Security officials and cleanup crews are now combing through the
carnage in Mumbai, following last week’s terrorist attacks in the city.
As the citizens of this vast metropolis seek to restore some semblance
of normalcy to their lives, it is important to probe the sources of the
violence in Mumbai, and consider the attacks’ implications for regional
security in South Asia.
How and why did the Mumbai attacks occur? Information at this stage is still incomplete. Nonetheless, a few points seem clear.
There is considerable evidence that Pakistan-based entities were
behind the Mumbai attacks. The sole surviving terrorist is Pakistani.
He claims that the attackers trained with the militant group
Lashkar-e-Taiba for months inside Pakistan prior to launching their
assault. And Indian officials have determined that the terrorists took
a boat from Karachi to the Mumbai coast, leaving behind cell phones
that had been used to call Pakistan.
None of this directly implicates the Pakistani government in the
Mumbai attacks. It does, however, suggest that Pakistan bears some
measure of responsibility for recent events; the Pakistani government
is either unable or unwilling to prevent its territory from being used
to launch terrorist attacks against India.
In fact, Pakistan has a long history of supporting anti-Indian
militancy. For example, during the 1980s, the Pakistani Inter-Services
Intelligence Directorate (ISI) began to provide training, arms, and
financial and logistical support to insurgent groups fighting Indian
rule in Kashmir. This transformed what had been a mostly spontaneous,
local uprising into a low-intensity Indo-Pakistani war. Despite
repeated Indian diplomatic entreaties and military threats, Pakistan
has never fully ended its support for such groups.
These outside links notwithstanding, the complexity and organization
of the Mumbai attacks suggest that they also employed local Indian
support. Thus, even if the operation originated in Pakistan, the
terrorists may well have had the assistance of disaffected Indian
Muslims.
Since independence, many Muslims have thrived in India, availing
themselves of educational opportunities, achieving high levels of
prosperity, and blending into the country’s vast, pluralistic society.
On a day-to-day basis they have faced little religious discrimination.
Less affluent segments of the Muslim community, however, have not
been so fortunate. They have long endured discrimination in aspects of
everyday life ranging from employment to housing opportunities. Past
generations acquiesced in these humiliations. Today’s lower middle
class Muslims, however, are better educated and more politically aware
than their predecessors, and thus less prone simply to accept their
fate.
Against this social backdrop, two incidents have helped to spur a
process of Islamist radicalization within India. The first was a spate
of anti-Muslim riots that swept across much of northern and western
India after Hindu zealots destroyed the Babri Mosque in 1992. Hundreds
of Muslims died at the hands of Hindu mobs while the police looked on.
The second episode was a 2002 pogrom in the state of Gujarat that
occurred after Hindu pilgrims died in a train fire allegedly set by
Muslim miscreants. Few, if any, individuals involved these incidents
have been prosecuted. Not surprisingly, these two episodes helped to
radicalize a small but significant minority of Indian Muslims.
The Indian government has failed to devise a set of policies to
address these social roots of Islamist zealotry. In addition, many of
India’s state-level police forces have not mustered the requisite
intelligence, forensic and prosecutorial tools necessary to suppress
the resulting violence. Instead they have resorted to the random
arrests of young Muslims, employed tainted evidence, and abused
draconian anti-terrorist laws. Such actions have only worsened the
situation, making it easier for foreign militants to recruit domestic
sympathizers inside India.
What are the Mumbai attacks’ implications for South Asian security?
The Manmohan Singh government has sought to avoid confrontation with
Pakistan in the wake of several recent terror attacks with potential
Pakistani links. Instead, it has preferred to maintain regional
stability in hopes of achieving continued economic growth. The Mumbai
attacks, however, undercut this rationale for restraint; by attacking
international targets in India’s financial hub, they threaten to
inflict significant harm on the Indian economy. Also, considerable
domestic political pressure for strong anti-Pakistani action is likely
to emerge, both from the opposition Bharatia Janata Party (BJP), which
has long accused the government of being soft of Pakistan, and from
ordinary voters outraged by the attacks.
In 2001, a failed assault on the Indian parliament by
Pakistan-backed militants managed to kill only five people and was over
in the space of a morning. In response, India mobilized roughly 500,000
forces along the Indo-Pakistani border, triggering a major militarized
crisis with Pakistan. The Mumbai attacks killed and wounded hundreds,
and lasted for nearly three days. Given the scale of the violence, as
well as the economic and domestic political factors discussed above,
the Indian government will be hard-pressed to avoid a reaction similar
to 2001 – particularly if the evidence from Mumbai continues to point
toward Pakistan. Given that both India and Pakistan possess nuclear
weapons, the stakes in any ensuing confrontation will be enormous.
Nuclear weapons will give both sides strong incentives to behave at
least somewhat cautiously, in order to prevent a crisis from escalating
too far. But they will also leave less room for error, making the costs
of miscalculation potentially catastrophic.
Will a serious Indo-Pakistani crisis emerge from the Mumbai attacks,
or will the Indian government manage to continue its policy of
restraint, even in the face of such a brazen provocation? The pieces
would appear to be in place for a serious regional confrontation. But
only the coming days will tell for sure.
Sumit Ganguly is the director of research at the Center on
American and Global Security at Indiana University, Bloomington, and an
adjunct senior fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy in
Los Angeles.
Paul Kapur is an associate professor of National Security
Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and
an affiliate at Stanford University’s Center for International Security
and Cooperation.
