Mumbai: Is This New Terror?

The murder spree in the streets of Mumbai prompted the question whether we are witnessing a new kind of terror that exceeds the level of murderousness of previous terrorist actions, or was this a matter of terror strategists adhering to basic operational principles in order to achieve a known spectrum of objectives.

Certainly the strategy of action chosen included several objectives far beyond killing the greatest number possible of Indians and non-Indians, and that those killed were only a secondary target in this bloody game. First and foremost the action was designed to spawn a sense of insecurity among the local population and to deter tourists from visiting India. The goal was to generate friction between the government and the Indian public, evidenced by the government’s inability to protect them from their enemies. It was also meant to create domestic friction inside India and exacerbate the religious rift between the Hindu majority and the large Muslim minority. Its perpetrators also wanted to generate tension between the governments of India and Pakistan and arrest the process of rapprochement ongoing between the heads of the two countries in recent years. Indeed, in the last two to three years Pakistan has also suffered from extreme Muslim elements that are working against the very security services that originally cultivated them.

The terrorists used the media as a major player and powerful amplifier in order to upgrade the image of their strength. To ensure maximum media coverage, the planners choreographed the attack with systematic and indiscriminate mass killing, aimed particularly at places that attract tourists and large numbers of people. The guaranteed media coverage that such events invite was undoubtedly a basic ingredient in the planning and predictably secured the attention of tens of millions of people around the world who were transfixed by the images broadcast from the scene. Even after the incident ended it continued to enjoy extensive coverage in the press and in online and other electronic media.

Was there an innovative element in the action's dimensions, methods, and means employed by the attackers? It appears that the most distinctive element was the attackers' use of accepted combat rules for fighting arenas between military units and guerilla cells in urban centers, making the most of the fact that “the enemy” was unarmed and defenseless, and they attacked it in a manner characteristic of dictatorial regimes' death squads.

The action in Mumbai, in terms of style though not in scale, is reminiscent of a 1997 attack in Egypt by Gama'a Islamiyya units that used knives and light arms against a group of tourists in Luxor, killing 58 tourists and four Egyptian policemen. The combination of an armed attack followed by taking up a fortified position is not an innovative step either. Indeed, it seems that the event was not planned as an integrated attack of killing and holding hostages for ransom as in classic bargaining attacks, and in this case was not a sophisticated and integrated attack.

A degree of innovation emerged in the attackers' use of advanced technological equipment, such as GPS for navigational purposes, BlackBerry, and a satellite telephone using Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) for communicating with their operators.

A look at the history of modern terror indicates that in the years prior to the September 11 attack and in fact since the 1970s, certain terror attacks were designed to cause a large number of fatalities. Prominent among these were attempts to bring down passenger aircraft. The general command of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine led by Ahmed Jibril blew up a Swissair plane in 1970 and tried to down five planes simultaneously in 1988. Wadia Haddad and its splinter factions tried to bring down American and Israeli planes, a Sikh organization killed over 300 people when it brought down an Air India plane in 1985, and Italian right wing terrorists killed 200 people in an explosion at the Bologna train station in the 1980s. Suicide attacks, which became part of the global terror repertoire since the 1980s, also caused the deaths of hundreds of people in isolated attacks. Hizbollah, which was a pioneer in this area, killed around 300 people in one day in suicide attacks in Lebanon, and 86 people in another suicide attack in Buenos Aires in 1992. The entry of al-Qaeda into terror activity was marked by a simultaneous terror attack on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people, most of whom were innocent Kenyan and Tanzanian civilians.

The September 11 attack was a watershed on two levels. For al-Qaeda and its affiliates it marked a new level of violence that generated many more casualties and thereby far exceeded a “tolerable” number of victims in one event. In addition, it launched a new era of increasing terrorism, in which deadly terror attacks became far more frequent than in the preceding thirty years.

Following the attack in the United States, organizations belonging to the global jihad tried to carry out a series of attacks with much lethal potential in various locations around the world. In 2001 the Asian Jama'a Islamiyya and al-Qaeda joined forces in planning a suicide attack in Singapore: detonate seven booby trapped trucks loaded with tons of explosives at foreign embassies and international financial institutions. The objectives of the attack – which was not carried out – were the deaths of many hundreds of people. Cooperation was more successful in the joint operation in Bali in 2002, which killed 202 people.

The attack on the trains in Madrid (March 2004) was designed to kill several hundreds of people, but due to technical problems and logistical delays caused the deaths of "only" 191 people and wounded hundreds more. Also in 2004 attacks by large numbers of suicide terrorists meant to kill many hundreds of people were prevented in Jordan (April) and Saudi Arabia (December). The attacks were prevented by the security forces, which were a main target of these actions.

The attempt to blow up between six and ten aircraft in the air on flights from London to various destinations in the United States, attributed to al-Qaeda, was foiled in August 2006. This was the most prominent example of the organization's attempt to implant its legacy among its affiliates and have them emulate it.

Thus far it is not clear whether there was direct involvement by al-Qaeda in the attack on Mumbai, which is currently attributed to the Kashmiri organization Lashkar-e-Taiba. However, it is known that the members of the organization had previous links with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and that its members helped to provide shelter for al-Qaeda operatives who escaped from Afghanistan in late 2001 following the American attack. Moreover, the names of Lashkar-e-Taiba members in Europe have been linked to al-Qaeda activists who carried out attacks in the West, such as Richard Colvin Reid (the “shoe bomber” who attempted to blow up an American plane in 2001), and the suicide terrorist who blew up a synagogue in Jerba, Tunisia (2002). Whether or not such involvement is ultimately proven, the spirit of the organization and its operational strategy based on launching mass casualty attacks, targeting tourist spots, and waging a violent battle for the liberation of Islamic land hovers over the current attack in India. Therefore, one may assume that a pattern of escalating the level of attacks is a fixed objective of those who consider themselves part of the global jihad, and there is nothing new in that. The innovation they are looking for could be in new arenas and tactical nuances, and it is clear that they are looking to obtain new weapons, including non-conventional weapons, to endow them with new possibilities in their all-out war against their enemies.