The Mayhem in Mumbai

Muslim militants have been responsible for much of the violence that has plagued Mumbai in recent years. But these attacks seem to be of a different magnitude.
One of the untold stories of India is that the Muslim population has not shared in the boom the country has enjoyed over the last ten years. There is still a lot of institutional discrimination, and many remain persecuted. There's enough alienation out there that there are locals who can be drawn in to plots. That tends to be a pattern, from Madrid to Casablanca to Bali—some hard-core jihadis who indoctrinate alienated locals they can seduce.

What's also new and different about this was that it involved suicide attackers. There have been planted bombs in the past. But this is a different level than we've seen in India.

Given the delicate politics of the region—and particularly the tensions between India and Pakistan—do you anticipate Indian officials pointing fingers at their neighbor?
If you wanted to construct a conspiracy theory, it would go like this: elements of the Pakistani intelligence service that would like to get India more drawn into conflict in Kashmir might encourage this sort of thing. That would draw militants in the Pakistani tribal areas away from attacking the Pakistani state, and back to attacking the Indian state. But I've never tended to believe such theories. More plausible to me: this is a classic Frankenstein monster. All these groups have some degree of training and support from Pakistan. But this operation probably does not involve that directly. These groups are now autonomous, self-supporting, and have gone beyond those origins.

Do you suspect an Al Qaeda connection?
I doubt it. My sense is that for the last several years, the core of Al Qaeda—Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri—has been very weak. This seems more like a Kashmiri, Lashkar kind of thing. They have the organization, they have the recruits, they have a cause they care about. The thing about Al Qaeda is that they've been quite unsuccessful in their core areas—attacking American soldiers and American targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan, attacking the U.S. embassies. But it's possible that they are now going where they can, and India is a big soft target. If you go to a five-star hotel in Pakistan, it's like a fort now. There are often two levels of security, and you often have to take a separate car to get from the gate to the door. It's not likely that will happen in India, an open, democratic society.

What strikes you about the way the country has responded in these first hours?
I think India is showing remarkable resilience. They're trying to get back to business as usual. They were planning to open the stock market, which is not far from the Taj; they ultimately decided that that might have been a bridge too far, but they're encouraging people to go back to work. That's the best thing about an open society. They're trying to project an image of resilience.

© 2008