The nightmare on television screens is real
Just returned from the Oberoi where hundreds are still inside – Indians, foreigners, cooks and cleaners. London in 2005, Mumbai trains 2006.
Each time I follow the same movements – learn what, locate where, retrieve family, check team, do phoners, make frantic calls with London desks.
And then reflect… strangely I was in both hotels just hours before Wednesday’s attacks.
Heavy security at the Taj in place since Islamabad Marriot bombing had just been lifted. As I entered to pick up a cake at 6 p.m., I pushed my way around a metal detector. I was in a hurry, the security guard gave me a knowing glance.
At 6:30 p.m. I was at the Oberoi – I walked in for a haircut (I have a thing for the hotel’s traditional barber shop). In the lobby two heavily decorated Maharashtra police officers chatting. One carrying a wooden baton with shiny metal tips. How odd it looked – what would it be used for I wondered… a marching band?
As I waited for an elevator down to the shop, I listened in on three French women chatting about shopping – the barber shop was its usual calm – one of the quietest places in the city – and just 15 minutes in and out.
As I made my way home through Mumbai’s insane traffic I could feel my blood pressure rising… it happens every day.
Sophistication and savagery in Ahmedabad
One of the most striking things about the weekend’s bomb attacks in Gujarat was the mixture of savagery and sophistication.
Savagery because of the way a second wave of bombs were detonated at a hospital, apparently to target the crowds of concerned relatives who had gathered there. Had they been watching Contract, a recently released Bollywood film with a similar plotline?
Sophistication because of the way the coordinated attack was planned and executed without the intelligence agencies getting a sniff of it, even though dozens of people must have been involved.
It also looks as though the IP address of an American living in Mumbai was hacked to send an email just before the first blasts. Perhaps the perpetrators remembered how Daniel Pearl’s kidnappers were traced in 2002 from a email sent from a cybercafe in Karachi. This time the sender of the email will be harder to trace.
The bombers also stayed one step ahead of the police by not using mobile phones to detonate Saturday’s blast. That allowed the bombers to detonate the second set of bombs without having to worry about the mobile phone network being closed down (as police in Bangalore did on Friday). It could also will rob the police of some potentially valuable leads.
By reportedly using old, rented bicycles instead of newly bought ones, as they did in Jaipur, the bombers may also have covered their tracks more carefully.
The email from the Indian Mujahideen was professionally put together, even if its message was one of hatred. In it, the group insisted that “each and every Mujahid belongs to this very soil of India”, and mocked the “cunning ones who call themselves the ‘Intelligence Bureau’”.
I think the cast system and rich poor gap,Approx. 300million people live below the poverty level are the real problems of India. These problems will not go away by blaming others.
Timing of Jaipur blasts will raise suspicion of Pakistani hand
Are militants, or even hawks within the Pakistani establishment, trying to undermine the peace process with India, now that President Pervez Musharraf has removed his uniform and civilians are squabbling for power?
The dust has scarcely settled on another horrific bomb attack in India, and the investigation has only just begun into the synchronised blasts in Jaipur that killed around 60 people .
It is still far too early to be drawing any firm conclusions, but the timing of the blasts is already making some people wonder whether Pakistan was involved.
The explosions came a week before India‘s foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee was due to visit Islamabad to review the peace process, his first visit since a new, civilian government took over in Pakistan.
It also came just a few days after some of the worst violence this year in Kashmir . India was unhappy that its soldiers came under heavy fire from Pakistani last Thursday along the Line of Control as armed militants tried to sneak into Kashmir .
It was also ten years since India conducted five nuclear tests, on May 11 and 13, 1998.
Now that the army is no longer running Pakistan, is the powerful military intelligence agency, the ISI, flexing its muscles again and warning its new civilian “bosses” to abandon the cause of Kashmir at their peril?
How long Indian keep blaming Pak for the problems they have in their society or country,like cast, injustice in ruling other ehnics, unfair class systems, poverty. It is time for Indian to face reality and fix these very difficult problems.
speaking from a civilian perspective, i must say i’m so disappointed in Muslims. They allow this sort of terrorism to spread throughout their commumities and do nothing but try to defend their religion after these deadly deeds are done. They condem them sure, but what do they do after the fact. Nothing! It’s the responsibility of the Muslims to control and stop this fanaticism amongst their people. To sit back and continue with their lives and cry over their youth giving their lives for some crazy group, is just a bad as picking up a gun and participating in the henious acts. There’s no way i will ever respect this Muslim religion.