November 2008 attack on Mumbai
Behind the Mumbai Attacks
NYTIMES
By Nicholas Kristof
November 29, 2008, 2:50 pm

The educated guess is that the terrorists behind the Mumbai attacks were from Lashkar-e-Taiba or Jaish-e-Muhammad, both Pakistani groups that have focused on Kashmir. The result is that we face a real danger of escalating tensions that will be bad for India and bad for Pakistan and Afghanistan. The risk is that Indian nationalists, such as the hot-headed chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, use the Mumbai attacks to gain ground and be more confrontational toward Pakistan. That in turn would empower Pakistani nationalists and radicals, and we would see more terror attacks in Pakistan and India alike. Moreover, since Afghanistan is one of the fields of competition between India and Pakistan, Afghan’s future would be compromised as well.

That said, Pakistan has to face its responsibility. The Pakistani government, particularly the ISI and other intelligence agencies, have had longstanding links with Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad. Those ties were cut back after pressure from Washington in the aftermath of 9/11, but Pakistan never really cracked down and put either group out of business as it could have. It just told them to pipe down and put pressure on them to behave better, and it curbed infiltration into India.

As I noted in a blog post before the Mumbai attacks, I heard during my trip to Pakistan that the government of Asif Ali Zardari has again allowed more of these infiltrations of militants into Indian Kashmir; it’s not clear to me if that’s because Zardari wants to put pressure on India or create a foreign scapegoat for his own problems, or if he just doesn’t want to spend his political capital tackling jihadis in Pakistan (there’s a view in the Pakistani security forces that it’s best to redirect hotheads toward India so that they don’t bother Pakistani targets).

So Zardari and other Pakistanis are right that the Islamabad government is innocent of any direct involvement in the Mumbai attacks. But I also think that if the government and intelligence agencies were serious about stopping infiltrations, they could. I also think they could be far more aggressive in uprooting Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad. The Pakistani security forces have always tended to see militants as tools to be used in India or Afghanistan, rather than as threats to stability. So I don’t think the Pakistani government is guilty, but I also don’t think it’s quite innocent.

As for India, its harsh violations of human rights in Kashmir — and the brutal anti-Muslim pogroms in Gujarat — have empowered groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba (in much the same way that America’s policies in Guantanamo have empowered Al Qaeda). And India was slow to react to olive branches from General Musharraf, missing the chance to ease tensions in Kashmir. There’ll be a tendency for enraged Indians to want to follow the Dick Cheney model now and fight back, but that Cheney model didn’t work so well for America and I would counsel Indians not to follow it.

At the end of the day, India’s interest is in a calmer, less militant, more economically vibrant Pakistan. The last thing India should want is a western border with the Taliban. When I made references to Kashmir in my first Pakistan column, Indians erupted in anger and asked why they should give up Kashmir to Pakistan. But that’s not what anybody is talking about, and indeed that’s not what Kashmiris want. A starting point is to introduce oversight and transparency in Kashmir, so that security forces don’t rape and torture Kashmiris with impunity. I would also see more trade and tourism ties between the two countries, to support moderates and undermine extremists.

But, alas, I’m afraid we may be on a downward spiral, with Indian and Pakistani nationalists alike gaining ground and empowering the other. I just hope that the Indian business community will step up to the plate and demand moderation and stand up to the Hindu nationalists.

Your thoughts?

The Special Sting of Personal Terrorism
NYTIMES
By ANAND GIRIDHARADAS
November 30, 2008

VERLA, India — This was not terror — not as Indians understood it. This was war.

The killers stormed the streets of Mumbai, India’s financial capital, with machine guns and bags of grenades. They did not strike with the terrorist’s fleeting anonymity. Their work was fastidiously deliberate. It went into a second day, then a third. They took time to ask your nationality and vocation. Then they spared you, or herded you elsewhere, or shot you in the back of your skull.

As a surprise attack became a 48-hour struggle, the burden of responding transferred from the police to soldiers. The language was of war: television anchors spoke of buildings “sanitized” and “flushed out,” of “final assaults” and “collateral damage.” Helicopters hovered over Mumbai, and commandos dropped onto roofs. The grainy television imagery suggested not so much a terrorist attack as the shapeless, omnidirectional chaos of Iraq.

While the hostage situation endured, more was unknown than known. Rumors flew, unconfirmed. Did you hear? They shot all the women at the hotel switchboard. Did you hear? They executed a young mother and her children. Did you hear? They sent a hostage out of the building to get food for their attackers. Truth was complicated; everything blurred.

