Toiba, which you mentioned. Lashkar-e-Toiba, of course, attacked India's parliament building a few years back. This has been denied, though, by the Lashkar-e-Toiba itself. What do you make of that?
MJ GOHEL: Well, I don't think one can take this denial seriously, and nor can one take the comment by Pakistan's Information Minister, Sherry Rehman, about, you know, how sad it is that this has happened, because after all it was Sherry Rehman and her leader, Benazir Bhutto, that created, nurtured and sponsored the Taliban militia in Afghanistan. Pakistani politicians, both civilian and military, have had very close links with the Taliban, and its intelligence service, the ISI, has had close links with terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Toiba, and India has been a victim of terrorism since 1989. It's just that the world did not pay any attention because there was something happening out there in a developing country. It's only after 9/11 and after the attacks in Bali and in London and in Madrid, in Spain, that terrorism was taken much more seriously. Now, Mumbai has been attacked six times previously. The last attack was two years ago, when over 200 people died - that's almost double the number that died yesterday. So Mumbai, as a commercial capital, has been targeted together with India's political capital, New Delhi, and of course other tourism centres in India, as well.
SEN LAM: Indeed, Mumbai is no stranger to these foreign attacks, but is there a danger, though, that the latest attacks may cause authorities to jump at shadows? That the terrorists might have succeeded in creating some kind of psychological paralysis?
MJ GOHEL: Well, yes, I think the country has been shaken to the core by what happened, but India, as I said, has suffered more terrorist attacks than any other country, other than perhaps Iraq and Afghanistan. In the last three years, something close to 1,000 people have died from acts of terrorism in India. India is a subcontinent of 1 billion people, it has enormous resolve, it is a democracy, there's an enormous amount of freedom there. India is able to withstand such attacks, lick its wounds, and move on. And one hopes that that kind of resilience will continue, but of course if these attacks continue and are repeated on a regular basis, then there could well be tensions within a society in that country and of course, if that happens, it will play into the hands of al-Qaeda and those who wish to destroy democracy.
SEN LAM: And, MJ, we've had reports that Indian security forces captured at least one suspected militant. Might that be a useful development, do you think?
MJ GOHEL: Oh, absolutely. I think in the past what's been a big stumbling block has been that suicide bombers blow themselves up or other terrorists have been killed when security services have tried to capture them, and there has been no-one to interrogate. In this instance, it appears a number of these terrorists have indeed been arrested, so the interrogation should provide a treasure trove of information and provide, hopefully, a lot of useful information. But one must not get misled by the names of these groups such as the Deccan Mujahideen or the Indian Mujahideen. These names are new names, they are intentionally used to be red herrings and to mislead and confuse the security services. The reality is: what are these terrorist groups doing? These groups are not like the IRA or the Ba'ath separatists in Spain or the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. Those groups had a regional agenda; the names meant something. In this instance, the names are used to confuse the security services. The real agenda is they are bonded to bin Laden's ideology of global jihad.
SEN LAM: And, yet, we still don't know, it's not clear whether or not these militants are home-grown Indian nationals or whether or not they're actually people from the region.
MJ GOHEL: Yes, that's a good point. I think on 9/11 the terrorists came in from outside and attacked the USA. Since 9/11, what we have seen is the growth of so-called home-grown terrorists, but virtually in every single case those home-grown terrorists have had transnational linkages to established groups normally in Pakistan where the ideology has come from, the brainwashing, the training, the funding and the indoctrination. So, I think again we will see that there may be some elements that are home-grown, but they will be linked to more established terrorist groups which have headquartered themselves in Pakistan.
