Mumbai Jihadis: "We want all mujahidins held in India released."

Cruel barbarity against us all
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Andrew Bolt
November 28, 2008 12:00am
THE slaughter in Mumbai was a barbaric attack not just on India, but on us. On the West.

For the first time in India, Muslim terrorists have singled out Westerners and Jews, and the places they are most likely to visit.

And that makes al-Qaida a prime suspect -- either as a partner with local terrorists or prime mover.

From the gunmen's targets, it seems that al-Qaida or associated Islamist groups have in fact chosen a new, easier, battleground for their war against the West.

This will change all the security thinking for next week's Twenty20 Champions League, in which Victoria and Western Australia, were to compete, and for the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi.

And a naive world will learn that the war on terror they'd hoped would die with the presidency of George W. Bush will be inherited by Barack Obama.

Mumbai has been hit by Islamist terrorists before, of course, but those were very different. The targets were locals, and so were the grievances.

The city's stock exchange, trains and hotels and gas stations were attacked in 1993 by criminals and terrorists who killed 257 people to revenge the killing of Muslims by Hindu mobs.

Ten years later, 52 people were killed in car bombings apparently by Muslims fighting for control of Kashmir, and in July 2006 pro-Kashmiri Islamists bombed commuter trains and railway stations, slaughtering at least 187 more.

But this is dangerously different.

Most of the buildings the young gunmen stormed were places tourists would use or know.

There's the five-star Oberoi and the Taj Mahal Hotel, right next to the iconic Gateway of India.

Also attacked were the main railway station and the exclusive Leopold Cafe, popular with foreigners and the rich, and the place where Australian Kate Anstee was shot in the leg.

Explosions have also been reported near the domestic airport.

Even more telling was that the terrorists reportedly took over Nariman House, a residential complex owned by Jews that contained a Jewish prayer hall and the local office of the Chabad movement.

Also different this time was the taking of hostages.

Again, they were mainly Westerners. British witness Ashok Patel said the terrorists at the Taj Mahal shouted out: "Who has US or UK passports?", and guests at the Oberoi said the terrorists there also singled out Americans and Britons for hostages.

Chabad officials feared that their Mumbai emissary, Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, was also being held at gunpoint at Nariman House.

In a way, it's pointless trying to decide exactly which Islamist group this time is formally responsible.

It may be the "Deccan Mujahideen", which contacted Indian media outlets to take the bloody credit, but nothing is known of a group with this studiously local name, and first-timers are unlikely to have the men, organisation, experience, cash or fire-power to launch a co-ordinated strike like this on a dozen targets.

The "Deccan Mujahidin" may just be the latest incarnation of another mysterious group, the "Indian Mujahideen", which boasted of carrying out the bombings in Delhi in September, which killed 20 people, and in Ahmedabad in July, which killed 45. But did they, too, have the resources it took to launch this attack?

The names of these outfits may shift, but it's just a rebadging of the same kind of people inspired by the same ideology. And more telling than their temporary names are the deeds.

True, one of the terrorists in the Oberoi rang India TV to say he belonged to an Indian Islamist group wanting to end persecution of India's Muslims, and demanding: "We want all mujahidins held in India released."

But the attacks themselves point to another, more specific agenda as well.

It's India's links to the West that were attacked -- its hotels, foreigners, Jews, and rail and airport links.

The aim, as with the al-Qaida-linked bombings in Hindu Bali, seems to be to split the country from the West. This would make it part of the Islamists' global war against the West and its freedoms -- a war driven by a deadly amalgam of religion and politics.

Some may see this latest horror as proof that US President George Bush has failed against the war in self-defence he launched after the 9/11 attacks of 2001, and Obama must choose more peaceful ways.

But terrible though they are, these killings are an aberration. The trend in recent years has been for fewer terrorist attacks around the world, even in Iraq, where al-Qaida has been mauled. Since 2001, Islamists have not managed one successful attack on the US. Britain has foiled every big terrorist plot since 2005.

Shambolic India was always an easier target, but one only for the desperate. And for this to be first in there against the West shows how small the appeal of jihad is even in a nation with 150 million Muslims.

Indeed, the Pew Research Centre has polled a dramatic drop in support among Muslims around the world for violent jihad and al-Qaida since 2002.

This is the struggle Obama inherits, and it will not end until Islamists horrify enough fellow Muslims by their pointless slaughter - and until Bush's dream is fulfilled, and Muslim nations share our love for the freedom now under such savage attack in Mumbai.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24718190-5000117,00.html