Mombai attacks are significant in the essence that attackers did not want to hide themselves, they wanted to show to the world who they are. They specifically targeted foreigners and especially jews. These people wanted to be recognized, they fully knew that they would be traced back to their roots by intelligence agencies. But despite all these facts, no organization has yet claimed responsibility. The good news is that a few of them have been captured alive, so law enforcement agencies should be able to work out within short time what exactly happened and why.
It is a fashion in India to blame these attacks on Pakistan, which is what happened in the case of Samjhota express. However, in case of Samjhuata express found that the perpetrators were Hindu fundamentalist led by a serving Indian army officer.
Similarly investigation about attack on Indian parliament is inconclusive in terms of reaching a definite conclusions. However the report points more to internal dissent within Indian society and security agencies rather than towards external hands and that is perhaps the reason why it has never reached logical conclusion.
One point of view is that these people might have been Al-Qaeda inspired with connections in Afghanistan. This may be in response to Indian involvement in Afghanistan. Thus this attack may be a repercussion of American war on terror. In such a case even if this attack is traced to terrorist organizations within Pakistan and Afghanistan, even then it is not different to what is happening within Pakistan e.g. attack on Marriott hotel, Benazir's murders and so on.
It is possible that the attackers may have foreign policy objective of bringing Pakistan under pressure by killing foreigners in such a manner in a hostile country. This would sabotage the efforts for peace and stability between India and Pakistan. It seems that whoever the attackers were at least in short term they are succeeding in creating trust deficit between the two nuclear armed countries.
One interesting aspect of attacks on Marriott hotel Islamabad is that RDX was used, and it has been shown that large quantity of RDX was stolen from an indian construction company in Afghanistan. The use of RDX in Marriott links this attack with Samjhuata express.
Therefore, keeping in view recent history of all these attacks indian government should act responsibly and avoid blame game for sake of political benefits in a election year. The need of the hour is that Indian society and especially its powerful media investigates previous attacks and brings out the facts while also reporting factually after thorough investigation on the current attacks.
My Opinion:
After going through lots of articles, something is not right about these attacks.
I think it is more likely that these people were home grown Indians with their own agenda. I feel that these people were some disillusioned youth group that was on a grand death plan, some of american style maniac shooting but on a grand scale and with a lot of publicity. May be this was an Indian home grown celebrity terrorism.
There are many reasons for this line of thinking, including:
Why would terrorist risk 10 or more men, why could not they just plant bombs these buildings?
How come an overseas organization risk so many men, and huge financial investment for such a risky operation ?
How many people were involved in these attacks , and how long had these people been surveying their targets ?
Why were not these people detected earlier even if there were prior warnings ?
Why would they not take any hostages and make demands ?
Why Indian forces failed to cordon the buildings and seal the area properly ?
This is important that if there were only 10 of them, how could they strike at so many targets and keep moving around freely in the whole area. It seems indians were more interested in playing the whole thing as a media stunt and did not make a swift and effective effort to isolate the militants and affected areas.
http://pkpolitics.com/2008/11/27/live-with-talat-27-november-2008/
http://pkpolitics.com/2008/11/28/live-with-talat-28-november-2008/
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=44581
http://thenews.jang.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=149591
On Celebrity Terrorism:
