Saturday, November 29, 2008

Roggio's Mumbai Analysis

At The Long War Journal, Bill Roggio analyzes Mumbai. And concludes it's very different from what we've seen in the past.

The Long War Journal: Analysis: Mumbai attack differs from past terror strikes

Almost two days after terrorists attacked the Indian financial hub of Mumbai, the military is still working to root out the remnants of the assault teams at two hotels and a Jewish center. More than 125 people, including six foreigners, have been killed and 327 more have been wounded. The number is expected to go up, as Indian commandos have recovered an additional 30 dead at the Taj Mahal hotel as fighting has resumed.
The Mumbai attack is unique from past terror strikes carried out by Islamic terrorists. Instead of one or more bombings at distinct sites, the Mumbai attackers struck throughout the city using military tactics. Instead of one or more bombings carried out over a short period of time, Mumbai I entering its third day of crisis.
An attack of this nature cannot be thrown together overnight. It requires planned, scouting, financing, training, and a support network to aid the fighters. Initial reports indicate the attacks originated from Pakistan, the hub of jihadi activity in South Asia. Few local terror groups have the capacity to pull of an attack such as this.
While it is early to know exactly what happened in Mumbai as the fog of war still blankets the city, multiple press reports from India allow for a general picture to be painted. An estimated 12 to 25 terrorists are believed to have entered Mumbai by sea. After landing, he attack teams initiated a battle at a police station, then fanned across the city to attack the soft underbelly of hotels, cafes, cinemas, and hospitals. Civilians were gunned down and taken hostage, while terrorists looked for people carrying foreign passports.
Preparation
While the exact size of the assault force and the support cells is still not known, police estimate about 25 gunmen were involved in the attack. The number of members of the supporting cells that provide financing, training, transportation, and other services could be two to four times this number. Operational security for such a large unit, or grouping of cells, is difficult to maintain and requires organization and discipline.
To pull off an attack of this magnitude, it requires months of training, planning, and on-site reconnaissance. Indian officials have stated that the terrorists set up "advance control rooms" at the Taj Mahal and Trident (Oberoi) hotels, and conducted a significant amount of reconnaissance prior to executing the attack. If the news about the "control rooms" is accurate, these rooms may also have served as weapons and ammunition caches for the assault teams to replenish after conducting the first half of the operation.


the rest at: http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/11/analysis_mumbai_atta.php

7 comments:

Michael Travis said...

Please!

For how long has the United States been training Afghan and Pakistani forces? How often during the past seven years have you heard that the Pakis, ISI, and Afghans were still siding with the Taliban and other Islamists groups?

"Few local terror groups have the capacity to pull of an attack such as this."

Both the Afghan and Pakistani Security Forces are "local terror groups". Their numbers are great, and we also allow them to operate within the USA. (As we do with the Saudis, Egyptians and Jordanians)

So the essence of what Roggio is say is......"This seems to be more than a spur of the moment, unplanned operation".

No operation is spur of the moment.

midnight rider said...

I think it goes deeper thanthat. No one argues no operation is spur of the moment. It was the change in tactics used. These were assault teams, guerrila type fighters attacking portions of a large city and paralyzing it for several days. Not suicide bombers hitting a McDonalds or blowing up a lobby of a hotel. This is a completely different mindset.

In that respect, though, many of us have been warning to expect this type of thing to happen. Exactly this type of thing. Whether Asia, Europe or here. We've evidence of camps right here that could train for this type of attack.

I wouldn't be as quick to dismiss this shift.

Michael Travis said...

I am not dismissing the tactics as unimportant..this sort of attack has been expected for a very long time (I also have warned of such an attack here, via Jamaat al Fuqra, the Dar, etc.). India, Israel, and others have long warned of the danger posed by training hundreds of thousands of rabid Islamists in the ways of modern guerilla warfare. Training stone age barbarians to employ modern means to fight an enemy is pure folly...especially when the "enemy" is us.

Michael Travis said...

By the way, we have also welcomed the likes of Jamaat al Fuqra, Dar ul Uloom, Ali Mohamed into the US Military (I have photos), the FBI, and CIA.

Here's some nice Sudanese trying to recruit Moslems, any Moslems, into the US Military;

http://tiny.cc/49PYR

We are making a very big mistake.