But what slowly became clear was that this was an attack of especial barbarism, because it was so personal. It was unlike the many strikes of the last many months, bombs left in thronging markets or trains or cars: acts of shrinking cowardice. The new men were not cowards. They seemed to prolong the fight as long as they could. They killed face to face; they wanted to see and speak to their victims; they could taste the violence they made.

A good story has characters, and a terrorist attack without characters tempts a society to forget. A wave of recent Indian attacks, more anonymous and less dramatic, offered little focus for public opinion.

For better or worse, the public has its characters now. As the weekend arrived, it was not clear who the men were, even as India’s government hinted at Pakistani connections. But even without learning their names, it was so easy to imagine them this time, combing the hallways, asking life-or-death questions, pulling women and children from their rooms at midnight.

For a country with no dearth of terrorism in its past, it is perhaps the fleshy immediacy of these men and their deeds that makes this a defining assault — one that separates all attacks of the past from those yet to come. In the television studios, on the roads, in the anguished phone calls of friends to friends, Indians said the words again and again: This is our 9/11.

“It is an Indian variant of 9/11, and today India needs to respond the way America did,” Ravi Shankar Prasad, a member of Parliament from the rightist Bharatiya Janata Party, said on television.

But if this was India’s 9/11, it seemed so only to certain citizens, and not, apparently, to their government.

It took 18 hours for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to come on television. He is a reflective, decent man. But he was emotionless, his mouth moving and nothing else. He knows all too well the history of blaming Pakistan and its militants for attacks, only to come up short on evidence. He said the attacks “probably” had a foreign hand. His most specific idea was “police reform” and the “tightening” of laws to close “loopholes.” He called for “peace and harmony.”

His temperateness helped to keep the ever-present threat of religious riots at bay. But it also seemed to misread the mood of a country that wanted it to be 9/11 — if not in the sense of war and conquest, then in the sense of instant clarity, of the simple feeling that an era had ended and that enough was, at last, enough.

When the video of Mr. Singh’s address was posted on YouTube, many said online what others were saying on the ground. He was “expressionless,” a “brilliant teacher but no leader,” an “ineffective puppet.” One user wrote: “He should have given a strong warning and threat to terrorists and those who support them. Unfortunately he is too soft.”

Nor did the government’s retaliation inspire. The commandos who came at long last and saved the day were heroic, working room by room to retake the two besieged hotels. But India learned thereby that Mumbai, with its 19 million people, lacks commandos of its own. They were flown in from the capital, New Delhi.

Meanwhile, “army sources” leaked to the press that they had warned the government of an impending attack days before, only to be ignored, as usual.

“The scale, intensity and level of orchestration of terror attacks in Mumbai put one thing beyond doubt: India is effectively at war and it has deadly enemies in its midst,” The Times of India, a leading English-language daily, wrote in an editorial published Friday. “The question now,” it added, “is whether the nation can show any serious degree of resolve and coordination in confronting terror.”

The government, in its defense, walks a fine line. Show too little resolve, and attacks happen. Show too much, and you galvanize hatred domestically and exacerbate tensions abroad, notably with Pakistan.

“It is extremely important to understand that the criminal activities of a minuscule group, even if it turns out to have home-grown elements, say nothing about Indian Muslims in general, who are an integral part of the country’s social fabric,” Amartya Sen, the Harvard economist and Indian-born Nobel laureate, wrote in an e-mail message. “Even if it turns out that the Mumbai terrorists had a base in Pakistani territory, India has to take full note of the fact that the bulk of Pakistani civil society is an ally, not an enemy, in the battle against Islamist terrorism, for they too suffer greatly from the violence of a determined minority based in their country.”

On Friday, Pakistan’s prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, agreed to send the powerful chief of his country’s intelligence services to India, to receive any evidence, as a gesture of good will.

People purporting to be the attackers have said they belong to a group called the Deccan Mujahedeen, and have claimed to be waging a war in Islam’s name. It was uncertain whether they are of domestic or foreign origin.

Whichever it is, they have crossed yet another line with these attacks. Islamist militants in India have in recent years lived somewhat apart from the global Islamist struggle. They bombed and killed, but their enemies were Indian Hindus, not “Jews and crusaders,” and their targets were markets and cinema halls that drew Indians, not foreigners.

This attack, in contrast, went after five-star hotels, a popular restaurant and a Jewish community center. The gunmen were reported to show a preference for Britons and Americans as hostages.

With their brutality, their sophistication, their links to the ideology of terrorism elsewhere, these attacks seemed, then, to usher in a new day. Late in the week, as the gunfire crackle trailed off, many Indians appeared to long for a sign that this attack would muster new will.

