The modern thinking Indian

The Mumbai terror attacks of 11/26 were a major shock for the world. Every nation fears the prospect of armed terrorists attacking civilians, and here were these 10 well armed terrorists who held the armed forces of a nation at bay for 3 days. How do you protect against terrorists who emerge from the night (from a vast coast), disperse swiftly into the night to their various pre-planned destinations, and attack civilians at will with automatic weapons and grenades. No matter what the security level, there is a more than even chance that some of them will evade detection and managed to attack. Today this happened in India, but given the ease by which the attackers managed to enter, and with some local support, the scenario is replicable to many countries which are on the cross-hairs of global terrorism.
If you read this article in TIME magazine (and I recommend reading the article), you will realize how easy it was for this youth in Pakistan to become a terrorist; there are institutions present everywhere that will feed a disgruntled person and make him feel valuable, and will then guide him on the path of taking up guns and willing to become a suicide terrorist, somebody who has no qualms about killing innocent people.

It was in Rawalpindi that Mohammad Amir Ajmal Qasab, the surviving gunman from the terrorist massacre that claimed 165 lives in Mumbai last November, took his first step toward infamy. In 2007 he visited a market stall run by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), an Islamist extremist group that has been blamed for the Mumbai attacks, among others. Understand Qasab's story and you begin to understand why young men throw in their lot with Islamic extremists, why Pakistan may be the most dangerous country in the world.
In 1990, Muslims in Kashmir — the Himalayan territory that India and Pakistan have been arguing and fighting over since 1948 — rose up against Indian rule, and the mujahedin soon found a new cause. The Pakistani military used the jihadi movement, hoping that guerrilla warfare would destabilize its enemy India where conventional warfare failed. Jihadi groups in Pakistan collected donations for Kashmir. Young men signed up for training camps, where they concentrated on physical fitness and learned how to use weapons. Jihad wasn't just a diversion from ordinary life; it was a rite of passage.

When you read the article, it makes it seem so easy. Here is a person who has rebelled away from his family, fled to a city. He comes into contact with a militant group while trying to learn how to live a life of crime, and is sufficiently brain-washed and impressed that he will go in for arms training and learn how to be a terrorist. This is sufficiently scary, but when you combine this story with how it seems so easy for this to happen, how arms training happens right under the umbrella of the state and the army in Pakistan, and you start to realize the dangers. What is to stop such a similar incident happening in a country like Great Britain which has a radicalized minority among its Muslim population, and it is easy enough to plan such an attack.

Labels: 11/26, 26/11, Attack, Infrastructure, Investigation, Mumbai, Pakistan, Terrorism, Terrorist

The last week has seen a major upheaval in Bangladesh, that too just a couple of months after the long-awaited transition back to civilian rule. After years of army rule, finally elections were held, and Sheikh Hasina won comfortably over her rival Begum Khaleda Zia. However, it was expected that since the powerful army did not like either Sheikh Hasina or Begum Zia (holding them to be corrupt, and essentially not good rulers), Sheikh Hasina would have to contend with a powerful force not fully under her control.
However, it was difficult to believe the events of the past week. In Bangladesh, the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) has always been seen as having a much lower status than the army. This includes having its officers drawn from the army (including the head of the BDR). Also, being a paramilitary, it has been seen as having a much lower status than the regular army, and seemingly less monetary benefits (including lower pay, no chance to go for higher paying United Nations missions abroad, and so on). At some point, when the Border Guards were having a conference, a group of Border Guards were looking to have a discussion with their officers (on deputation from the army), and the discussion did not go at all well.
Reports indicate that the group of Border Guards grouped the officers together, and then shot most of them (and bayonetted many of them after shooting them). This was certainly not something that their officers would have expected to happen to them in any way; the end result is a cleanup of the officers of the Border Guards. After killing many of the officers (and in many cases, their families who were staying in the headquarters of the Border Guards), the dead were quickly put in mass graves or floated down sewers. The decimation was complete, with the top leadership of the Guards gone, and almost 130-140 officers killed over a period of 1-2 days (link):

The Bangladesh army has launched a manhunt for border guards who mutinied at their headquarters in Dhaka last week, killing about 140 army officers. The government issued arrest warrants for "1,000 guardsmen and accomplices". The mutiny by the Bangladesh Rifles apparently began as a row over pay.
The charges include conspiracy to kill officers and civilians, using weapons and explosives, creating panic, looting and trying to hide bodies.
The BBC's Mark Dummett, in Dhaka, says the fugitive border guards can expect little mercy from the army, which has now been ordered to fan out across Bangladesh to apprehend them. About 180 officers were present at the BDR annual meeting when the mutiny broke out - only 33 are known to have survived. The bodies of 70 officers have been discovered so far, many of them mutilated after being shot.

No army in the world would take such an incident lightly, and certainly not in countries where the army believes that it is one of the influential sections in the country. It would have been a test for the newly elected Prime Minister to hold back an army that must have straining at the leash to attack the border guards who killed so many of their officers. However, if that had happened, it would have undermined the civilian leadership, and led to a huge amount of bloodshed without the chance of a formal trial.

Labels: Amy, Attack, Bangladesh, BDR, Border Guards, Coup, Kill, Killing, Military, Murder, Politics, Sheik Hasina