Flunking the Intelligence Test

[BanglaBhoot]

The only real question about the Mumbai attack was just when it would come.

The hostage takers in Mumbai didn't need to wonder how large an armed rescue team the Indian government was sending, or when to anticipate its arrival. They had only to click on the nearest TV set, and there was the federal home minister, Shivraj Patil, obliviously telling viewers that 200 commandos had taken off on the two-hour flight from New Delhi at 2:30 a.m. Even after the aircraft had landed in Mumbai, the gunmen had plenty of time to get ready, as the troops were herded aboard rickety transport buses to be hauled from the city's northern edge to its southern tip. The commandos finally reached the scene about 6:30, roughly nine hours after the terrorists had launched their murderous attacks in the financial capital of India. The battle would drag on for the next two days while the body count reached 195 before the last gunman went down.

In Mumbai and throughout India, people reacted the way Americans did after September 11: they demanded to know why their government had failed to protect them. "Since November last year I have been drawing attention to the iceberg of jihadi terrorism," says B. Raman, a former top official at India's equivalent of the CIA, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). "The government of [Prime Minister] Manmohan Singh reacted to the repeated warning signals of the moving iceberg in the same way as the Bush administration reacted to reports about the plans of the Al Qaeda for aviation terrorism in the U.S.—it just didn't react. It was in a denial mode."

Maybe that's why no one seems to have drawn up any guidelines for handling terrorist emergencies. Security professionals could only groan in frustration at Patil's televised lack of discretion on the commando deployment. But the minister's job seems safe, at least for now: his removal at this point would be seen as a failure of political will on the government's part. In any case, he's hardly the only Indian official with a role in this bloody disaster. The problem is systemic in India, international security analysts say. "There is a frightening lack of strong and decisive political leadership in dealing with this menace," says Wilson John, a terrorism expert and senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi. "This incompetence and lethargy seeps all the way down to the level of beat constable."
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About an hour before the shooting started, villagers on the shore in South Mumbai saw a group of 10 young strangers climbing out of an inflatable raft. The incident was reported to local police, who did nothing. The cops might have displayed more interest if their superiors had given them a heads-up. About four months ago the president of the fishermen's union, Damodar Tandel, received a warning from a colleague in the coastal state of Gujarat: of the nearly 1,000 fishing boats that shuttle between Gujarat and Mumbai, some might be smuggling munitions and plastic explosives into the city, the friend said. Tandel relayed the message in a letter to the police chief in charge of Mumbai's port. The chief was asked about that letter last week, during the terrorist siege. "It was just a general statement," he said. "There was no specific information."

That's the kind of thing that infuriates people like India's No. 1 industrialist, Ratan Tata. "It has become clear that we don't have a crisis infrastructure in place," he told reporters, as terrorists remained holed up inside the city's landmark Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel, which his company owns. Proof of his complaint was all too evident after another gang seized hostages at a hospital not far away. The state's antiterrorism chief and two other top police officials arrived at the scene with a posse of cops who were armed with antiquated .303 rifles. Seemingly unaware of any danger, the three men stood unprotected on the firing line, where they were quickly mowed down by sudden bursts of automatic gunfire. Even then, intelligence sources say, the state government didn't seem to comprehend the magnitude of the attacks. The state's chief minister delayed nearly two hours before requesting specialized assistance from New Delhi. "The militants know and exploit gaping holes in India's counter-terrorism architecture and strategy," says John.

Horrified police officers in Mumbai saw their vehicles hijacked by terrorists who showed intimate knowledge of the city's streets and the layouts of the huge hotels they captured. In contrast, the police displayed no familiarity with the layouts of those buildings. The commandos who flew in from New Delhi had to waste precious time getting hotel staff members to sketch out the layouts of their workplaces. "We've really not learnt the lessons," says M. N. Singh, a former Mumbai police commissioner.

