MUMBAI - As part of Mumbai's preparations to mark the first anniversary of last
November's deadly terrorist attacks, which claimed the lives of more than 200
Indians and foreigners, the city will host an international anti-terrorism
conference on Friday.
India's Home Minister P Chidambaram, secretary of the United States Department
for Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, London Police Commissioner Paul
Stephenson and a British counter-terrorism expert, Brett Lovegrove, are among
those attending the one-day event.
Surprisingly under-represented is the New York Police Department, an
institution that the Mumbai police could learn
The conference, entitled "Security and Resilience Summit: Securing the City of
Dreams", will be held at the Oberoi-Trident, a luxury business hotel that was
among five south Mumbai landmarks hijacked by Pakistan-trained gunmen on the
night of November 26, 2008, sparking a tense 48 hour-long siege.
The US, British, Indian governments blamed the Pakistan-based terrorist outfit
Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) for the Mumbai murders, but a year later those nation's
anti-terrorism efforts have not borne much fruit, particularly in discouraging
the LeT's ringleaders. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) warned last
week that the terrorist group is plotting further attacks on key installations
and possibly schools in India.
Life may be buzzing again in Mumbai, almost back to normal nearly a year later,
but has the city learnt lessons from the past? India's financial capital and
one of the world's largest cities (population over 13 million), Mumbai has been
attacked by terrorists more than a dozen times since multiple bomb blasts
struck the city on March 13, 1993, killing over 200 people.
"No, people have not learnt any lessons," a 63-year-old resident and a senior
media professional who was born and brought up in Shivaji Park, Dadar, in
central Mumbai, said emphatically. "Concerns over long-term security measures
last only for a short time after a terrorist strike. A few months later, the
urgency is forgotten."
The Mumbai police force were much criticized for negligence after last year's
attack, yet despite promises from new police commissioner N Sivanandan, of
better arms and equipment, not much seems to have changed.
On a sunny Saturday afternoon in south Mumbai on November 7, uniformed
policemen were chatting and reading newspapers in plastic chairs outside the
Mantralaya, or administrative headquarters of the state government. The new
state government was about to be sworn in, and the local police were supposed
to be on high alert following an FBI warning of possible LeT activity.
Along the road from Mantralaya, towards the tourist hub of Colaba, a policeman
on duty was busy filling in a crossword puzzle, his gleaming new machine gun
lounging against his chair. Perhaps he was expecting terrorists to ring a bell
and alert him before they launched an attack.
At Churchgate station and Shivaji Terminus, major railway hubs in Mumbai and
likely terrorist targets, the sight of lounging policemen is reassuring but
also disquieting. Reassuring, because they seem to be asking: why worry?
But this sight, as a reminder that these under-trained officers, even armed
with new firepower, may be just as ineffective in the face of another major
terrorist attack, is equally disquieting.
Colaba, a center of the November 26 attacks, is humming nearly a year later.
International tourists, including Westerners, are clogging narrow sidewalks
filled with handicraft showrooms, restaurants and bars as well as roadside
cotton garment stalls where smarter customers open negotiations at half the
first price the salesman offers.
"It has been back to normal for five months," said Anil Kumar, one such
friendly garment salesman. Is he confident the Mumbai police are now better
able to handle any such terrorist attacks in the future? Kumar didn't say "no",
but his face split in a diplomatic grin.
About 100 meters from Anil Kumar's roadside stall is the 138-year-old Leopold
Cafe, where the terrorists began their two nights of carnage.
Last November 26, the cafe floor was strewn with blood, human flesh and glass
shards. Members of a Lufthansa flight crew, whom I met soon after the attacks
began, told me how they were at Leopold's when the gunmen opened fire at
diners. The flight crew escaped by lying prone among the corpses.
Leopold's was nearly packed to capacity on the Saturday evening of my recent
visit, with tourists from many countries. The only noticeable change from a
year ago is the uniformed security guards standing at each of the two
entrances. One of them is armed with a metal scanner, the other optimistically
clutches a bamboo stick.
From Leopold's, the terrorists ran the short distance to the Taj Mahal Palace
hotel. The Taj, whose blazing, smoking towers became a symbolic image of the
attacks, is back to near-normalcy with a subtler, less intrusive security
regimen than in its counterpart the Oberoi-Trident.
The narrow marble corridor leading to the in-house restaurants past the Taj
lobby bears no resemblance to the shattered, blackened tunnel of last year. A
glass showcase still draws attention to some of the more hotel's more famous
guests, including Alfred Hitchcock, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Shirley Maclaine,
John Kenneth Galbraith and Sidney Sheldon.
"Guests now rarely ask us about November 26," said Gangadhar, manager of the
well-known Nalanda bookshop inside the Taj. But beneath the surface of
normality, the old friendly, homely air has vanished from the lobby. Wariness
and uneasiness were palpable. Eyes were watching, both human and from closed
circuit surveillance.
Two kilometers from the Taj, renovation work continues at the devastated
Oberoi-Trident, which last November was under constant machine-gun and grenade
fire for 48 hours.
"Normalcy has returned, but business has been terrible the past three months,"
said Sajjad Shah, owner of a Kashmiri carpets and handicrafts shop inside the
hotel shopping arcade. "It's only in the past 15 days that things are looking
up. I have never seen such a business low in the 17 years we have been here."
Like many of the shop owners in the Oberoi-Trident arcade, Shah is a Muslim.
Shah told Asia Times Online that he expects business to get better after air
crews from Lufthansa, Air France and Saudi Airways return to residing in the
Oberoi, instead of the hotels near the international airport where they have
put up between flights since the attack.
Mumbai has not had a terrorist incident since last November and there is not
much talk or memory-swapping now of what happened. Even the lone surviving
terrorist, Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, is no longer a hot topic for the media or
the public.
Kasab and fellow terrorist Ismail Khan were intercepted at 12.15 am on November
27, 2008, by Mumbai police officials. Kasab was captured alive while Ismail was
killed in an exchange of fire. The two gunmen were driving a hijacked Skoda
car, after randomly shooting and killing commuters in Shivaji railway terminus
as well as passers by on the road outside and a group of police officers.
As a result of closed-circuit TV footage captured within Shivaji Terminus
station, the captured Kasab became the face of the November 26 attacks. He
would have looked like any Mumbai teenager returning from college were it not
that he carried an AK-47 assault rifle and a rucksack full of grenades. He is
currently held in solitary confinement at a high-security cell in Arthur Road
Jail, in central Mumbai, where he is undergoing trial in a specially
constructed court within the jail.
In the early days after his capture, Kasab was a prominent feature in local
newspapers, with leaked information from prison about his pining for his mother
in Pakistan, cursing the terrorist "devils" who "brainwashed" him into carrying
out the attacks and even demanding mutton biriyani. However, public
interest in his fate seems to have declined with the passage of time.
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