Epaminondas said...

1) It is impossible to remain the USA and bar anyone because of religion, entry into the armed services. PERIOD. Some other method will have to employed, and it will have to stand up to the constitution. Dreaming of an unconstitutional solution is simply dreaming at this point. The population at large doesn't even recognize this as a war

2) Whether or not such ex military help, or the ISI ( which is utterly penetrated..at best ) is responsible for the seeming expertness of this attack is - reality or not, IRRELEVANT

3) It's the QURAN. There is no nationalistic basis for this attack. If there was, no one would have given 2 shits about the Chabad. Anchors and analysts straining to find one, especially in Kashmir are delusional fantasists

4) Those democracies with the abilities and will simply need to make it plain that there is an invisible unknown line beyond which Mecca and their banks are a hole in the ground. This message needs to be delivered quietly to the place where it counts... WHERE THE MONEY IS. We obliterate their banks, EMP.
No money, no attacks.
No money, no transportation
No money, no shelter
No money, no weapons
No money, no communications

Why we have not executed a totally disabling cyber attack on a bank or sovereign fund as an object lesson is beyond me


I am sure Al Saud, the Al Sabah, and the rest can make it plain to those who are financing the murderers that we will ensure they cannot stand up to us militarily and/or financially.

All it takes is will.
Our best hope is that Mr. Obama HAS SOMETHING TO PROVE, and QUICKLY

midnight rider said...

Exactly. In Islam there is no separation of church and state because there is no church and state. Only Islam. And the Quran. All the laws (the burqa etc) while maybe not specifically stated in the book take their queue from it.

In that respect it is wrong to pigeonhole this war to Iraq or Afghanistan. It's not against a country, those are just the battlegrounds. It is against Islam. But the talking heads on teevee and in the quick written books and magazines etc cannot seem to grasp that and cannot do so at our own peril.

Since 9/11 we have shown remarkable almost suicidal restraint in prosecuting this war overall and on the thus far stated battlegrounds specifically. 1 shot started the first world war. Pearl Harbor the 2nd. 9/11 was far worse than any of that and we have not responded in kind. In under an hour we could send any of these countries back to the 1700's without directly killing anyone (the EMP) and we choose to pull our punches.

Jamaat et.al. have been mentioned here often and recently. Revere asked in an earlier post who the hell is watching Islamberg and other such camps? Their threat is not missed by regulars on these pages. And to all of us this shift in tactic may be obvious & expected. But Roggio's piece is of import if it gets read by the right people, the ones to whom it isn't obvious, the ones we're trying to get through to, The Walmart shop till you drop someone else then go home and watch the 6:30 Federal news crowd. Overall it's part of a keep throwing shit (for lack of a better term) at the wall and hope something sticks, we get through to somone.

This is a fight to the death. Like it or not it's here. We all recognize it but most of America doesn't see the scimitar at their throat. Hopefully Roggio's piece (& others like it) will get through to some of them, get someone thinking about Jamaat & Gilani & Islamberg & the rest.

Reliapundit said...

The Mumbai attack is unique from past terror strikes carried out by Islamic terrorists. Instead of one or more bombings at distinct sites, the Mumbai attackers struck throughout the city using military tactics.

THIS IS FALSE - and roggio contradicts it some what later in the same article:

A unique attack

The Mumbai attack differs from previous terror attacks launched by Islamic terror groups. Al Qaeda and other terror groups have not used multiple assault teams to attack multiple targets simultaneously in a major city outside of a war zone.

Al Qaeda and allied groups have conducted complex military assaults on military and non-military targets in countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Somalia, Algeria, and Pakistan. But these are countries that are actively in a state of war or emerging from a recent war, where resources and established fighting units already exist.

THIS IS ALSO FALSE

besides, these are meaningless distinctions.

the enemy will use whatever means and attack anywhere at anytime as long as they feel they can get maximal terror effect.

they do what they can when they can.

and they consider the entire west as dar el harb, and therefore targetable.

we are all living in dar el harb so we are all in a war zone as far the enemy is concerned.

roggio's war zone definition is not the enemy's.

we should be increasing our surveillance and our forward leaning military response but obama will weaken both.

so expect these kinds of attacks - or other within the usa as soon as obama is sworn in and as soon as he has weakened us.