Mumbai has a long record of massive terrorist attacks dating at least as far back as 1993, when a wave of bombings left roughly 250 dead and 700 others injured. Deadly incidents have recurred ever since, most notably in July 2006, when seven huge explosions tore through commuter trains at rush hour, killing 160 people and injuring more than 200. On at least five occasions in the past nine months, terrorists have staged devastating strikes across the country. Even so, there has been little response beyond platitudes from politicians and well-publicized visits by government ministers—always surrounded by heavy security cordons.

That's the standard pattern in India: an inept and callous political leadership and a cocooned and corrupt bureaucracy take care of their own interests while ignoring the public's welfare. In the past few years that decay has spread to the country's intelligence services, including RAW. "Ten years ago it was one of the best in the world," says a source close to the French security establishment whose job precludes his being quoted by name. That was before India's ruling parties started appointing top officials based on their political leanings rather than their intelligence credentials. People in the field say a few serious professionals remain even now, like National Security Adviser M. K. Narayanan. "He's good," says this source. "But he doesn't have the power."

Not that anyone else in India's intelligence community is truly in charge. Not unlike America's agencies before September 11, India's many spy services are crippled by interagency rivalries and failures to communicate. One result, experts say, is that although nearly 16,000 suspected Islamist militants were detained and interrogated between 1991 and 2006, most of that information has never been analyzed and put to use by any central authority in order to prevent attacks. (Don't even ask about intelligence sharing with India's neighbor and fellow victim of Islamist terror, Pakistan.)

After the spectacular armed attack on India's Parliament Building in 2001, an elaborate Multi-Agency Center was created to oversee the country's counterterrorism efforts and collate information gathered by an array of new state-level agencies. Today MAC consists of a tiny staff using a bare-bones computer system with no real-time links to state police or other intelligence sources. Only five of India's 35 states have done their part by setting up local agencies.

The latest rampage in Mumbai has prompted widespread demands for the country's politicians to do something about terrorism instead of just talking about it. "There must now be public pressure on them the way it was in the United States after 9/11," says intelligence expert B. Raman. "We must tell them they won't get votes if they bicker over terrorism and politicize it."

Indians are fed up. "If the politicians abrogate their duty once again, I am not saying the streets will burn," says Bollywood actor and activist Rahul Bose. "But Mumbai will be a very, very angry place."

Lessons From Mumbai's Latest Terrorist Rampage | Newsweek International | Newsweek.com

 

[Munir]

It is that organized that even Bollywood actors are giving serious statements... We heard about Maitabh sleeping with his gun under the pillow... Now this... Do we really need evidence to say thatIndia is a failed state?

 

[Nihat]

It is that organized that even Bollywood actors are giving serious statements... We heard about Maitabh sleeping with his gun under the pillow... Now this... Do we really need evidence to say that India is a failed state?

You are telling me that India is a failed state .

One of the worlds fastest growing and largest economies , a failed state . Yeah , right !!.

 

[haviZsultan]

It is that organized that even Bollywood actors are giving serious statements... We heard about Maitabh sleeping with his gun under the pillow... Now this... Do we really need evidence to say thatIndia is a failed state?

Nope! I dont think we need any evidence whatsoever...

836 million people earning less than a dollar. 700 million never seen a toilet before, Indias 89 percent of rural households don't have a telephone; 52 percent do not have any power connection... absolute failure to protect minorities where over 1 Million f4m minority religions being killed. Incidents of witch burning and dog marrying common due to superstition... it all proves the Indian Nation is in not only in a state of utter collapse but also its citizens have lost faith in it.

Until India manages to remove this widespread poverty, religious intolerance and these traditional beliefs of witchcraft etc what else can we call it other than a failed state? Here is evidence of India being a failed state. Mr Ravi Shanker Kapoor here from India himself tells the World about the failures of his country. Even though it only mentions the problem India faces from rebels and insurgents. It does not even mention the issues of mass starvation and farmers killing themselves because they can't grow enough food which may be the reasons behind them. It does not even mention that 836 Million Indians (about 75% of Indians population) have immense difficulty feeding their families everyday. Suicide rate in India also is one of the highest along with AID's. Anyway heres an article from him:

India: A Failed State
by Ravi Shanker Kapoor

Political commentators in India are fond of calling Pakistan a “failed state,” but few Indians are willing to admit that their own country is hurtling towards anarchy.

