Mumbai Attacks: Domestic Indian Terrorism With a Global Twist

The claim of responsibility came from a group no one had heard of before, the Deccan Mujahideen. The Deccan plateau is a huge area of central and southern India, and mujahideen is the Arab word for Islamic holy warriors.

The name suggests a domestic agenda with foreign inspiration. The claim may of course be bogus, or the name could be a cover for another group, but it looks a fair guess at this very early stage that this represents home-grown terrorism with an imported twist.

India is one of the principal targets of terrorism. According to the US state department, 2,300 people died in terrorist attacks in the country during the course of 2007. There are Maoist groups in the east and center and nationalists in the north east.

In this case, it looks like Islamist extremism. Mumbai has been a particular target over the years. More than 250 people were killed there in a series of 13 bomb blasts in 1993, blamed on Muslim militants. And two years ago, more than 200 people were killed by bomb attacks on trains and railway stations. The police charged about 30 suspects belonging to a Pakistan-based group called Lashkar-i-Taiba and a northern group called Students Islamic Movement of India.

The violence is fueled by longstanding ethnic tension, that was inflamed by riots in Gujarat State near Mumbai six years ago in which nearly 2,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed. The most serious attacks followed those riots.

On the other hand, there is clearly something different about this attack. It has relied not on bombs, but instead on a coordinated assault by men with rifles who seem to have arrived at some of their targets by boat. They appear to be on a suicide mission. In at least one instance they singled out Britons and Americans, and one of their targets was a Orthodox Jewish center. So clearly there is outside influence on the strategy and ideology involved.

It is too early to say whether there is an al-Qaida connection, and such links can take many forms, from active training and assistance in planning and logistics, to simple internet inspiration.

What is likely is that the attacks will get blamed on Pakistan and its Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), as previous Islamic attacks have been. US counter-terrorism officials believe that some ISI members played a role in an attack earlier this year on the Indian embassy in Afghanistan.

This attack is the latest of many outrages that have their roots in recent Indian history, but the targeting of westerners suggest that this tradition violence is becoming globalised, intertwined with a brand of violent extremism, emanating from Pakistan and Afghanistan.