After the body count - Mumbai terror Attacks

26/11 The day it all started. The most horrendous terror attacks on India. It was the most co-ordinated and well planned terror attacks anywhere in the world since 9/11.It should also have far reaching consequence as the 9/11 had.It was unique in the sense 10 terrorists had taken hostage almost the whole city.There were bomb blasts , indiscriminate firing , hostage situations which lasted for than 60 hours and the casualty included ATS chief Hemant Karkare, encounter specialist Vijay Salaskar ,ACP Kamte and many other brave soldiers from Mumbai Police and NSG.Almost two hundred people died including many foreigners.We as a nation lost many businessmen, artists, journalists and many other distinguished personalities from all walk of life.

The terrorists seem to have to chosen their targets very astutely.Chatrapati Shivaji Terminal (CST) or the VT junction as it is popularly known has been acknowledged as 'World Heritage Site' by UNESCO.Then there was the Taj. It is probably one of the symbol of Bombay.It has stood there for over a hundred years.Almost every Mumbaikar associates himself with The Taj Hotel.Even I being a delhite remember one of my photographs in front of the Taj when I was two years old.The other targets being Leopold Cafe and the Nariman House clearly indicating that the terrorist specifically targetted the foreigners and were very well planned.


The terrorist attacks are going to have far reaching consequence on India and on the world.We are all witnessing some of them.The cricket T-20 Champions League has been indefinitely postponed, the last two India- England ODIs were cancelled, the tourism industry has been massively hit, there have been reshuffle in the cabinet both at the centre and state level.

All done and said.Now we need to focus on "Whats next".Are we going to learn anything from these attacks or we are going to do nothing and keep sitting waiting for next terrorist attacks so that some more Indians die and we loose some more of our brave cops as we have done in the past.

The leader of opposition Mr. L. K. Advani came out with a press conference and announced his support for the government that he is going to stand together with the government in this hour of crisis. This is the least that we expected from the main party in opposition and we got that. But unfortunately that was the last of the comforting words that came from any politician. Then so called the "leader of the future" Mr. N. Modi came out and started the dirty politics again stating that he was not satisfied with the PM`s address to the nation and considered it too weak. May be he wanted some of his hatred filled speeches from the PM on such a delicate moment. Then the Deputy CM of Maharashtra Mr. R.R. Patil came out and stated that "Itne bade shehar mein akhada haadsa ho jaata hai (in such a large city, an incident or two will occur)". Probably he was inspired by SRK`s "bade bade deshon mein chhoti chhoti batein hoti rahti hain" from DDLJ. Then our CM Mr. Vilas Rao Deshmukh toured the Taj hotel with his family and friends including his actor son Riteish and director Ram Gopal Verma. The icing on the cake was put by The spokesperson and vice-president of the main opposition party Mr. Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi. He is true nationalist and can`t stand any of the western culture. So if a group of people are demonstrating against politicians he feels thats it is part of western culture and more than that he compared the woman demonstrating with "lipstick and powder on their faces" with the separatist groups of Kashmir. Kuddos.

Do we hate politicians? I don`t know but we are probably starting to hate them.Not because they are the ones who attacked us, who killed us. Neither they are ones training these psycopaths in POK or where ever this eccentric people operate.But these are the people who have the responsibility of protecting us , protecting the society and they have failed miserably.The US suffered the most devastating terrorist attacks in human history on 9/11 and ensured that the country doesn`t suffer any other terrorist attacks and same goes with the UK which has been terror free after 7/7 the London bombings. Even if we take the superpower nature of these two countries, we are moved to shame that even Indonesia has taken the necessary actions so as to safe guard its citizens after the Bali Bombings.I can recall only of four nations which witness continuous terrorist attacks the way we do.Two of them being Iraq and Afghanistan which are at war and the third one Pakistan is a failed state and the fourth being India the second fastests growing economy of the world. huh.