Political commentators in India are fond of calling Pakistan a “failed state,” given the havoc wrought by uncontrollable jihadis in our neighboring country. Few Indians, however, are willing to admit that their own country is hurtling towards anarchy. While Leftwing extremist violence and Islamic terror are rising at an alarming pace, the Indian state and the intellectual class refuse to even recognize the existence of any serious threat.

Military help was sought on May 18 against Naxals, the Leftwing extremists, to rescue senior police officials in the central Indian state of Chhatisgarh. Quoting Union Home Ministry officials, The Indian Express (May 20, 2005) reported that “Naxals carried out a series of coordinated attacks on two police outposts adjoining the Abujmarh Hills...They had also laid land mines along the exit and entry points,” trapping the senior officials who had rushed to the spot. “Ministry officials said that the Naxals wanted to loot arms and ammunition from the police. Ten policemen were injured in the attack.” That Leftwing extremism has assumed alarming proportions becomes evident from the fact that it was the first time that a military helicopter was used in anti-Naxal operations.


Hardly a day passes when the media does not inform us about killings by the various Naxalite groups. According to expert estimates, Naxal influence has spread from 55 districts in nine states in October 2003 to more than 150 in 13 states (in India, there are 602 districts).

Peace talks with the Naxalites in Andhra Pradesh -- the southern coastal state where Leftwing extremism is six decades old and is very strong -- ended unsuccessfully on April 4. Right from the beginning -- that is, October 2004, when the talks began -- there were doubts about any meaningful outcome.

State police chiefs met on November 4 last year. A news report in The Indian Express quoted the police chief of Chattisgarh, a state in central India, OP Rathore as saying, “Actually, there is nothing to talk. These people are ruthless. They are killing poor and innocent people and indulging in extortion.”

According to Rathore, “The country has never witnessed internal insurgency of this extent, spread over such a large geographical area. And what we see is only the tip of the iceberg. Tough measures are required to tackle it.” Another senior police official was quoted: “It is alarming the way Naxalites are spreading their activities, right from the Nepal border down to parts of Kerala now. New mergers are happening… Foreign elements are supporting them.” The police chief of Uttaranchal, a northern state, Kanchan Chaudhary, wanted her state to be included in the list of Naxal-infested states.

Naxal violence is not the only threat India faces; there is also demographic invasion from Bangladesh, which is linked with Islamic terror.

On April 16, 2005, an assistant commandant of India’s Border Security Force (BSF), Jeevan Kumar, along with a BSF soldier, went to the Akhaura Border checkpost in the Indian State of Tripura to seek a meeting with Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) officials, following a report that an Indian national had been abducted by Bangladeshi miscreants. But it was a trap to ensnare Kumar, who had proved effective in checking smuggling and illegal immigration of Bangladesh nationals. He was tortured and murdered in cold blood. His subordinate was also tortured and left for dead, but he survived to tell the tale.

Exactly four years earlier, on April 16, 2001, as many as 16 BSF personnel were similarly murdered in the Boroibari area of the Mankachar sector bordering the Indian state of Meghalaya. The bodies of some BSF men were tied onto bamboo poles, in the fashion that killed beasts of prey are tied, and paraded through the villages. Photographs of slain soldiers appeared prominently in all newspapers.


The two instances are part of a pattern: Bangladesh’s espousal of lebensraum policy to push its nationals to India and its promotion of the Islamist cause. In an interview with rediff.com, Lt Gen SK Sinha (Retd), former governor of the Indian state of Assam bordering Bangladesh, said in July 2000, “Even a friend of India like Sheikh Mujibur Rehman [father of Bangladesh, erstwhile known as East Pakistan] wrote in his book that East Pakistan should be given more space and the mineral wealth of Assam for his people to improve their lot. And in the 1990s, intellectuals in Dhaka began talking about lebensraum, which in German means living space, and they have been targeting Assam and the northeast. They have even been saying that with globalization, you have free movement of goods across international boundaries. There should also be free movement of labor, which means movement of population.”

