I recently watched HBO’s documentary "Terror in Mumbai" a recount of the deadly terrorist attack against Mumbai one year ago launched by the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taibain, (Army of the Righteous), based out of Pakistan. The attacks lasted for three days and claimed the lives of 170 people. I recommend that anyone in the homeland security/emergency management business see it.
The documentary, narrated by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, who is from Mumbai, provides interesting insights and actual phone conversations between the attackers and their handler inside Pakistan during the incident. The assault involved ten men armed with machine guns, grenades, cell phones and small amounts of food and water. It was hardly a sophisticated 9/11 style attack requiring the flying of large jet aircraft, but it was still deadly and grabbed international headlines.
There were two major lessons from the 2008 Mumbai attack and the film touched on both of them: First, how could Mumbai, a city whose mass transit system was attacked by the same group in 2006, killing over 200 people, not be better prepared to prevent and respond to such an event; and second, such an event could happen in any major U.S. city.
Virtually all of the targets in Mumbia were “soft targets” - hotels, night clubs and mass transit hubs. The attackers had gone to such lengths in their preparation that they were more heavily armed and knew the buildings better than the police they battled during the earlier part of the attack. Indeed, the terrorists began their pre-operational planning and surveillance months, perhaps a year, prior to the actual assault.
With all this pre-operational planning, someone at one of the hotels – a security guard, a bus boy, a maid, a janitor, or a parking attendant – must have seen something that appeared suspicious and if passed to law enforcement could have possibly helped prevent the attacks. Indeed, Indian intelligence had earlier infiltrated the group by providing them with sym cards for cell phones which enabled the Indians to trace and listen to the conversations between the gunmen and their handler in Pakistan during the three day siege. Unfortunately, the sym cards only went active the night of the assault. Regardless, how a city such as Mumbai did not have a means to collect, report and analyze such suspicious activity is beyond explanation.
While it was clear Mumbai had no means for detecting the terrorists in their pre-operational planning phase, it was equally clear they had no means of combating them once the operation commenced. The Mumbai police could not establish command and control within their own department and their coordination with the military was abysmal. Some of the police actually ran from the gunmen while others tried to battle them with single shot rifles.
We have done a lot in this country to better prepare ourselves for such events using the National Incident Management System and the National Response Framework, but one cannot help but wonder how local, state and federal law enforcement would coordinate their activities under a well planned military style assault on civilian targets. Every major urban area law enforcement agency in America would be wise to exercise such a scenario with the FBI and possibly the Defense Department to test incident command and unified command.
Finally, and most importantly, are we in the U.S. able to detect the pre-operational planning that would occur prior to such an event and can our intelligence systems intake it and then analyze it to thwart the attack? This is essential, for as the documentary explains, the overwhelming number of those killed were struck down in the first several minutes of the assault. Therefore, even a flawless response would have left well over a hundred dead. I suspect the answer to such a question depends on what jurisdiction you ask, but no matter the jurisdiction, the anniversary of the Mumbai attacks should be a wake-up call for us all.
The documentary, narrated by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, who is from Mumbai, provides interesting insights and actual phone conversations between the attackers and their handler inside Pakistan during the incident. The assault involved ten men armed with machine guns, grenades, cell phones and small amounts of food and water. It was hardly a sophisticated 9/11 style attack requiring the flying of large jet aircraft, but it was still deadly and grabbed international headlines.
There were two major lessons from the 2008 Mumbai attack and the film touched on both of them: First, how could Mumbai, a city whose mass transit system was attacked by the same group in 2006, killing over 200 people, not be better prepared to prevent and respond to such an event; and second, such an event could happen in any major U.S. city.
Virtually all of the targets in Mumbia were “soft targets” - hotels, night clubs and mass transit hubs. The attackers had gone to such lengths in their preparation that they were more heavily armed and knew the buildings better than the police they battled during the earlier part of the attack. Indeed, the terrorists began their pre-operational planning and surveillance months, perhaps a year, prior to the actual assault.
With all this pre-operational planning, someone at one of the hotels – a security guard, a bus boy, a maid, a janitor, or a parking attendant – must have seen something that appeared suspicious and if passed to law enforcement could have possibly helped prevent the attacks. Indeed, Indian intelligence had earlier infiltrated the group by providing them with sym cards for cell phones which enabled the Indians to trace and listen to the conversations between the gunmen and their handler in Pakistan during the three day siege. Unfortunately, the sym cards only went active the night of the assault. Regardless, how a city such as Mumbai did not have a means to collect, report and analyze such suspicious activity is beyond explanation.
While it was clear Mumbai had no means for detecting the terrorists in their pre-operational planning phase, it was equally clear they had no means of combating them once the operation commenced. The Mumbai police could not establish command and control within their own department and their coordination with the military was abysmal. Some of the police actually ran from the gunmen while others tried to battle them with single shot rifles.
We have done a lot in this country to better prepare ourselves for such events using the National Incident Management System and the National Response Framework, but one cannot help but wonder how local, state and federal law enforcement would coordinate their activities under a well planned military style assault on civilian targets. Every major urban area law enforcement agency in America would be wise to exercise such a scenario with the FBI and possibly the Defense Department to test incident command and unified command.
Finally, and most importantly, are we in the U.S. able to detect the pre-operational planning that would occur prior to such an event and can our intelligence systems intake it and then analyze it to thwart the attack? This is essential, for as the documentary explains, the overwhelming number of those killed were struck down in the first several minutes of the assault. Therefore, even a flawless response would have left well over a hundred dead. I suspect the answer to such a question depends on what jurisdiction you ask, but no matter the jurisdiction, the anniversary of the Mumbai attacks should be a wake-up call for us all.
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