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Many Unanswered Questions in Mumbai

By Larry Johnson on November 30, 2008 at 8:36 PM in Current Affairs

(bumped up by Lena)

The emerging details about the attack on Mumbai continue to build the circumstantial case that the attackers received significant and extensive support from people who most likely were a part of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency. Consider what we are not told about the hijacked ship that took the ten terrorists to the shore of Mumbai:

The story of the Mumbai terror attacks likely began when a private fishing trawler with five crew members set sail from the Arabian sea off the coast of Porbandar in India’s western Gujarat state on 13 November.
Sometime during the next 12 days, the trawler was taken over at sea by at least 10 young men, aged between 20 and 23 years, carrying backpacks and bags, according to sources in the Mumbai police, coastguard, and commandos.

Daily Mail has a different version and more details

Kasab and the nine other terrorists, who communicated using BlackBerry mobiles, began their journey to Mumbai on November 21.

Initially unarmed, they left an isolated beach near Karachi in a small boat, before being picked up the following day by a larger vessel.

At this point they were each given eight hand grenades, an AK-47 rifle, an automatic pistol and ammunition. And in anticipation of a lengthy siege, they also carried dried fruit.

Kasab told police that the group then hijacked a fishing trawler bearing the name Kuber near the maritime boundary between Pakistan and India.

Now, if you are already on a boat capable of carrying ten men, a couple of zodiacs, ammunition, explosives, and grenades, they why do you need another boat?

Because you want to hide the fact that the boat you were originally on hailed from Pakistan. While the amount of equipment involved was relatively limited, it was more than ten men could carry at once. They had help. Transferring uninflated Zodiacs, backpacks, weapons, and ammo on the high seas from one boat to another is not an easy task either. The people involved had prior experience.

Next, we are given this curious detail:

Three speedboats met the Kuber a mile and a half from the Mumbai seafront on Wednesday. After waiting for the light to fade, they moved off, later transferring to two inflatable dinghies to go ashore.

If three speedboats come out to the ship, why not use those to get to shore rather than inflate two zodiacs? Plus, this means there was communication between the men on board the Kuber and the people on land at Mumbai.

We do not know if the attackers had been in Mumbai previously to select targets and conduct surveillance or if they had local guides who had performed those tasks for the terrorists. What is clear is that one does not simply look at a map and a videotape of Mumbai to know how to get from point A to point B. Think about your own experience of going to a large city, New York or Los Angeles, for the first time. It is confusing and disorienting. And if it is dark then the task of figuring out where you are and where you need to go is made even more difficult.

The Daily Mail’s account of what happened after the boats reached shore underscores the prior planning implicit in this operation:

The two groups then split up. Four men went to to the Taj hotel, two to the Jewish centre of Nariman House, Kasab and another man set off by taxi towards the railway station, and two headed for the Leopold restaurant.

While his colleagues were executing hostages at the Taj, Kasab and Ismail first opened fire with their assault rifles at around 10.20pm, killing dozens of people standing at Chhatrapati Shivaji railway station.

Then they hijacked a police 4×4, killing the two officers inside. Kasab told investigators they continued their killing spree by attacking a petrol station and blowing up a taxi before being stopped.

Left unexplained is who hit the Oberoi Hotel? Did the two who hit the Leopold cross the peninsula to the Oberoi? And the other two who hit the train station headed south to the Oberoi as well? We still do not know. Even with four people, the task of taking and holding hostages is very difficult. Once you are inside the hotel (or other enclosed space) your ability to maneuver becomes quite limited. This also limits your ability to kill large numbers of people. Folks are scattered and can take evasive action or hide behind locked doors. If the attackers use their ammo shooting their way through locked doors they would quickly run out of bullets. It does not appear they had pre-positioned ammo caches.

I continue to believe that the circumstantial evidence points to an ISI role in planning and conducting this operation.