Dhaka also believes in another kind of globalization: spreading Islamic terror in the entire region. In an article in South Asia Intelligence Review, Ajai Sahni and Bibhu Prasad Routray wrote, “Bangladesh has long supported terrorist organizations operating in India’s Northeast; Dhaka has been complicit in the massive demographic invasion and destabilization of India’s East and Northeast; BDR personnel have disrupted every Indian effort to construct a fence along the border by firing on the workers and BSF personnel engaged in this task; Bangladesh has emerged as the primary source of illegal arms and explosives for virtually every insurgent and criminal operation all along India’s East and Northeast; and the BDR supports a wide range of smuggling and criminal operations along the border.”

The response of the political class to growing Naxalite violence and Islamic terror has been, to put it mildly, pusillanimous. After observing the ritual of lodging a “strong protest” with Dhaka over the killing of Kumar, India’s national security adviser MK Narayanan directed the BSF to “exercise restraint.” Similarly, the federal government, which depends on the crucial support of the Left Front from outside, continues to oscillate between tough talk and reconciliatory posturing in its response to the Naxalites.

However, it is not only the incumbent United Progressive Alliance government that has behaved in an abject manner in its dealing with the threats to the nation. Even the earlier regime of the National Democratic Alliance (1998-2004), which was accused of being jingoistic and anti-Muslim, ended up appeasing Bangladesh by refusing to bring the culprits to justice. The real factor behind the NDA’s, and now the UPA’s, capitulation was the fear of losing Muslim votes. Besides, there was the fear of getting targeted as anti-Muslim by the intellectual class. Not surprisingly, in the words of Sahni and Routray, “the then Union Home Secretary [during the NDA regime] went so far as to inform the media that it was ‘a unilateral action by the BDR troops and Government of Bangladesh was not aware of it.’ The fact that Dhaka chose to take no action against the guilty -- and that it has till now taken no such action -- has not deterred the pronouncements of Delhi’s political and bureaucratic illusionists.”

The illusionists are not confined to the political and bureaucratic circles; the intellectual class is not far behind. Some of the issues which engage our experts, scholars, and media brahmins are: when would India become a developed country, how to build an Indian century, when would we achieve the superpower status. When Prime Minister Singh was chosen to speak for Asia at the recently concluded Bandung conference of Asian and African countries, intellectuals started celebrating. The choice of Singh to speak for Asia was called “yet more evidence of India’s rising eminence on the global stage” by The Times Of India. The rest of the media was no less ecstatic.

This is not to suggest that there are no grounds for optimism. India registered 6.9 percent growth in 2004-05; this fiscal year, the GDP growth is projected to be in the region of 7.5 percent. Industry grew by 8 percent in the last fiscal year, and the high growth rate is expected to continue in 2005-06. Similarly, many other indicators -- exports, foreign exchange reserves, etc. -- are also encouraging. A major concern, however, is spiraling government expenditure; this is mainly a legacy of socialism, which molded economic policy till 1991. On the face of it, the economy appears to be sufficiently resilient; but such resilience is because of private enterprise and robust values of Indian society; as the Indian state retreated from the economic arena after the economic reforms of 1991, the creative forces of Indian society filled in the gaps, giving rise to a veritable feel-good factor in the economy.

But politics is different from economy: if the state does not deliver in the economic arena, it can just withdraw; but it cannot give up its primary duties of maintaining law and order and protecting the nation. The Indian state has failed not in just its peripheral functions -- like running government-owned businesses -- but also in its primary duties.

But the political and intellectual illusionists refuse to see such failures of the Indian state; instead they keep pontificating about the need to make India a permanent member of the UN Security Council, given its “rising eminence on the global stage.” It is another matter that the aspiring superpower meekly watches the slaughter of its soldiers.

Ravi Shanker Kapoor is the editor of IndiaRight.org : India's first website to promote Rightwing Ideology, India's first conservative website. Before that he spend more than ten years with The Financial Express. His most recent book is Failing the Promise: Irrelevance of the Vajpayee Government (2003).

