Operation ‘Incompetence’ - India’s Response To Terrorism In Mumbai
I was playing WoW when one of my guildmates mentioned blasts in Mumbai. Some idiot is lighting crackers for yet another festival, I thought to myself but the guy said it was bombs. I went to check the usual news channels and they were speculating that it was gang warfare. A few minutes later they claimed it was a terrorist attack… by Nigerians. What was puzzling was the reports of gunfire from many different parts of the city and so it did seem like gang warfare.
The next few hours demonstrated how utterly unprepared Indian security forces and the Government were to tackle the situation. Chaos reigned as frantic reports of attacks from seven different parts of the city reached people. Huge mobs of civilians roamed the city yelling and pointing as policemen stood by helpless and confused. You can depend upon Indians to congregate in huge numbers in dangerous situations instead of going home (the obvious thing to do).
Hours later some officials started arriving and took in the scene at their own pace. I watched as one guy slowly took out flak jackets from the boot of an Ambassador and handed them out. I saw a lot of policemen with their World War 2 rifles when it was clear that the attackers had assault rifles.
From then on it was carnage as poorly equipped and armed policemen went to their deaths versus an enemy they were never trained to engage. The job of the police was to establish a perimeter and wait for people prepared to handle the situation. But of course this is India where cops have gotten used to harassing civilians, taking bribes and conspiring with anti-social elements and politicians to make money.
Where is our elite counter-terrorism unit, I wondered? Where is the Indian equivalent of SWAT or Spetsnaz? Then the ATS (Antiterrorism Squad) arrived on the scene. I should have known it would be a cruel joke. The ATS turned out to be plainclothes cops with kevlar vests and automatic rifles. The vests were procured from somewhere because kevlar vests are not issued to ATS men. How pathetic is that? Almost everyone was chatting away on their cell phones and I wondered if these people have even heard of shortwave radios and secure frequencies. India gives 600 million US dollars to help Afghanistan but law enforcement officials don’t get proper gear.
Finally the Army arrived and and some NSG (National Security Group) commandos were flown in all the way from Delhi. The level of incompetence in the general area dropped a bit as some semblance of order descended upon the place. A whole day later police managed to get the civilians under control and establish a perimeter.
Tall claims of rescued hostages were made and large numbers throw to the media. The truth was that most of those people were not held hostage but simply trapped in different parts of the buildings under attack and had never even seen the terrorists. They were rescued from the building, yes, but calling them hostages implies that the terrorists were holding them. Some of the rescued mentioned that people with British and American passports were taken away by the terrorists. See the worth of an Indian; even the terrorists attacking the country wanted people from other countries as hostages.
By the third day the NSG and the Army were ready to retake the buildings held by the terrorists. They were brave and trained but apparently they couldn’t quite grasp the hostage rescue part of the mission. As they merrily stormed the buildings terrorists were chucking grenades and killing hostages.
You think I’m not being fair to the NSG? Israel commented that the premature storming of besieged places risked hostages, intelligence gathering before engaging terrorists was a failure and that the entire operation was botched up. So it’s not just me but a country experienced in dealing with terrorists thinks so.
And this was the scene at Nariman House:
Indian television had reported jubilantly just after sunset Friday in Mumbai that the siege of the Nariman Chabad House in Mumbai was over, and that all the terrorists were killed — but suddenly, in a dramatic reversal, announced that authorities ordered the wildly cheering crowd to move back: it wasn’t really over after all.
Government commandos had begun to exit the badly damaged building smiling broadly and flashing the “thumbs up” sign at the applauding crowd in the street, with one commander telling the media that the fierce fire fight was finished, with three terrorists dead. A loud explosion, probably from a grenade or rocket launcher, had been heard moments earlier on the top floor of the five-story building, which was badly damaged.
The situation was termed “utter chaos” by journalists, as darkness combined with crowds and confusion to create a mess for security forces who were trying to figure out whether there were terrorists left in the building, and if so, where they were and how to either capture or kill them.
Then it was back to the Taj on day four (or was it five? I lost count) to flush out the last remaining terrorist. Or there might be more than one. No there’s two. Maybe three. But not more than six. If you don’t know how many are inside stop speculating.
Finally Operation ‘Incompetence’ drew to a close and left behind smoking buildings and a lot of dead people - people who had nothing to do with the cause the terrorists claimed to be fighting for. And you know what will come out of this? Better security? More funding and training for security forces? A thorough investigation to find out what went wrong? Ha ha, don’t be ridiculous! This is India. Welcome to India.
He is your friend!!
November 29th, 2008 at 10:59 pm
True
But blame our politicians
instead of blaming india
India is a country ruled by dumb asses
thats all
BTW next terrorist attack, we can go for rescue wat do u say???
we got exp than loacl police playing CS CZ
November 29th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
After almost every attack, the Government has an answer that they had intelligence reports of a possible attack on so and so city. I don’t understand what they were doing with it.
And of course, news channels had a field day out there. And also a possible reason for many of the hostages death. Do you know they had awesome cinematic background score for news clips?
November 30th, 2008 at 12:25 am
I saw a lot of policemen with their World War 2 rifles when it was clear that the attackers had assault rifles.
LOL.
Clever terrorist but they always die at the end. Also one think fucked up is “its the army people who are inside the building and they dont even care about their life and try to rescue people inside and kill the terrorist bastards but its the politicians who comes and give commentary to media proudly saying we finished the task”. WTF? its the army people did the rescue job and politicians were just simply sitting and watching.”
I think i’m not going to comment much about this cos i’m going to post a blogpost about this. So see HERE also.
November 30th, 2008 at 12:41 am
Marc, you forgot the part where the people were cheering, blocking the way and waving at the camera.
@Vijay
Who votes for them?
November 30th, 2008 at 1:13 am
I thought it was gang warfare at first. Sad, no? A bad situation exacerbated by incompetence.
November 30th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Expected post from you.
November 30th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
I think they took the move of attacking the terrorists at right time coz the terrorists were planning to take the Taj down. But they could have gathered more information (I accept that coz they had more than a day before they made any move). Did you see whats going on now after this??? Troops could be multiplied at LoC now!!! The rail and other means of transportation is going to be cut from India to Pakistan! Talks with Pakistan suspended!
November 30th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Alayan, we probably know more strategy from playing games and watching movies than these clueless policemen.
Arun, it’s true. After every attack they say they had intelligence about it. The problem is they don’t have the power to do anything about it. There will be lots of red tape to get past to get even one M1 Garand. I’m happy that news channels were there to cover all the fumbling.
Hari, the terrorists are completely prepared to die. They know they will die and they are not afraid. That is what makes them so dangerous because they become utterly fearless.
Adithya, it goes without saying. They do that in every situation, from the release of a movie to a bomb alert.
vinod, nothing will happen. Don’t worry. Politicians are spineless people who will do nothing that compromises their position of power.
December 1st, 2008 at 8:51 am
1. The police are utter imbeciles, the media keeps taking about high number of police casualties and about how all those high level police officers died bravely in the line of duty… What the hell were they thinking ? a bunch of cops who are badly armed and armored rushing into a prepared ambush against a well trained, well armed and highly motivated fanatical enemy.
The primary function of the ATS , despite the misleading name is to probe bomb blasts and arrest those responsible (oddly enough they suck at that as well.. a few people are arrested and mock trials are held and they drag the case for years on end till everyone forgets what happened and the perpetrators get away scott free). if those idiots had established a perimeter and pinned down the terrorists and limited their mobility while waiting for the professionals to arrive they would have saved a lot of lives and also remained alive themselves. but instead they chose to get themselves killed and due to that miscalculation got a lot of innocent people killed in the process.
Also 20 - 25 terrorists attacked the city and at last count there were 9 confirmed killed and 1 confirmed prisoner so where are the rest of them? probably on their way to their next target all because those incompetent police morons fumbled around cluelessly.
2. I completely disagree to saying NSG should have waited to gather more intel before storming the targets.
there was no possibility whatsoever of gathering intel. The terrorists wernt open to negotiations and never revealed their numbers, and there was no way to correlate the eye witness reports. the entire interior of the buildings were in darkness as the power was cut and since the terrorists knew the layout much better than the rescuers and had prepared ambush points no recon team could be sent in advance.
Also you never know if the terrorists would execute the hostages if they made contact with the recon team.
So the only option was to go in force and eliminate the terrorists as quickly as possible. A job which the NSG and the Marine Commandos did Splendidly, given the circumstances.
3. one thing i find really funny is the fact that they had the NSG rappel from a chopper onto the roof of Nariman house… i mean the roof of the house next door was full of more commandos and the walls of the two roofs were touching each other. one of the commandos even jumped over to secure the rope for the guys in the chopper… so why didnt they all just go over the wall ? which would have been much simpler rather than loading up a chopper and then flying all the way out there and then rappeling down.
The worlds eye was on mumbai and i suppose the people in charge of the operation didnt want to disappoint the crowd and the media. Maybe next time they will have helicopter gunships hovering around and fighter jets buzzing around as well.
anyways kudos to all who read the whole post and made it all the way down.
December 1st, 2008 at 12:27 pm
The part about the intelligence gathering is Israel’s view and not my own.
And it looks like most of the terrorists either got away or weren’t meant to be seen so who knows what’s next. I have zero confidence that they’ll be caught within the next decade. They’ll go to Pakistan and India will send them monthly reminders to extradite them (see Dawood Ibrahim) which will be completely ignored since everyone knows India is all about talk and no action.
You’re saying there was easier access to the roof? That’s just hilarious! They must have bought the chopper just for show.
December 3rd, 2008 at 12:22 pm
It’s funny you mention the Spetznaz for urban warfare after the Moscow theatre hostage debacle. They killed over 100 of their own people.
December 3rd, 2008 at 11:31 pm
I heard policemen at CST weren’t armed, and were shot dead like dogs.
@Xavier:
Good points! Esp about police waiting for commandos.
@Marc
There was an article about the vests policemen had. They were meant to protect against 9mm pistols. The police force was cribbing that not enough money is spent on their security. Hell!
I also feel too much info was let out. Who the hell told terrorists NSG and Marine Commandos are coming in? And why the hell did they let the media broadcast everything? THe media shouldn’t be allowed to use cameras.
December 4th, 2008 at 2:17 am
Suren, those people died because Moscow does not negotiate with terrorists. There were no questions raised about the competency of the Spetsnaz.
Arun M, I pointed out (to my dad) on the first day that their body armor would not stop rounds from an assault rifle. It’s not the media’s fault but the fault of the police who don’t understand basic things such as establishing a secure perimeter.
December 4th, 2008 at 3:05 am
Here’s a related BBC article George linked to:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7760460.stm
You can see that I wasn’t joking when I said the police were armed with World War 2 rifles.
December 7th, 2008 at 1:43 am
I have been wronged, I am unable to log in.
Anyway, Suren, you were talking about Chechen militant theatre debacle? I remember that. Pretty much got the idea that they used some chemical weapon (Kolokol-1, I remember reading).
I don’t want my government experimenting on me. I’ll settle for being ignored.
December 10th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
The worse thing is that the person who died in this attack were given a compensation of 5 lakhs. But the Government is able to give 3 crores to a person winning for himself in Olympics. This is where India lives. This will continue…
December 31st, 2008 at 12:26 pm
This is India!!!