Now what we need to do ?? India has been target of terror attacks for long and intensity has increased in the recent past with the bombings in Delhi,Hyderabad,Jaipur, Bangalore and North Eastern Part Of India.After every terror attacks our 24*7 media sets up some talk show where youth simmering with rage comparing India with US that how they have successfully secured their nation from terrorist attacks and we have miserably failed. Yup thats true but here we need to take into account that we can compare Hollywood with Bollywood but we can not compare India with US. US shares borders with Canada which is extremely friendly to US while the other border country Mexico is not a terrorist breeding ground the way Pakistan and Bangladesh are. Neither they have porous borders the way we have with Nepal , Bangladesh and to some extent with Pakistan.Secondly US has defense budget of $711 billions for the year 2009 and India`s defense budget stands at $ 26.5 billion for the year 2008-2009 (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures).So we can never match US in their war on terror.But we don`t need that. We don`t need to start a war like the Iraq War or The Afghanistan War.We need to do certain basic things correctly.

Now as we know that our intelligence agency RAW had successfully intercepted a satellite - phone conversation between a known Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) asset and an unknown person several times and warned the government of the imminent attack.They also got to know from the intercept that the sea route will be used and the targets were also known to the RAW.Still we did nothing and let the attack happen.Also the actions of the navy and coastal guards or rather their inaction was one of the reasons for India going through this trauma. By the very first hour the seriousness of the attacks were certain when we lost three of our top cops but still it took 10 hours for NSG to reach the battle ground.Even after that it took us 60 hours to get hold of the situation.Had we done our homework after the previous attacks we would have been saved from this ordeal.

Second issue facing the nation or rather the government is how to nab the culprits, how to punish them.Here comes into scene our neighbour Pakistan.It has been ascertain that the terrorists were Pakistani citizen and had trained at Lashkar-e-Toiba`s centre in Pakistan.Now is the time when the promises made by the civillian government of Pakistan be fullfilled but they have already started showing their inability to do so.Pakistan is a strange country in the sense as a nation we don`t know who is the right person to talk. Should we talk to the sweet talking Presidant Zardari or to Chief of Army Staff Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and then there is a PM named Yousaf Raza Gillani as well in the country. We also know that terror attacks like these have been masterminded by ISI and there is parallel governement being run by Taliban style Islamists in various parts of country like the Swat valley.

Pakistan has readymade answer for everything. Pakistani government does not consider Karachi to be part of Pakistan when it comes to Dawood Ibrahim. Then Pakistan becomes the country that has been tormented by terrorism the most when we show evidence of presence of terror groups on our home land. And we can not make Pakistan the state as the culprit untill we have evidence against the ISI and with the confidence with which the Pakistani president is talking about the Non-State actors it seems as if we are not going to find any evidence against ISI.When we say the so called "Non-State" actors like L-e-T are behind the attacks then Pakistani administration replies that Pakistan itself is waging a war against these organisations.

What are the options left for us?? War ??
May be. But the non-alignment and the non-violence policy of over 60 years still stands in between.Even if we discard that the second question that comes into mind is that are we capable of affording a long term war in the times of global financial crisis as the if we start a full fledged war its going to go long as the talibs have decided to fight with the pakistani army in case we have a war.

The second option is to target the training camps of these organisations.We can specifically target the camps in Pok. But this is easier said than done as we have to make sure that there is no citizen casualty and these attacks may have adverse effect on Kashmir.

The third option that we have is diplomatic one.We stop the peace talks with pakistan,the road links,the railways,bilateral business,airspace etc.But here again only we are going to be at loss.If we remember the last time when something like this happen our airlines started loosing lots of money as there distance to Europe and Americas was increased drastically due to non-availibility of pakistani airspace.What we need to do is to put a stranglehold around Pakistan with the help of United Nations and other countries who fighting the so-called War on terror esp US. And if US declines to do so then all that talk of India-US nuclear deal and co-operation is crap.


to be continued............................