Terrorists Paralyze India's Business Capital
India's business capital was brought to a standstill as army and police continued to fight suspected Islamic militants in the heart of the usually bustling metropolis, marking a dramatic escalation of radical Islam's war against the world's largest democracy.
The coordinated, commando-style assault on Mumbai's luxury hotels, its historic train station, a Jewish center and other targets began Wednesday night, and marked the most audacious in a string of terror attacks to shake this majority-Hindu nation in recent years.
Friday morning, local time -- more than 35 hours after the initial attacks -- Indian commandos launched an all-out push to seize the Jewish center, where gunmen still held hostages. Helicopter-borne commados were dropped into the area. Intensive exchanges of gunfire could be heard.
Elsewhere in downtown Mumbai, Indian forces appeared to have made progress in flushing terrorists from other beseiged buildings. Earlier in the day, forces swept the famed Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel and the Oberoi Trident hotel for hostages, encountering sporadic resistance. But as of Friday morning, a small number of militants still remained in parts of both hotels.
About 120 people, including Mumbai's anti-terrorism chief and several foreigners, were reported killed in the attacks; more than 300 were injured.
With gun volleys still ringing out Friday morning and a major fire blazing in the Oberoi Trident, Indian officials were just beginning to piece together their investigation. Almost immediately, several blamed traditional arch-enemy Pakistan.
While not mentioning Pakistan by name, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pledged to 'take up strongly with our neighbors that the use of their territory for launching attacks on us will not be tolerated.'
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani have both condemned the bloodshed in Mumbai.
The scale and sophistication of the Mumbai attacks, as well as the choice of targets, however, appeared to point to a more insidious threat that the Indian government has been reluctant to acknowledge so far -- the potential involvement of extremists within the country's own Muslim community, which, at 150 million, is the world's third-largest after Indonesia and Pakistan. It is also one of India's most economically and politically disadvantaged minorities.
In a statement that couldn't be independently authenticated, a previously unknown group, the Deccan Mujahideen, claimed responsibility for the Mumbai operation, describing itself as hailing from the south Indian city of Hyderabad. Hyderabad was the world's largest Muslim-ruled monarchy until it was invaded and annexed by India in 1948.
Indian security officials cast doubt on this statement, saying that the attacks bore the hallmarks of Al Qaeda and Pakistani militant groups. They also claimed to have found a boat on which ammunition for the attacks was allegedly smuggled from Pakistan. That couldn't be confirmed.
While independent security experts said it's likely that the attackers received some support from like-minded radicals in Pakistan, they also stressed that such a massive operation would have been nearly impossible without a deep-rooted local network inside India itself.
India's Muslims, some of them still nostalgic for a medieval golden age when most of the subcontinent was under Muslim dominion, are among the country's poorest communities, partly because much of the Muslim professional class emigrated to Pakistan at partition in 1947.
In addition to being disproportionately targeted in outbreaks of religious violence, they are severely underrepresented in the country's government bureaucracy, universities and security services. On literacy scores, young Indian Muslims now lag behind even the country's historically most disadvantaged group, the Dalits, or Hinduism's 'untouchables.'
India's main stock exchange was closed on Thursday, some international flights were canceled at Mumbai's airport, and the city's central business district had the feel of a ghost town as most shops remained shuttered and occasional gunfire crackled.
'Business won't come back for one year at least,' said Vijay K. Hegiste, who owns a tobacco shop around the corner from the Taj hotel. 'No one is going to come.'
How India will respond to the attack is already shaping up as a central issue for upcoming elections in several states, and for the country's general elections due before May next year.
Addressing the country on television Thursday, Prime Minister Singh promised to prevent similar attacks in the future. He said India will create a new federal investigative agency and tighten legislation 'to ensure that there are no loopholes available to terrorists to escape the clutches of the law.'
Some in Mumbai's large Muslim community fear the attacks may stir the upcoming political campaigns, aware that such controversies can easily end up in religious clashes. 'Elections are coming around the corner -- and the politicians want the vote banks,' said garment merchant Mohammed Salim, as he watched riot police surround a building known as Nariman House in his Colaba neighborhood. |
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