A text-message moving among Mumbaikars expressed the uniqueness of the now: “Brothers and sisters, it’s time to wake up and do something for the country — however little — related to this or not — start today and continue it through the years — do not forget as easily as we are used to forgetting.”

Many told themselves and each other that this time would change things, just as Americans had told themselves after 9/11. But they knew their own history, and America’s, and they seemed, even as they spoke the words, to disbelieve them already.

Anand Giridharadas, a columnist for The International Herald Tribune, recently completed three and a half years as a correspondent in Mumbai for that newspaper and The New York Times.

WHO IS ADAM VOTING FOR WITH AN OVERSEAS BALLOT?
Adam Gadahn, minus turban, warns of "worse than Septgember 11, 2001" attacks in the future. 

Disaster Plans Include Unthinkable — Replacing Our National Monuments
By DOUGLAS FEIDEN - Monday, January 6, 2003 DAY...
New York — A beacon of freedom that has illuminated the New World for 116 years. A symbol of American democracy and the seat of
government since the 1790s.  A temple of presidential greatness that has stirred hearts and minds for 75 years.  Imagine New York Harbor without the Statue of Liberty. Or Washington without the U.S. Capitol.  Or the heartland of America absent Mount Rushmore.

Unthinkable? In truth, federal officials have spent a lot of time thinking about such nightmarish scenarios since the cataclysmic events of Sept. 11, 2001.  And, quietly, they have been mapping doomsday strategies that could be used to replace or resurrect our national icons in case they are ever damaged or obliterated in terrorist attacks.

The bottom line: Should disaster strike, and a political decision be made to rebuild, exact replicas — or architectural clones — could be
constructed fairly quickly. How do you replicate the 225-ton, 305-foot Lady Liberty? The 288-foot Capitol dome? The 60-foot busts of
Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt?

Deploying high-powered, laser-scanning technology to record the landmarks from every angle, federal workers have been creating three-dimensional digital models of their complex exterior features. They also have scanned part of the ornate interior of the Capitol.

By converting the monuments' unique architecture into geometric maps, they are producing digital archives and computerized databases that can be used to manufacture or rebuild those physical objects.

Capturing every nook and cranny, scanning every curve and jowl, officials have recorded millions of measurements — accurate down to 6 millimeters, or 1/4 of an inch — that are being stitched together to produce comprehensive and finished blueprints.  The 3-D images — recording height, width and depth — will be more detailed than the limited drawings left by Frederic Auguste Bartholdi and Gutzon Borglum, the sculptors of Liberty and Rushmore, respectively. They will also be more complete than the unfinished plans left by the eight principal architects who built the Capitol between 1793 and 1868.

And in a worst-case scenario, the scans could provide the means to replace the heretofore irreplaceable.

“If someone comes along with a suitcase bomb or a briefcase nuke and blows up a chunk of Thomas Jefferson, and his nose falls off, the 3-D representation would allow us to perform major reconstructive surgery on the mountain,” said Don Striker, superintendent of Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota.

The 21st century, computer-imaging technology is being employed to record the entire surface area of the Statue of Liberty. The world-famous lady has posed for millions of photos, but since her creator left no blueprints and only minimal design sketches, replacing her in the event of a catastrophic loss would have been all but impossible. So a team from Texas Tech University was dispatched to document the tone of her copper skin, the undulations of her flowing gown, the muscles in her outstretched arm, the curve of her lips
and the height, width and depth of her wide-open eyes.

Their mission: “Reverse engineering.” That's what they call it when a physical object is the source for blueprints — instead of the other way around.  Armed with a Cyrax 2500 3-D laser scanner that can capture 1,000 images a second — and shooting from 13 positions on the pedestal and about the island — they collected some 200 million data points. Shipped back to Lubbock, Texas, these are now being stitched into a precise, digitized model.

Copies of that 3-D map — which potentially could be used to clone the statue — will be stored in the National Archives, the Library of Congress and a secure federal government vault somewhere in the United States.  “Sept. 11 heightened fears that we could lose this thing — along with other high-profile American icons — to cultural terrorism,” said Glenn Hill, an architecture professor at Texas Tech who heads the scanning team.

Participants described the scanning as insurance that everyone devoutly hopes will never be needed. But if any portion of the statue were destroyed, it could be replicated with great accuracy.  As Hill put it, “The Statue of Liberty as a symbol of freedom will always be
safe for future generations.”

Government officials and private contractors told the New York Daily News that the mapping grew out of prudent contingency planning by the monuments' custodians, not from official White House policy. The projects are consistent with federal directives to ramp up security at the nation's parks.