As you can see even though this man does admit that india is a major failed state he still lets his bias come in the way where he displays his deep hatred for the people of Bangladesh. Thats obviously natural as Indian forces have displayed this too by killing 100 bangladeshi civilians in the last 6 months... but yeah he does speak well about what a major failed state India is and how it has miserably failed...

 

[haviZsultan]

You are telling me that India is a failed state .

One of the worlds fastest growing and largest economies , a failed state . Yeah , right !!.

You cant deny it!

Yeh karwi sachai haiy yaar...
Munir sey puch agar tujhey koi bhi shak hai is barey mein rey...

Also muslims are rebelling in India. You and others like you r still defending India but sooner or later u will have to decide which side you're on and where ur loyalties lie. Afterall BJP is coming again for more butchering here... who knows what might happen... Maybe something like this:

According to the evidence recorded by the Tribunal, the leaders of the mobs (many of whom have been identified) even raped young girls, some as young as 11-years-old. The young girls were made to remove their clothes in front of 1,000–2,000 strong mobs who humiliated and terrorised the girls. Thereafter, they were raped by 8-10 men. After raping them, the attackers inserted sharp swords, knives or hard objects into their bodies to torture them before burning them alive. In the many bouts of communally incited pogroms that have taken place in different parts of the country, never has there been this depth of perversion, sickness and inhumaneness. Even a 20-day-old infant, or a foetus in the womb of its mother, was not spared. They flung babies in the pyres that they had prepared. They cut up people, threw then in a well known as ‘teesra kuva’ and then burnt them. The police supported the mob during the assault by shelling tear gas shells on the hapless Muslims. They also opened fire on men when they were trying to defend the women in the area. The State Reserve Police was very complacent and indifferent saying, "We have been given orders to do nothing for 24 hours in Naroda." Women pleaded with the police and the SRP to stop acting partially and save the children at least. They begged before these policemen, laying their children at their feet, but it made no difference to them.

Numerous eyewitnesses to the attacks in Ahmedabad told Human Rights Watch that police gunfire paved the way for the violent mobs. Marching in front of the mobs, the police burst tear gas shells and aimed and fired at Muslim youth seeking to defend their families and their homes.

During the first two days of violence, Chief Minister Modi defended the actions of his police stating that they had "mowed down people" to quell the violence. According to the Indian Express, "one such incident he was referring to occurred on February 28 and March 1 near the Bapunagar police station, where 40 were killed in firing. Now, according to a batch of FIRs filed last week and post mortem reports, it has come to light that all 40 were Muslims, most of them shot in the head and the chest. And 36 of them were between 20 and 25 years old.

Also remember we're all the same. We escaped the oppression u decided to face it. When hindu fanatics attack you do remember my words though cauz the doors of Pakistan are always open for those who have suffered Indian bias and discrimination. Afterall there have been quite a few muslims who did run away f4m indian genocide and have settled here. U are welcome here as well.

 

[BanglaBhoot]

India 'had warning of attacks'

Indian authorities were warned about a possible attack by sea - much like the one on Mumbai last week - several months ago, Al Jazeera has learnt.

Al Jazeera obtained a document believed to be an intelligence report that warned the government and police of impending attacks by well-armed and well-trained fighters with possible links to Pakistan.

News that the government may have been warned about a possible attack is likely to increase pressure on New Delhi, which is already being criticised for not responding adequately to the attacks on its financial centre.

Shivraj Patil, India's home minister, has already resigned – the first political casualty of the co-ordinated attacks in Mumbai that left more than 170 people dead and hundreds more wounded.

With national elections just months away, Patil said he accepted "moral responsibility" for failing to prevent the attacks.

'Elements in Pakistan'

As the city began to mourn its dead and security officials stepped up their investigation, the Indian government was continuing to link those behind the attacks to neighbouring Pakistan, Al Jazeera's Sohail Rahman said from Mumbai.

Pranab Mukherjee, India's foreign minister, said "according to preliminary information, some elements in Pakistan are responsible".

