We are at it again...

60 hrs, 250+ dead and the peace shattered again. It's Mumbai this time. But here’s what’s going to happen. Glowing tributes will be showered upon the brave men of the armed forces who laid down their lives, we the Indians will fulminate for a good week or so… and then we will be back to our mundane lives. Just waiting for our peace to be shattered again. Maybe not all of us. The kin of the 250+ dead will have another path to take. The one of reconciling with the fate that their loved ones went out that day and never came back alive.



It is needless to say that this would be a good time to cut all relations with our neighbor and possibly go start a war too. It would be a great idea if we could pinpoint terror camps sitting in PoK and elsewhere on the soil of our neighbor and give them a 24 hr ultimatum to eliminate these facilities. Failure to comply would allow us a reason to respond in a manner deemed fit to protect our sovereignty. I guess most of the camps are within 150 km of our borders. I wonder what a 1000 kgs of napalm laden Prithvi missiles could do to these camps. I guess we won’t see that. Guess that takes a Texas governor who ends up as President of a nation which does that. But what we need the most, beyond wishful thinking, are the lessons learnt in this incident. All the mistakes that occurred in the run-up to this day need to be rectified. Some of those were seemingly so easily “duh you didn’t?”


Start with the response. The ATS chief had to ask his men to arrange for a bulletproof vest. Arrange? Doesn’t every man in the ATS have full battle gear? Then the hotels. The terrorists had enough ammunition to battle out 60 hrs? Unconfirmed reports say they stockpiled the weapons beforehand. Ever heard of X-ray systems? Those scan baggage at the airport? How about the police response to the Cama location. Residents had to get help from Navy barracks first after the police was a no-show for over an hour. This from a police force of a city that is regularly targeted by terrorism? The NSG did a great job but the big question. Why did they have to wait to get to the city (and reportedly travel to the locations by BEST buses) before taking stock of the situation? Ever heard of computers and internet which could have been used to give details of the plan and layout of their targets while they were airborne? Lastly, waiting for day break to storm the hotels. Why doesn’t the team have night vision goggles? And don’t tell me that the US is not ready to sell them. If the terrorists can procure weapons illegally, what’s stopping us from getting this kind of gear? Questions questions… I don’t see them answered, hope someone does try to.



The problem with countering terrorism in the guerilla form of warfare is that it is hard to counter beforehand and even harder when it is ongoing. The objective of each individual involved in the attack was to take lives. Our forces were put on back foot since their primary objective would have been to save those lives. Instead, if they were instructed to eliminate the hostile threat, irrespective of the loss of life, we could have sent back a stronger message and achieved a faster response. But such an approach would only be useful if we were also able to ensure that the masterminds would not be able to walk away alive and our leaders would ensure retribution at a later date. Given that our leaders are not capable of this, we should be happy with the lower body count. A small compromise for our inability to go elect the right people into power and opposition.



Bottom line is… extremism works… because the greatest human weakness is that we can be convinced too easily to kill or be killed for the flimsiest cause. Maybe the answer would be systematic elimination of individuals who preach extremism. Or maybe we missed something about the Gandhian message about non-violence and peace. If only the people with nothing to lose had something to cherish, something they would not want to lose, we could see a change. That would somehow make the idea of 72 virgins in Paradise not exactly the most lucrative one. Till then, if Paradise is where they want to go, let’s give them a helping hand!