Opinion | Columnists
Friend or foe?
Fingers are pointing, not all in the same direction. Voices raised in protest. These are but two of the symptoms of aftershock. It doesn't alter the inescapable fact: Hundreds have died. Hundreds of others came perilously close to the terrorist's bullet, felt its hatred wing past and take out somebody else. Some escaped the fire and smoke, scaling down heroically on five-star drapery.
- By Kevin Martin, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 23:16 December 3, 2008
Fingers are pointing, not all in the same direction. Voices raised in protest. These are but two of the symptoms of aftershock. It doesn't alter the inescapable fact: Hundreds have died. Hundreds of others came perilously close to the terrorist's bullet, felt its hatred wing past and take out somebody else. Some escaped the fire and smoke, scaling down heroically on five-star drapery.
One Australian hid in a broom closet while machine gun fire ranged just outside and a man, apparently shouting out for foreigners, was busy shooting up anybody and everybody, mostly locals, and thereby possibly losing the plot that everybody's now speculating about. Cliches are being invented: This was Mumbai's own 9/11, says someone sagaciously. Confusion abounds. There was chatter that something was afoot, said a BBC journalist, but nobody expected anything as well planned and coordinated as this. Shane Warne, the famous cricket spinner, tells of his narrow miss. He was due to fly out to Mumbai, apparently to one of the targeted venues. The Indian Prime Minister, we hear, a figure of significantly greater international status than Shane was due, similarly, at one of the venues allegedly.
One of the 'terrorists', we are told, allegedly enrolled as a chef at one of the hotels ten months in advance. This bespeaks of meticulous planning. People with such ruthless minds usually have a calendar, a diary, of events that they target.
Could this actually have been a plan gone wrong, some are asking. Could the focus really have been India's top politician? Possibly not because some of the terrorists were allegedly heard asking for 'foreigners' and those with 'foreign passports'.
Here's my question: If the target was nationals of a certain country, why not base the operation in countries where such 'nationals' are more plentiful. Why was Mumbai chosen to weed out 'foreigners'? Something doesn't quite add up. One of Australia's top officials dealing with the world of spying said on television that large terrorist groups can no longer run efficient assignments all over the world, so they franchise their 'business' to splinter groups with similar ideals of hatred and vengeance, and with a committed-ness and training schedule that is mind boggling.
The good guys, on the other hand - the nationally run secret services in many countries - are still in the control of bureaucrats when they, in reality, now have to be in charge of professionals, he said. Otherwise, he implied, we are handing victory to the terrorist.
We are allowing them to get away with superior planning, preparedness, while our own forces, the 'good guys' continue to be only reactionary - striking after the event. Has the time come, one wonders, for 'splinter good groups', assuming they don't already exist? In trying to curb the evil and the menace of terrorism will we forever be divided henceforth into the good guys and the bad guys? Is this a silent evolution into some sort of worldwide Masonic society, where we only secretly identify ourselves by coded handshakes? It's scary and it brings to mind the experience of one fortunate Australian in Mumbai.
Holed up with a few others in a room, they waited hours, cringing in a corner in terror while machine gun fire raked the walls outside. Any moment, he said, they expected the door to burst open and a masked figure to come striding through, firearm blazing.
A few hours are spent this way, terrified, living with the closeness of death. Any moment now. Any second. Three, two, one. Gunfire is even closer. The door flies open, shot to pieces by a hail of bullets and in bursts the imagined masked man, gun in hand. Only, it's an army commando. How an emotion can spin on a second. One moment we dread the appearance of a man with the gun; the next we're elated at the arrival of a man with a gun.
Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.
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