So says both Tata Group Chairman Ratan Tata, whose company owns the TaJ Mahal motel, and American-based global security analysts
Tata said his hotel had advance warning, and took precautions, but that they failed:
“They knew what they were doing, and they did not go through the front. All of our arrangements are in the front,’ he said. “They planned everything. I believe the first thing they did, they shot a sniffer dog and his handler. They went through the kitchen.”
Hmmm. Hindu business owners in Mumbai and elsewhere will probably tighten their screening of would-be Muslim employees.
If a group like Lashkar-i-Taiba, which means “Army of the Pious,” and Jaish-i-Muhammad, or “Soldiers of Muhammad,” is behind this, it could accomplish some of what the groups want.
“This is a new, horrific milestone in the global jihad,” said Bruce Riedel, a former South Asia analyst for the CIA and National Security Council and author of the book “The Search for Al Qaeda.” “No indigenous Indian group has this level of capability. The goal is to damage the symbol of India’s economic renaissance, undermine investor confidence and provoke an India-Pakistani crisis.”
And:
”What is striking about this is a fair amount of planning had to go into this type of attack,” said Roger W. Cressey, a former White House counterterrorism official in the Clinton and Bush administrations. “This is not a seat-of-the-pants operation. This group had to receive some training or support from professionals in the terrorism business.”
This alleged Deccan Muhajedeen, even if it exists, doesn’t sound like that group.
So, whether British, American or Pakistani officials like it – indeed, even if they try to tamp down such thoughts – the smartest thing for New Delhi to do, it seems, is look on the other side of the Indus River.
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