Mumbai Attacks: Tactics

Deciding how to separate posts about the Mumbai attacks is a difficult prospect - to tackle the entire enterprise in one fell swoop would be extraordinarily lengthy for you, the reader, but focusing on any one aspect at a time potentially ignores the issues’ inter-relatedness. 

Here is my best attempt to cut a delicate path between insightful brevity and complex analysis.  I am going to start from the tactical level in this post, and work my way up through strategy, responsible groups, and geo-political implications.

Operatives:

The perpetrators conducted a series of simultaneous small arms attacks attacks through Mumbai, as you can see on the map above. 

It is difficult, in my experience, to count up the exact number of operatives.  Press accounts tend to paint confusing pictures by reporting confirmed participants, or by sometimes double-counting operatives’ participation when multiple attacks occur.

By my count, there were probably just under 25 operatives.  I arrive at this number because there were 15 life-jackets found in the zodiac boats in addition to eight potential operatives hunkering down in a flat in Mumbai.  Also, I believe there were eight targets hit, and you would need at least two operatives per target in a small arms attack, in addition to perhaps four or five for the larger venues.

[And as an aside, it's funny to think that potentially suicidal terrorist operatives are safety-conscious enough to wear life-vests before tearing through India.  But the life jackets are an indication of the number of people the zodiac could hold, rather than a statement about Lashkar-e-Tayyiba's (or LeT) affinity to water-wings.]

Coordination

The media points out that the simultaneous nature of the attacks is a hallmark of al Qaeda.  True enough.  But I would say that simultaneous attacks are no longer limited to al Qaeda - rather, they were pioneered by AQ and the rest of the terrorism world saw how well they worked, and copied them.  Therefore, the simultaneous nature is now “en vogue” as a successful attack method; I would discount it as evidence that AQ specifically directed these attacks.  (Of course, AQ could have been involved, but the simultaneous nature of the attacks isn’t as damingly relevant as it once was.)

Objectives

These attacks were aimed at the Taj Hotel, Oberoi Hotel, a Jewish center, train station, the Leopold Cafe, a cinema, and a hospital.  Those targets do not send a crystal clear message about the group’s intention.  While stories of terrorists singling out American and British passport holders are sure to ignite speculation that there is some sort of al Qaeda connection to the attacks, again, I’m not so sure. 

Rather, historically LeT’s primary modus operandi has been to strike the Indian government over the Kashmiri issue.  I’ll opine that LeT is actually sticking to that broad objective, but doing so in a new way - through India’s pocketbook.  Amongst the dead were a broad selection of nationalities - Israelis, Americans, French, Australians, Germans, Japanese, Canadians, British Cypriots, and Italians; the hotels and restaurants hit catered to a foreign crowd; train stations and hospitals are important pieces of economic infrastructure. 

It could be that LeT is trying to hit the Indian economy by scaring off international tourism and foreign direct investment.  Whether that was a smart objective is, of course, debatable:

“It seems unlikely that the terrorist attacks will have much of an impact on the Indian economy” said senior currency strategist Win Thin at Brown Brothers Harriman in New York in a research note. “However, it will certainly sour investor sentiment at a time when it was already poor. And the attacks come at a time when the economy is slowing and is the most vulnerable it has been in years.”

But that doesn’t mean they weren’t trying. 

Oh, and though the Jewish center doesn’t seem to fit in with the international economic side of the hypothesis, I guess that’s the outlier… It was probably attacked just because the LeT doesn’t like Jews.  Seriously. 

Maritime capability:

Lashkar-e-Tayyiba is well-known throughout the intelligence community to possess a maritime capability.  I used to work for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service as a counter-terrorism analyst.  Even though LeT isn’t explicitly interested in targeting the United States, terrorist networks - no matter how closely they’re affiliated with one another - watch other groups’ innovations and copy the successful ones.  Therefore, we monitored LeT.

Because the high seas provide an additional layer of stealth - ie, searching for a small suspected vessel can be like looking for that needle in the haystack - groups that successfully employ a maritime component to an attack tend to re-use it.  Al Qaeda, for example, first attempted to attack the USS THE SULLIVANS in Yemen in 2000.  They failed, but learned from their mistakes and went on to attack the USS COLE and MV LIMBURG in 2000 and 2002, respectively. 

The “mothership” concept - a larger vessel in transported smaller zodiac boats across a large body of water - has gotten a lot of attention in the media as well.  Here again, terrorists copy one another - off the top of my head, Somali pirates used the concept off the Horn of Africa in 2005.

Complexity

This mothership was apparently hijacked off the Pakistani coast, and possibly brought the operatives in from Pakistan.  If true, that, in concert with the multiple targets and successful execution of the attacks, is an awesome testament to the fact that this was a professional job from top to bottom.  A quiet hijacking, inconspicuous transportation of operatives and arms, and eventual near-flawless execution indicates a high level of complexity that depends on meticulous planning, financing, training, and a bit of luck.

The Man Responsible?

Keep an eye on this name: Dawood Ibrahim (left).  He’s a Pakistani terrorism financier who has collaborated in the past with LeT.  Want to know some other interesting tidbits about him?  Well, he has been on the run from the Indian Security Services since 1993 for his involvement in the… wait for it… the 1993 Mumbai bombings.  Where, possibly uncoincidentally, he transported operatives, arms and explosives in that attack from Karachi on a ship. 

Starting to sound like a familiar song?  Given the level of complexity I just outlined, it would take a personality like Ibrahim to help pull it off.

There’s nowhere near enough evidence to make the charge against Ibrahim, but if I were working the case, he’s who I would be investigating.  Precious few news sources have speculated about his involvement thus far, but I’d expect that chorus to grow in the coming days.