DarkTimes - 24Hr Global News Blog

On the first night of last week's terror attacks on Mumbai, Amitabh Bachchan did something he had never done before. Before going to bed Mr Bachchan, one of Bollywood's biggest film stars, pulled out his licensed revolver, loaded it and tucked it under his pillow.

It did not help him sleep any better as gunshots and explosions rang out over the city's storied Marine Drive. "My pain has been the sight and plight of my innocent and vulnerable and completely insecure countrymen . . . And my anger has been at the ineptitude of the authorities," he wrote on his blog.

He is not alone. The blanket television coverage of the siege of Mumbai's two best-known seafront luxury hotels and a nearby Jewish centre has gripped and horrified the nation. The world's largest democracy is under fire, its people nervous - and angry.

Last week's attacks are the latest, most bloody, episode in a terror campaign that has unfolded quickly across India over the past six months. Multiple bomb attacks have struck Jaipur, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Guwahati and New Delhi.

The Mumbai attacks, which took the number of terror victims for this year to more than 400, have brutally exposed India's vulnerability, at a time when it is trying to project itself as an economic and political power on the world stage. As well as exploiting serious shortcomings among the country's nominally formidable 1m-strong security forces, last week also underscored the fact that India faces terrorist threats with origins both outside and within the country.

The political consequences of the attacks are also likely to be significant. Terror has climbed rapidly up the political agenda ahead of general elections next year. Even before the horrors of last week, the left-of-centre Congress government of Manmohan Singh, prime minister, was already under sustained pressure from the opposition Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), which has campaigned hard on the issue of security, slamming the administration for being too soft on terror and demanding tougher laws. Now, observers say, security could be the issue that costs Mr Singh the election.

The government and security forces have struggled to uncover those behind the tide of attacks and their motives. Previously unknown groups such as the Indian Mujahideen and the Deccan Mujahideen have claimed responsibility, driven apparently by grievances over the disputed territory of Kashmir.

The profile of the perpetrators has shocked a country where rising incomes were expected to reward the young. Some of the militants suspected of carrying out a countrywide bombing campaign were cricket-playing and computer savvy, seemingly with bright futures ahead of them. The faces of terror were smiling, educated young men, in some ways similar to the terrorists who attacked London's transport network in July 2005.

The latest attack, now pinned by the Indian authorities on Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani militant group, is of a different order. Mumbai now ranks alongside New York, London, Madrid and Bali as a victim of chillingly executed global terror. The strike was launched from Karachi, its foot-soldiers were Pakistani and its masterminds targeted business people and foreigners, Jews and the open, diverse society for which Mumbai is famed.

Fighting such a brazen and coordinated campaign - whether in Mumbai or elsewhere - has left Mr Singh, a technocrat rather than war leader, struggling. His Congress party is caught between tackling what initially appeared as home-grown terror fuelled by the marginalisation of the country's 140m Muslims - just over a tenth of India's population - and blaming militant groups based in Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Before the Mumbai attacks, Mr Singh had recognised the domestic origins of the violence. "The role of Pakistan-based terrorist groups cannot be minimised but the involvement of local elements in recent blasts adds a new dimension to the terrorist threat," the premier acknowledged after Delhi was hit by multiple blasts in September.

Police said suspects were mostly radicalised young Muslim Indians, loosely associated with a banned extremist student movement. But in one case, a serving army officer and a Hindu seer were implicated.

But the relentlessness of the attacks has frustrated India's political leadership, which has preferred to focus on promoting the country's emergence as a world power capable of delivering double-digit growth and sending rockets to the moon. An escalating terror campaign was shrugged off by some cabinet ministers as something that global citizens just had to live with.

The attacks have reinvigorated the BJP, which governed from 1998-2004, a period characterised by inter-communal strains and a marked deterioration of relations with Pakistan. Arun Jaitley, the party's general secretary, claims the Congress government has "lost the moral authority to survive". He blames Mr Singh for presiding over a collapsed intelligence service and inadequate emergency services.

Those views are echoed by many commentators, business people and ordinary Indians. "Ineffectual leadership is turning a tough state into a soft state. We should have been world leaders in the war against terrorists, for no nation has more experience. Instead we are wallowing in the complacent despair of a continual victim," says M.J. Akbar, an influential media commentator.

