Mumbai Attacks and their impact

[davidbfpo]

A FP article which reviews the prospects for complex urban assaults, with many links within and worthy of adding here:http://afpak.foreignpolicy.com/posts...rban_terrorism

To date there have been no repeats of Mumbai in the West and rightly the author reminds us that we are the lucky ones:

The terrorist attacks in Kabul, Mumbai, and Pakistan constitute gruesome evidence of the important role of sound command and control and intelligence in dealing with the urban adversary's potential for operational disruption in crowded cities.

[carl]

David:

Allow me a bit of chauvinism but I think a big part of it is that the average western street cops are just better and will react to contain the situation without any central direction.

[Ray]

I would not know about how efficiently the Police of the West can handle terrorists, but in India the Police is not geared to handle terrorists.

In India, with regional political parties holding sway in many States, the issue of federalism has also surfaced.

The States find the Central overbearance and practically taking over the States' responsiblility as an infringement to the concept of federalism.

This is stil to be resolved.

Till that time, the terrorist wil have a field day!

[Bill Moore]

Posted by Carl,

Allow me a bit of chauvinism but I think a big part of it is that the average western street cops are just better and will react to contain the situation without any central direction.

Since Ray chimmed in as the expert on India CT capabilities, I don't feel offensive agreeing with you that our police will respond in a more effective manner than India's did. However, their capacity and ability to respond effectively to a complex attack will vary considerably based on where a future attack takes place. The police in NYC appear to be very capable of responding, and I'm confident that is true in other cities as well. Not so confident that capacity and ability exists in a lot of mid size cities. This largely based on budgets, if the city can't afford the right number of officers and afford to train them to the appropriate level, then we assume more risk. On the other hand, we do have armed citizens (thank God we all haven't gone metro) that will also respond.

Europe of the other hand appears to be very vulnerable to these types of attacks and if their intelligence services fails to detect and pre-empt it I suspect such an attack could have a significant impact (much like the Norway shooter recently).

[Ray]

Posted by Carl,



Since Ray chimmed in as the expert on India CT capabilities, I don't feel offensive agreeing with you that our police will respond in a more effective manner than India's did. However, their capacity and ability to respond effectively to a complex attack will vary considerably based on where a future attack takes place. The police in NYC appear to be very capable of responding, and I'm confident that is true in other cities as well. Not so confident that capacity and ability exists in a lot of mid size cities. This largely based on budgets, if the city can't afford the right number of officers and afford to train them to the appropriate level, then we assume more risk. On the other hand, we do have armed citizens (thank God we all haven't gone metro) that will also respond.

Europe of the other hand appears to be very vulnerable to these types of attacks and if their intelligence services fails to detect and pre-empt it I suspect such an attack could have a significant impact (much like the Norway shooter recently).

I would think that more than the US Police being effective, the manner in which the US has 'wired' up the nation to keep a tab on all citizens to include their communications and the way the US has tightened up the entry of foreigners into the US, is what is keeping the US safe.

Of course, at times it is ridiculous wherein ex Presidents and Ministers of countries or dignitaries invited by the US Govt get strip searched. Indirectly, it means that the US does not even trust Ministers of other countries!

[Ken White]

...Indirectly, it means that the US does not even trust Ministers of other countries!

This is, after all, a nation that does not trust any of its own politicians...

[carl]

Bill:

In the medium to small size city and area I was familiar with officers would just respond and go to the sound of guns so to speak. There would be lots of citizens who would help them out. It would be more efficient if each officer were trained specifically for the situation but I think simple individual officer initiative coupled with citizen assistance would be good enough, not perfect, but good enough. Maybe it could viewed as something like a swarm attack in reverse.

[Ray]

India's counter-terrorism strategy



\http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/apr/05spec.htm

Maybe of interest.

[blueblood]

David:

Allow me a bit of chauvinism but I think a big part of it is that the average western street cops are just better and will react to contain the situation without any central direction.

Yes, they definitely are but then again money talks. The budget of NYPD alone is more than the combined budget of two of the largest paramilitaries of India i.e., CRPF and BSF. Jurisdiction of NYPD is tri state area and has ~35,000 employees.

On the other hand BSF guards the nearly 7500 kms of border and CRPF's jurisdiction is entire India and have a total of 550,000 employees. And trust me these are the "well funded" agencies. Salary of a NYPD police officer (corporal) is more than 4 times than that of an Indian Assistant Supritendent (Captain equivalent).

Now you do the math.

[Bill Moore]

Blueblood I agree, but I think advantage diminishes rapidly when you move to mid and small sized towns. NYC and LA police among others have incredible capabilities, but they don't represent most cities and towns.

[blueblood]

Blueblood I agree, but I think advantage diminishes rapidly when you move to mid and small sized towns. NYC and LA police among others have incredible capabilities, but they don't represent most cities and towns.

Not likely Bill. I compared "well funded" police forces of both countries. Smaller police forces of US are equally well equipped while the weapon of choice of Indian police in smaller cities is a wooden cane and at the most a Lee-Enfield of the 1960's vintage. More than 80 percent of police members have never operated an automatic rifle. There were CCTV videos of CST, the Mumbai railway station where the initial onslaught took place. Many Railway police constables ran away as they had no weapons. Those who had tried to return the fire but they too jammed since they haven't been used and cleaned since god knows when.

The West jumped the gun when they criticized the performance of NSG during the whole fiasco. People were comparing them with the past performances of American SWATs, GIGN, GSG9 and whatnot, but how many of these forces have faced situation identical to this. These were not some teenagers attacking a high school. They were trained by ISI and SSG(N) and had more tech than your average jihadi.

NSG did more live room clearing drills with hostages inside in less than 48 hours than many forces did in their lifetimes. The attack was deemed as India's 9/11 and so it was. Complete breakdown of the security apparatus.

American SWATs though very well trained are not designed to react to the scale NSG is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operati...er#cite_note-5

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_Missions

I was dumbfounded when I first saw this show. SWAT members of smaller cities were demolishing the SEALs, Green berets, Deltas and Marines Recons.

[davidbfpo]

This anniversary has just passed (26th November 2008) and led to some local commentary. There is a short article in The Times Of India by Vappala Balachandran:http://articles.timesofindia.indiati...olice-response

It opens with:

Security breaches can be prevented only through a combination of measures in which mental anticipation of the possible situation is cardinal.

The US security machinery's pre-9 /11 lapses were described as 'failures in imagination, policy, capabilities and management' by the Kean-Hamilton commission. Despite intelligence alerts since 2006 that a seaborne commando attack on multiple targets in Mumbai was likely, our resistance capacity was not strengthened.

The author has written a longer article for an Indian magazine, Defence & Security Alert, which is not linked on the Web; it is too big to use an attachment, so PM me if required with an email address.

[blueblood]

26/11 villain Ajmal Kasab hanged, Pak stops journalists from entering his village

Pakistani national Ajmal Kasab, the sole surviving terrorist of the Mumbai terror attack of November 26, 2008, was hanged in a Pune jail at 7.30 am on Wednesday, after his mercy plea was rejected by President Pranab Mukherjee earlier this month.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-...e1-962152.aspx


What's disappointing is the western media's use of tag of gunman instead of terrorist and even more disappointing is the Pak media's tag of accused despite the CCTV footage and the confession.

Anyhow, it's better late than never.