The National Park Service, which administers both Liberty Island and Mount Rushmore, describes the 3-D scanning as “routine maintenance and good stewardship,” a central part of its mission to help plan for worst-case scenarios and preserve landmarks for future generations.

Officials note that efforts to document Lady Liberty date to the '70s and '80s, and that the scanning project got under way in the spring of 2001 — after American intelligence received information in March 2000 that al-Qaida might strike U.S. landmarks like Liberty.

But after 9-11, the project won a renewed commitment, increased funding, a speedier timetable and access to government helicopters for overhead photography.  Park service officials acknowledge that, today, worst-case planning can mean preparing for a catastrophic loss due to terrorism — and mulling the feasibility of a phoenix-like rebirth.

“Until Sept. 11, the only time we ever faced battles on our soil was in the Civil War, so most of our preparations, historically, were for natural disasters,” said John Burns, deputy chief of the park service's documentation division.

“Since we now face new threats to the touchstones of our heritage, our history and our civilization, we are also now looking at new possibilities in terms of reconstruction.”

Those possibilities were first explored in Japan in 1999, said Geoff Jacobs, a vice president at California-based Cyra Technologies, which makes the Cyrax scanner. After vandals torched a giant Buddha, Tokyo University used the laser system to create a historical record of other Buddhas in case they, too, were targeted for destruction. Unfortunately, the 3-D-mapping technology was not permitted inside Afghanistan before March 12, 2001.  That was the day the Taliban finished dynamiting the two Bamiyan Buddhas, the fifth century statues carved into a mountainside that, at 190 feet, were the world's tallest Buddhas.  Had the ancient sculptures been scanned in time, enough data could have been collected to create exact replicas.

That is precisely what the stewards of America's treasures are now racing to do. At Mount Rushmore, engineers scanned sculptor Borglum's detailed 1-12th scale model of the four Presidents in February 2002. Since an inch on the model translates to a foot on the mountain, the minute recordings could be used to reconstruct the entire granite monument.

The next step is to scan and digitize the four visages — which are 60 feet high and have 11-foot eyes and 20-foot noses — and compare the 3-D map with the representation produced from the sculptor's model.

“We have that icon status,” said Striker, the park superintendent, “and that means we have to be prepared if, heaven forbid, something horrible happens.”

At the U.S. Capitol — one of the world's most symbolically important buildings — officials for 15 months have operated on the theory that the soaring cast-iron dome was the intended bull's-eye of United Flight 93, which crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.  Three days after Sept. 11, Alan Hantman, the architect of the Capitol, hired teams of surveyors to do a laser scan of the massive facade, accurate to less than 1/4 of an inch.  Multiple additions and changes over two centuries had rendered the original blueprints inaccurate.

Barely two weeks after the attack, C.W. Over Inc., a Maryland contractor, sent its workers to the roof to scan images below, then down to the grounds to scan images above, and finally atop other federal office buildings to shoot directly across at the columns and colonnades.

The 3-D modeling that was created, and is still being developed, could be used to restore any portion of the Capitol were it damaged or destroyed in an attack.  A C.W. Over executive briefly discussed the firm's work with the New York Daily News before being asked by Capitol administrators not to talk about the project, apparently for security reasons.

“The architect of the Capitol does not wish to comment,” said Eva Malecik, a spokeswoman for the architect.


From across the pond Tuesday, Dec. 24, 2002...
Philippines blast kills 13;  The MILF has a reputation for hostage taking
At least 13 people have been killed by a bomb blast in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. Another 12 were injured.  The army said that Islamic militants had carried out the attack in the town of Datu Piang, in which a mortar was detonated by remote control as Mayor Saudie Ampatuan walked past.

Only the Moro Islamic Liberation Front "is capable of making powerful home-made bombs", army spokesman Major Julieto Ando told The                Associated Press news agency. MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu denied responsibility for the attack, saying he had relatives among the injured.

The army say they have in custody a witness who saw a suspected follower of an MILF leader plant the bomb.

Blast

Ampatuan was caught in the blast as he returned home from a ceremony in honour of a dead relative.  He died in hospital on injuries to his head and abdomen.  In addition to the mayor - a Muslim - the dead included a town councillor, treasurer and a bodyguard, the army said.

The army deployed about 500 soldiers to the region in response to the attack, Major Ando said, adding that MILF fighters had been spotted in the area.  MILF spokesman Kabalu said the movement had no quarrel with the mayor.

"There is no reason for us to do that because the mayor is not our enemy," he said.

Ampatuan survived an MILF attack along with his father, the governor of Mindanao's Maguindanao province, earlier in the year.

