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NEWS & LETTERS, December 2008 - January 2009
World in View
Mumbai massacre
The horrific massacre in Mumbai, India, on Nov. 26-28 killed at least 173 people and wounded many hundreds more. The lone surviving terrorist (of 10) has stated that their goal was to kill 5000 people in India's financial and cultural center. In this effort they attacked train stations, hotels and hospitals, firing indiscriminately at men, women and children.
They would have come closer to that goal if not for the heroism of the workers at places like the Taj Mahal and Trident/Oberoi Hotels. Many of these hotel staff persons risked their lives to lead guests away from the terrorists, tend to the wounded, and barricade rooms against attack. In some cases they laid down their lives. There could hardly be a starker contrast between the workers' humanity and the dehumanization of the gunmen.
This dehumanization also showed itself in the vile antisemitic attack upon the Mumbai Chabad House. Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg and their colleagues were singled out to be tortured and killed only for being Jewish.
The surviving killer claims to have been involved with the group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is based in Pakistan near Peshawar and operates training camps in Kashmir. The group was originally formed to fight the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, with funding from the CIA and Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). They have since been outlawed in Pakistan, under pressure from the U. S., but continued to receive some support from elements of the ISI. The brutality of the Mumbai attacks would fit the pattern of previous attacks by Lashkar-e-Taiba.
It would hardly be a surprise to find that terrorism can be a shadow of state power. In this case part of the plan may have been to provoke a crisis between India and Pakistan. That this kind of crisis could escalate to a nuclear exchange would hardly be beyond the level of nihilism on display in Mumbai. It could only serve such dehumanized purposes.
The real crisis in Pakistan has always stemmed from the deep contradictions in the society. Repeated military governments have seized power claiming to fight corruption, and using the ISI and its fundamentalist religious allies as tools of domestic control. This has been an unmitigated disaster for Pakistan, especially when the process has been taken across its borders as in the debacle of Taliban rule in Afghanistan which has now blown back as low level civil war in the North West Frontier Provinces.
It has also fueled the growth of domestic strife and terrorism as seen in incidents like the siege of the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad last year, where over 100 people were killed, or the recent bombing in Peshawar which killed 29.
Under pressure from the U.S., India and Afghani-stan, the current civilian government of Pakistan may be making some effort to purge the ISI. They have recently disbanded its political wing. But as the long term problem stems from the contradictions within civil society in Pakistan, it is not likely to disappear without revolutionary developments there.
--Gerry Emmett
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