The response to earlier terror attacks was noticeable for how quickly life moved on. Mumbai promises to be different. It has escalated the terror debate to the point at which personnel and policy changes are deemed imperative.

The government's first response has been to sack Shivraj Patil, the interior minister. Other state politicians are following. The second is to beef up the security services - particularly elite anti-terrorist units.

The urgent necessity of addressing inadequacies in India's intelligence and anti-terror forces - already apparent from the spate of attacks across the country and a strike against India's embassy in Kabul in July - has been underscored by Mumbai. Although dotted with naval installations and person nel, the city's defences were useless. Its vulnerability as a global financial centre was cruelly exposed by a military-style attack that killed about 200 people. In the process the attackers also outwitted a military machine focused on fighting Pakistan - sometimes with equipment superior to that of many Indian soldiers.

While the overwhelming majority of the victims were Indian, the terrorists homed in on business people, tourists and a rabbi and his family. The hotels' guest lists were a roll call of globalisation, including employees of Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Barclays Capital and Unilever. One of the highest profile victims was Ashok Kapur, the chairman of Yes Bank, an Indian banking group.

Ratan Tata, the chairman of the Tata Group that owns the Taj Mahal hotel, has been one of the most vociferous in trying to explain what went wrong. He says that lessons were not learnt from previous attacks on Mumbai in 1993 and 2006. The emergency services were not up to scratch and slow to respond. However, it appears that security was also lacking at his hotel; some guests have described it as "non-existent".

Now, in the wake of Mumbai, India awaits a more assertive stance towards Pakistan, most probably along the disputed Kashmiri border where there are high troop concentrations. "The Congress party is under tremendous political pressure to be seen to take a hard line against Pakistan," says Seema Desai of the Eurasia Group, the political risk analysts.

She adds that, while tensions between the two neighbours will continue to run high, an outbreak of hostilities does not appear likely: "There has been no army or navy movement in India so far, although internal security has been raised to 'war level'."

Few, however, expect a government response similar to that which followed the 2001 attack on India's parliament. Then, India reinforced its forces on the border with Pakistan. Islamabad followed suit, raising the threat of war.

One of the biggest challenges remains that of understanding the threat from within. Prior to the Mumbai attacks, investigators had identified the suspects for the Ahmedabad and Delhi blasts as young men belonging to the Indian Mujahideen. Many hailed from Azamgarh, a city in Uttar Pradesh better known for being the home of Sabana Azmi, a famous actress-cum-lawmaker. Some of the radicals even grew up together in the same village.

Mohammed Shakeel, 24, was studying for a masters in economics; Saquib Nisar, 23, was an MBA and gold medal winning economics student. Other suspects include a hotelier and an electrician-turned-bombmaker. The release of their profiles prompted widespread incredulity. The very people expected to gain from India's growth appeared to have turned violently against it.

"India has always been a violent place," says Alastair Newton, senior political analyst at Nomura International, the banking group. "A lot of foreigners have the impression it's all about peace and sitar players strumming in the streets. It's prone to very, very violent outbreaks."

Mumbai, India's irrepressible "Maximum City", is widely expected to bounce back. But unless some of the questions about this latest upsurge of violence are addressed, India's most celebrated actor is unlikely to be the only person sleeping with his revolver.

Suspect groups

Indian Mujahideen Believed by Indian police to be an offshoot of the banned Students' Islamic Movement of India (Simi), trained and backed by militant groups in neighbouring Pakistan and Bangladesh. Police have blamed Simi for almost every major bomb attack in India, including explosions on trains in Mumbai two years ago that killed 187 people. It has successfully recruited young, educated Indian Muslims as its bombers.

HuJI Harkat-ul-Jihad al Islami is a Bangladeshi militant Islamist group that is suspected of attacks on Indian cities and has been linked to militants in Assam province. It was blamed for the 2004 bombing of a political rally addressed by Sheikh Hasina, former prime minister of Bangladesh, and an attack on Anwar Chowdhury, then British High Commissioner to the country.

Lashkar-e-Taiba The main suspect for last week's Mumbai bombings. The group, which figures on the US list of terrorist organisations, is banned in Pakistan.Security analysts say it is well-funded and sympathises with al-Qaeda. It was blamed for attacks on markets in New Delhi that killed more than 60 people in 2005, and a 2001 assault on India's parliament that brought New Delhi and Islamabad to the brink of war.