To Goanet -
Is Goa prepared? Of course the answer is an
unequivocal No. Then what are we going to do
about it going forward? Already there are nasty
enclaves of outside non-Goan Muslims (some
of them Bangladeshis illegally in India) that have
taken root in Goan slums and these are potentially
fertile pickings for terror masterminds. An attack
on Goa is no longer in the realm of the hypothetical.
We must be out right now kicking on Digu's door
demanding a plan of action for Goa's internal security.
In an earlier post, I had indicated that the Mumbai
attack was the establishment of a template for
future operations. The Islamicists were letting
India know with the whole world as audience the
following:
"We can humiliate you at a place and time of our
choosing and there's NOTHING you can or will
do about it."
This can be made much more scholarly and respectable
when it is cast in academic-sounding language, as done
by Professor Balagangadhara below. But if you want
a one-sentence takeaway, just copy & save my passage
above.
r
*****
Prof. Balagangadhara (Balu), University of Ghent (Belgium),
wrote this initially on the academic Religions of South Asia list (RISA-L):
Quote:
Following the horrific events in Mumbai, many suggestions and ideas
are floating around about the identity of the terrorists, their motives,
their nationalities and the cause(s) of the attack. In some senses, these
ideas and explanations fall within the limits of predictable parameters:
the Hindu-Muslim conflict in India, the issue of Kashmir, links with
international terrorist units, the resentment among the Indian Muslims,
and so on. While some such speculations could be true, there is
something else that needs to be taken into account.
Let me begin with the fact that no known group has claimed
responsibility for the multiple attacks in Mumbai. In fact, one of
the suspect groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba has explicitly denied authorship
even though some e-mails have been received from Deccan Mujahedeen,
a hitherto unknown entity. As a result of this, the `aim' of these
attacks is also unknown. Specifically focussed acts, like the
Mumbai attacks, do not have the propagation of general issues
like the `plight of the Kashmiri Muslims', `the support of India for
the US foreign policy' or anything analogous as their aim. Of course,
both commonsense and newspaper pundits will sooner or later
bring such issues and link them to the goal of these attacks, but
I think they are wrong: the Mumbai attacks were far too focussed
to be commensurate with a vague and general goal.
The second striking thing, I find, is the apparent irrationality of
these attacks, even when looked at from within the framework
of the terrorist rationality. Sending well-trained people armed
only with AK-47 and grenades, knowing that none will make it
back (with a chance of capture as well), while they could have
created even more damage with armed bombs placed at strategic
places suggests that this event was planned to take place exactly
the way it unfurled. That is to say, mayhem was a secondary
focus of this whole exercise: there is something else to the
Mumbai attacks than highlighting a `social issue' or killing
people at random or dying for a certain `cause'.
1. I think that the attacks in Mumbai were a response to the rather
inept and amateurish bombings that took place earlier this year in
multiple sites in India: Bangalore, Delhi, Surat, Jaipur and Hyderabad.
Mumbai is a demonstration lesson for the would-be terrorists in
India and abroad: how to make use of the local resources,
exploit the local conditions and work with local elements in
order to achieve the maximum result. This lesson is being
taught to the potential recruits in India and abroad by an
influential section of the international terrorists.
2. Why the need for a lesson, and who is doing the teaching?
To answer this question, we need to understand how the face
of terrorism has changed in the course of the last decades.
In the latter part of the twentieth century, terrorism remained
both local and provincial. It was local in the sense that some or
another cell (or an organization with a pseudo-military structure)
undertook (mostly) small scale attacks against locally known
figures. It was provincial in the sense that the attacks had
very little ripple effects outside the locality (or the nation)
where such events took place.
The basic "business model" (it will very soon become clear why
I use an economic metaphor in this case) was also provincial:
some or another country was the place for the would-be terrorists
to go to, get trained in some aspects of warfare, and rely on
that country for supplies and guidelines.
The terrorists were also locally organized: they functioned mostly
in the form of cells that were relatively isolated from each other,
and they were dependent on well-wishers and sympathizers to
keep them active and alive. As a consequence, at the maximum,
they were mostly annexes and appendices to the foreign policy
of some or another nation and were also used in this fashion.
Given this, the association of terrorists, both nationally and
internationally, took the form of networks: loosely connected at
the outer rims of their organizations, these networks were
something like fraternity clubs that meet on big occasions or
at celebrations. They were either uncoordinated or only very
loosely coordinated by the sponsoring nation.
3. Beginning with the attacks of 9/11, I believe we see a
metamorphosis in the nature and structure of these terrorist
`networks': they are now being transformed into a multinational
enterprise. Through mergers, takeovers, and the establishing of
new branches, the terrorist networks of yesteryears are
transforming themselves into a true multinational firm. They are
`thinking globally while acting locally': bombs, suicide bombers
and rockets in Iraq and Israel, aeroplanes in the US, grenades
and AK-47s in India. They do not have a single signature or a
modus operandi: they are adapting, changing and transforming
their ways of working to suit the conditions they find themselves
in. They effortlessly undertake purely criminal activities (just
think of the drug money in Afghanistan), mix easily with the
local criminal population but yet manage to retain their
identities as `elites'. These are their equivalents of
joint-partnerships with local firms.
4. The war in Afghanistan sounds the death knell of the old
business model of going to a particular place for training, living
with other `comrades' in tents, and learning to make a bomb
or blow up an armoured vehicle. Today, one has to make use
of local conditions and develop strategies for dealing with
different places in different ways. This, I believe, is the
biggest lesson of Mumbai: instead of ineptly trying to copy
Iraq and Afghanistan, the terrorists are being taught the
lesson of how to be maximally effective in exploiting local
conditions. This lesson was needed because the Indian
terrorists created no waves despite simultaneous bombings
in multiple sites in India; the international leadership stepped
in to teach them how to act so that the maximum could be
achieved. I believe that this is how the leadership demonstrated
how things have to be done, perhaps at the behest of the
terrorists in India, aimed at a very broad group of
would-be terrorists across the globe.
5. This has very important implications for policy makers.
One cannot treat the terrorists anymore in terms of loosely
coordinated networks. Today, we confront a multinational
firm with a clear `business model'. Much the same way
the national governments are helpless in controlling
multinational firms, national intelligence agencies will
not be able to do much about this emerging phenomenon.
Exchanging `intelligence' among each other, or coordinating
activities on an ad hoc basis are not sufficient anymore
to contain and neutralize this threat. Neither the removal
of a CEO (say, an Osama Bin Laden) nor the destruction
of a training camp (say, in the tribal areas in Afghanistan)
will damage this `business model'. At the very least, we
need a multinational intelligence agency with a clear
mandate and the required legal powers to successfully
take on the transformed nature of crime in the era of
globalization, namely, terrorism.
6. If we forget to look at this crucial dimension but instead
focus only on the `Hindu-Muslim' conflict or the possible
role of Pakistan or the religious identities of the terrorists,
then, I think, we fail to learn from Mumbai while most
would-be terrorists would have learnt their lesson.
(Originally posted on RISA-L)
*********