Brother killed

His younger brother, his brother's wife and friend were killed on Saturday following an incident at a disco. His family is reported to have retaliated against two people related to suspects in the attacks.

Army spokesman Ando said Tuedsay's killing of the mayor seems not to be connected with the killing of his brother at the weekend.  The southern
Philippines has been a scene of separatist conflict for 30 years, led by Muslim rebels in the predominantly Catholic country.

The MILF have signed a cease-fire and peace talks with the government are expected to resume in Malaysia next month.  The group denies any connection to the Muslim militant Abu Sayyaf group, which has been accused of links with the al-Qaeda network. 

Saturday, 7 December, 2002, 18:08 GMT
Bombs hit cinemas in Bangladesh

At least 15 people have been killed and more than 200 injured in a series of bomb blasts in a densely populated town in northern Bangladesh.  The explosions took place almost simultaneously at four cinemas in Mymensingh, 110 kilometres (70 miles) from the capital, Dhaka. Officials say the death toll is likely to rise.

There is no indication as to who might have been behind the attacks.

Although the devices were crude, this was a well planned series of attacks which police say was calculated to cause the maximum number of deaths and injuries.  In September, at least two people died and 200 were hurt in bomb blasts at a cinema hall and circus in Satkhira, a district town nearly 180 km (112 miles) south of Dhaka. No one admitted planting those devices.

Successive blasts

The Mymensingh cinemas were packed with about 2,000 people who had gone out after the Eid al-Fitr holiday - the Muslim festival marking the end of the Ramadan month of fasting.

The first explosion came at the end of a show at Ajanta theatre and killed two people instantly.  The others came at five-to-10-minute intervals as shows were still going on.  People ran out of the buildings screaming for help.

"I heard a big bang and then saw many people running for shelter," local journalist Jahangir Alam told the Associated Press news agency.  "There were bodies lying in blood and many injured crying for help."  Hospital authorities have appealed for blood donations to treat the injured.

Al-Qaeda allegations

The attacks are strikingly similar to the ones last September, when a crowded cinema hall and circus were hit on a Saturday evening.  Those attacks came amid controversy over claims that the country had become a safe haven for Taleban and al-Qaeda fighters.  The government and the opposition accused each others' supporters of having been behind them.

The opposition Awami League blamed the attack on a hardline Islamic group with links to the government.  Spokesman Saber Hossain Chowdhury
said there were "certain elements in Bangladeshi society, it may only be very small elements, who are sympathetic towards the Taleban".

Analysts said the Satkhira blasts, in turn, were very similar to attacks during the last year of the previous Awami League government.  Nearly 100 people were killed in a series of bomb attacks on open-air functions, public meetings and on a mosque and a church.  The then Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, accused radical Muslim groups for the attacks. 


Friday, December 06, 2002
King: Understand Islam better
KUALA LUMPUR: The Yang di-Pertuan Agong Tuanku Syed Sirajuddin Tuanku Syed Putra Jamalullail has urged Muslims to have a deeper understanding of Islam to avoid being led into the path of terrorism.

“I am confident that with strong faith, Muslims will not do anything forbidden in Islam and uphold Islam’s image as a religion of unity and universal peace,” the King said in his Hari Raya message over radio and television last night.

Muslims throughout the world had been under tremendous pressure from those who did not understand the teachings of Islam and had been frequently associated with terrorism since Sept 11 last year.                    Terrorism perpetrated by Islamic fanatics all over the world had given rise to much misconception to the extent of Muslims being labelled as terrorists and terrorist sympathisers.  These extremist groups neither understand nor cherish the teachings of Islam which does not condone conflicts but promotes the spirit of tolerance among mankind.

The King noted that Malaysia’s security forces had identified and taken action against several groups which could endanger national security through their un-Islamic activities.  He expressed hope that Islamic nations would be able to co-operate and emerge as a group that had the voice and influence to safeguard the interest of Muslims.  Co-operation and a strong bond of unity would be of help to Muslims and other Islamic nations in need of assistance such as Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Islamic nations continue to be weak and thus their voice at the world stage has no strong influence,” he said.

Tuanku Syed Sirajuddin said Muslims would not be able to play a more effective role to ensure fellow Muslims were not oppressed so long as they were weak and unable to co-operate with one another.  The King and the Raja Permaisuri Agong Tuanku Fauziah Tengku Abdul Rashid wished all Muslims “Selamat Hari Raya” and hoped they would use this occasion to forgive one another and strengthen their brotherhood.

The King also urged his non-Muslim subjects to visit their Muslim friends and share with them the joy of Hari Raya. –Bernama