With the suspicion that elements in Pakistan were involved, the Indian government is considering suspending peace talks with its neighbour, the Press Trust of India (PTI) reported.

"There is a view in the government that India should suspend the peace process and composite dialogue to show that it is not going to take lightly the deadly carnage in Mumbai," the official Indian news agency quoted an unnamed official as saying.

Although the Indian government has confirmed moving troops to the Line of Control at the quasi border with Pakistan in Kashmir, it maintains that the painfully negotiated ceasefire with Islamabad there is still in place, our correspondent said.

Kanwal Sibal, a former Indian foreign secretary, told Al Jazeera: "We have been put in an extremely difficult situation where, on the one hand we need to respond - we must respond, otherwise we lay ourselves open to more such attacks in the future.

"On the other hand, we also want the democratic government in Pakistan to survive and we do not want the armed forces to come back."

But Islamabad has denied any links to the attacks and called on New Delhi to share evidence.

Assad Durrani, a former head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), told Al Jazeera: "I heard that India would be prepared to share their intelligence with Pakistan, so that is already a positive move, because that has been a problem in the past.

"And, in most cases, if I recall correctly, it turned out that either they did not have any good proof or someone else was responsible."

Earlier Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Pakistan's foreign minister, said: "Our hands are clean, we have nothing to hide and nothing to be ashamed of because this government feels that good neighbourly relations with India are in the interests of Pakistan."

The only attacker captured alive after the 60-hour siege said he belonged to a Pakistani armed group with links to the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, a senior police officer said on Sunday.

Joint Police Commissioner Rakesh Maria said Ajmal Qasab told police he was trained at a Lashkar-e-Taiba camp in Pakistan, the group he said was "behind the terrorist acts" in Mumbai.

A US counterterrorism official had said some "signatures of the attack" were consistent with Lashkar and Jaish-e-Mohammed, another group that has operated in Kashmir, both accused of having links to al-Qaeda.

Security forces criticised

India's security forces have also come under heavy fire for being unprepared and ill-equipped to handle the Mumbai attacks.

Although Manmohan Singh, the Indian prime minister, promised to boost maritime and air security and consider a new federal investigative agency, some analysts expressed doubts that there would be any fundamental change.

"These guys could do it next week again in Mumbai and our responses would be exactly the same," said Ajai Sahni, head of the New Delhi-based Institute for Conflict Management who has close ties to India's police and intelligence agencies.

He said the 10-hour delayed response by commandos based outside of New Delhi gave the gunmen time to consolidate control of two luxury hotels and a Jewish centre in Mumbai.

Sahni said not only were the local police poorly trained, even the commandos lacked proper equipment such as night-vision goggles and thermal sensors that could have helped better locate the attackers.

In the first of a series of attacks, two young men armed with assault rifles had managed to spray bullets in the city's crowded main train station despite more than 60 patrolling police officers.

"The way Mumbai police handled the situation, they were not combat-ready," Jimmy Katrak, a security consultant, said. "You don't need the Indian army to neutralise eight to nine people."

Bapu Thombre, the assistant commissioner with the Mumbai railway police, said policemen who were armed mainly with batons or World War I-era rifles "are not trained to respond to major attacks".

Indian commandos were also severely criticised for the slow response to the hostage situation at the Jewish centre in Mumbai.

Assaf Hefetz, a former Israeli police commissioner, said the commandos should have swarmed the building in a massive, co-ordinated attack that would have overwhelmed the gunmen and ended the standoff in seconds.

The slowness of the operation he said made it appear as if the commandos' main goal was to stay alive.

"You have to take the chance and the danger that your people can be hurt and some of them will be killed, but do it much faster and ensure the operation will be finished [quickly]," said Hefetz, who created the Israeli police anti-terror unit 30 years ago.

But JK Dutt, the director-general of the commando unit, defended their tactics.

"We have conducted the operation in the way we are trained and in the way we like to do it," he said.

Meanwhile Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, is scheduled to visit the Indian capital this week as a "further demonstration" of US solidarity with India and to "work together to hold these extremists accountable", the White House said on Sunday.

