From Vinu’s pretty live coverage of the bombings
India is one of the few bright spots in the coming global clusterfuck to the poor house. I’ve been reading the business news from there for some ray of light. Things there, however, seem to have gotten mara fucked up, what with the terrorist attacks on everything in Mumbai. Terrorists simultaneously attacked a railway station, hospital, the docks, police headquarters and major hotels. It sounds like the just walked in and opened fire in these places, killing over a hundred people and wounding over 287 as of now. The Wikipedia page is constantly updated. And there’s a hostage crisis ongoing. And the hotels were on fire. Damn.
The attacks were claimed by the Deccan Mujahideen which, despite sounding like an IPL cricket team, is relatively unheard of. The Foreign Policy Blog has a bit on them, saying that they’re probably connected to the Indian Mujahideen. Regardless, it’s a pretty brazen attack, and extra damaging cause they supposedly targeted Americans and Britishers.
Being able to hit so many major targets at once is nuts, in Colombo you can barely even go to such places as a civilian. I was looking through the terrorist attacks in India this year and they’re actually way more ‘impressive’ than anything the LTTE has done. In the swirling masala of India, however, it’s kinda unclear what those terrorists actually want. There are so many grievances that I’m unclear what these terrorists attacks actually communicate, aside from ‘die’.
This Gauvronomics blog has the best round-up of coverage I’ve seen, ranging from Twitter to mainstream.
What do the terrorists want? In this case, it might just be an eye for an eye. This is probably the latest episode in a saga of tit for tat atrocities that goes back years. Probably back to the partition, although I think this current phase commenced with the demolition of the Babri Mosque by Hindu extremists in 1992, and subsequent anti-Muslim rioting in Bombay. The city was hit by a devasting retaliatory strike in 1993 in the form of a terrorist bombing spree organized by a major Muslim underworld figure. And this blood feud has gone on ever since, with riots and terrorist acts alternating at regular intervals in various parts of India. There’ll be talk of underlying grievances, and some obligatory official finger-pointing at Pakistan. But I think simple brutish revenge could be the main dynamic in the appalling tragedy unfolding in Mumbai today.
dude, this thing is still going on. Crazy
Not sure about that, Rajiv. There’s the fact that they picked only western hostages (or mostly) in order to prolong the event and get attention rather than go for a more destructive strike as the LTTE did against the Central Bank.
True enough, David. There’s always the possibility that this could be something different. But so far, I haven’t heard of any coherent set of demands or pronouncements from the terrorists (apart from some vague prisoner release thing which has yet to be confirmed). And the basic object of the exercise seems to have been to cause maximum damage and humiliation to India, not really to strike against Western interests. Also, there have also been some reports of the mastermind/financier being a Muslim Indian national residing in Saudi Arabia. If true, this still seems like vendetta to me.