Attacks on Bombay

Published: 29/11/2008

Indian Attacks
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

In the immediate aftermath of the attacks on Mumbai, wild speculations swirled, furious cyclones that threw up windy and wild theories, charged conspiracies and noisy condemnation. Inevitable perhaps, just human nature responding fearfully to sudden and unspeakable violence. The terrorists cleaved the body, heart and soul of this cosmopolitan, enterprising hub which draws to its bosom the richest and most wretched of the earth. What they did coldly in hotels, cafes, streets and the Jewish Centre was as atrocious as the killings in Beslan. But as the days pass and the panic subsides, it is surely the duty of all world citizens to confront truths, however inconvenient.

Instead we see a scandalous passing of the buck. Can’t be, won’t be, not our native sons, say India, Pakistan and Britain as they set about impugning each other explicitly and implicitly. It is a form of post-trauma nationalism that can grip wounded nations and was most vividly manifested in the US after 9/11. Meanwhile millions of Muslims, also traumatised, habitually revisit sites of unending conflict- Palestine, Kashmir, Afghanistan and Iraq- or list other legitimate grievances to explain away ( to themselves and others) each successive act of Islamicist violence.

Denial and obfuscation once again stops us from examining who the killers were, why they did what they did, the places and times they pick. It is not to exonerate them or forgive them, but to acquire vital data and deeper understanding of the international networks and the mental states of the perpetrators, their religious and political ideologies. This essential information cannot be extracted through torture or the outlandish ‘evidence’ of anti-Muslim, neo-con think tanks whose agenda we know all too well.

Years on from the Al Queda assault on the US, with two wars still going on, Guantanamo Bay and other centres of ‘rendition’ doing their filthy work Islamicist assassins can still strike they way they did in Mumbai. We have no psychological profiling, no dependable evidence to stop the next time. Is that not chilling?

As big a problem is the pathological reluctance of nations to examine how their politics and policies bear some responsibility for the support given to men of terror.
Take India. Its people, economic power, history, multifarious culture and democratic credentials make it a remarkable country. It is also a nation which tolerates shocking poverty, inequality, caste and religious injustice and gender oppression. Some Indian Muslims have done brilliantly well in the last decade or so, too many though are trapped in poverty ( or kept there by discriminatory practices) and have fallen below the lowest of the Hindu castes. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appears sanguine about this Muslim underclass and has done little to bring to trial those responsible for the massacres of Muslims in the Gujarat. Nothing is done to quell the physical abuse and oppression of Kashmiris by the Indian security services. Even if the terrorists came from Pakistan- and credible evidence is coming in on this- there must be Muslims in India who feel unwanted and unsafe in their land and so support the unsupportable. Ashok Mehta, an Indian security analyst says;’ Without help, the terrorists would not have known how to enter the hotels or where the exits are. This operation would have been well-rehearsed and there certainly would have been local guides’. That kind of talk is taboo in complacent India.

Then there are the deniers who are outraged if you suggest that Pakistan breeds Islamicist terrorists who terrorise Pakistan itself. Ahmed Rashid is one of the world’s most authoritative Pakistani authors. His latest book, Decent into Chaos: The US and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia, tells you how his country is now increasingly lawless and churning out young people filled with homicidal aspirations. Many in the political and military establishment back the jihadis. I said so on the BBC this weekend and then was forced to shelter from the torrent of abuse from ‘patriotic’ Pakistanis here and back there. Sara writes;’ just because these men were Muslims doesn’t mean they were the financiers’. The men were probably Indian double agents, says another Pakistani and a man from Burnley calls me ‘a fucking Zionist’. Don’t ask me why the last.

Here in Britain, after some irresponsible early coverage claiming many of the killers were British, there is now an assumption that there is no connection at all. I think we need to wait and see. The British government still refuses to accept that our foreign policies may have contributed reasons to be hateful and as yet has not commissioned credible, long term research on radicalisation.

After Obama’s victory the world felt optimistic. That India and Pakistan ( now a democracy again) were at last trying to rebuild trust was also a moment of cautious hope. The terrorists in Mumbai shattered all that. And once more, we are lost in misinformation and misapprehension.

Published in The Independent