Al Jazeera English - CENTRAL/S. ASIA - India 'had warning of attacks'

 

[BanglaBhoot]

Systemic failure seen in India's response to attacks

Experts blame deep structural problems in India's anti-terrorism operation, including poor intelligence, inadequate equipment and limited training. And they doubt that reform will be forthcoming.

By Mark Magnier
6:40 PM PST, November 30, 2008

Reporting from Mumbai, India -- Facing mounting public anger over the response of his government and security forces to last week's assault on Mumbai, India's prime minister pledged Sunday to beef up anti-terrorism measures, and a top police official more pointedly fixed blame on a Pakistani group for the violence that left nearly 200 dead.

But analysts and ordinary citizens questioned whether the government's promise of reform would lead to serious changes in an approach whose systemic problems were laid bare by the assault.

"I'll be surprised if this is a wake-up call," said Brahma Chellaney, professor of strategic studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi. "The government has proven quite adept at making statements after every act of terror and going back to business as usual."

The government promised Sunday to create an FBI-style agency and station specially trained forces in four cities in addition to New Delhi. Early in the day, Home Minister Shivraj Patil resigned, taking "moral blame" for security lapses.

Police said the only gunman captured -- 10 others were killed -- had told authorities he belonged to Lashkar-e-Taiba, a militant Islamic group.

Lashkar-e-Taiba was behind the assault on the city, Joint Police Commissioner Rakesh Maria told reporters Sunday, giving a high-ranking voice to previous Indian suggestions that the group was to blame.

Pakistan has denied any links to last week's attack. Western and Indian intelligence officials have long charged that rogue elements in Pakistani intelligence agencies used Lashkar and other militant groups as proxies in their conflict with India over the disputed Kashmir region.

Even as Indian officials focused on the possibility that India had been attacked from abroad, public anger raged at the response to the coordinated attacks launched Wednesday night. The assault on two top hotels, a restaurant, a Jewish center and other sites killed at least 174 people, including six Americans. The death toll was revised downward Sunday after authorities said some bodies were counted twice.

Students, Internet groups, social critics and the media have harshly criticized the government for its failure to protect citizens. "Our Politicians Fiddle as Innocents Die," read a front-page headline in Sunday's Times of India.

Many analysts, former police and military officers and ordinary citizens said they feared that weak political will, corruption and the shortcomings of the nation's anti-terrorism forces would undermine needed reform. All too often, some observers said, terrorist incidents become political footballs for a variety of reasons.

For starters: With Muslims accounting for 13% of India's population, politicians tend to avoid pushing too hard against militant Islamists for fear of alienating this important voting bloc.

"The issue of anti-terrorism, especially around election time, is radioactive," said Ryan Clarke, a researcher with Singapore's International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research, saying areas with large Muslim populations can play swing roles in close elections.

Another problem, others said, is that India's porous borders with Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and entry points along the coast make it easy to launch militant operations from a neighboring country and then slip away. Last week's attackers reportedly sneaked into the city aboard rubber dinghies launched from a hijacked fishing trawler.

"Mumbai has 15 patrol boats, and none of them are used for patrolling," said lawyer and former Mumbai policeman Y.P. Singh. "There's such complacency."

Security experts say individual police officers and national guard personnel performed bravely during last week's standoff. And some of the targets chosen by the militants, such as the vast Taj Mahal and Oberoi hotels, would challenge most security organizations. But these factors were far outweighed by deep structural problems, poor intelligence, inadequate equipment and limited training, they add.

Anti-terrorist operations ideally need to quickly and decisively respond. The longer officials wait, the more time terrorists have to wreak havoc and hole themselves up in defensive positions, experts say.

Mumbai lost three of its top anti-terrorism officials almost immediately when the violence began Wednesday night; they were gunned down as they rode together in a van. The three should not have been in the same vehicle, experts said, nor should they have exposed themselves to danger. Their loss badly handicapped the early response.

Mumbai has no equivalent of a SWAT team. It took hours to decide to send in the nation's rapid-response National Security Guards, based in New Delhi. The capital is three hours away by air, but no military aircraft were available and the unit evidently lacked authority to requisition a commercial plane. Military transport was flown in from elsewhere.

On reaching Mumbai, the guards were driven to the hostage sites by bus -- there were no helicopters -- then briefed. By the time they took up positions, many hours had passed.

"A city the size of Mumbai, with [more than] 18 million people, doesn't even have a SWAT team or a helicopter available," said Ajay Sahni, executive director of New Delhi's Institute for Conflict Management. "At every stage there was complete institutional failure. You can't have a rapid-action force that takes seven hours to arrive."

At the two massive hotels, a handful of militants kept hundreds of commandos at bay for two days. Senior commanders would announce that sections of the buildings had been cleared, only to see the attackers move back in.

Government forces lacked hotel floor plans, although the militants seemed to have had them -- and apparently had stockpiled explosives and ammunition at the sites in advance. And the commandos lacked an effective command structure or a good communication system, experts said, whereas the terrorists reportedly used BlackBerrys and GPS devices to navigate and monitor news coverage.

Though the hotels are huge, the Jewish center is located in a five-story building, known as Nariman House, which should have made for a far easier recovery operation. When commandos were dropped on the roof Saturday morning by helicopter, the craft made three sorties, removing any element of surprise.

"These are Jews," Sahni said. "It's very clear they were not going to be allowed to live by these people. This tiny building should've been taken in the first few minutes."

Onlookers at the Nariman House were allowed to watch from a few feet away, hampering police operations. A night counterattack was nixed, reportedly because it was too dark: The attackers had night-vision goggles, the police didn't.

Conventional theory suggests that commandos move quickly once there's indication that hostages are in imminent danger in hopes of getting at least a few out alive. Yet days passed until, in the end, all hostages at the center were killed.

"You can wait, but you use that wait to engage the terrorists and plan," said Yoram Schweitzer, an international terrorism expert at Tel Aviv's Institute for National Security Studies. "Then you engage them quickly, with shock -- prepare for a maximum one- to two-minute strike."

India also has paid the price for corruption in the ranks, said Singh, the former policeman.

"Everyone wants to be in the police station where you have contact with the public and can get payments for resolving a dispute, allowing a builder to build a flat," he said. "If you're assigned to the anti-terrorism unit, you try and find a politician to get you out of it. You can see the results in the past few days."

Also problematic has been the lack of training or equipment. The elite forces had no thermal-imaging equipment, which would have helped distinguish terrorists from hotel guests. And ordinary policemen on the front lines had single-bolt rifles of the sort used in World War I, which they had only fired 10 times total during training.

"We're talking about an early 20th century police system trying to deal with a 21st century threat," security analyst Sahni said.

Intelligence also has come under criticism amid reports that fishermen, the Home Ministry and foreign and domestic intelligence agencies all recorded strange goings-on or received warnings that were never acted upon.

And rather than authorities taking the lessons to heart and reforming the system, many observers see a pattern of reflexively blaming outside elements, finding scapegoats and making excuses.

"Blaming others tends to reduce your anxiety rather than a more professional approach of taking time to investigate," said Abhay Matkar, a retired Indian army major. "While public awareness has expanded after [last] week and I expect there will be some change, politicians really need to be shaken up quite a bit."

Systemic failure seen in India's response to attacks - Los Angeles Times

 

[Chanakya.10]

Abhay Matkar, a retired Indian army major. "While public awareness has expanded after [last] week and I expect there will be some change, politicians really need to be shaken up quite a bit."

I REALLY HOPE THAT HAPPENS ANY TIME SOON.........

 

[Kharian_Beast]

Me too, please elect Sharukh Khan.

 

[zeus]

It is that organized that even Bollywood actors are giving serious statements... We heard about Maitabh sleeping with his gun under the pillow... Now this... Do we really need evidence to say thatIndia is a failed state?

Yes India is a failed state, and i am tied of Americans bombing in our Tribal area and Killing innocent citizen of my country ,that to with UAV drones what is use of this great air force