Some kind of Enfield rifle was the standard police issue in Southern Sudan when we lived there in the first half of the ’80s. They mostly didn’t have ammo, however (usually shot up for hunting purposes shortly after it was issued, despite official prohibitions against personal use.) I have no idea as to the condition of those arms, mind you.

Lack of police response? Somebody had figured out what local habits and official rules were
and moved to take advantage.

Only surprising little factoid: Enfields refused to fire? Funny, the SMLE is unusually reliable. Either the cops had no
prior experience whatsoever with manually operated long arms or (more likely) outdated ammunition resulted in ruptured casings/head separation or something similar.

Polygamy? As long as informed consent is freely given I see no reason that a woman cannot have as many husbands as she can properly support.

As to the comparison between Luxor and Mumbia, the Indian secret police [anti-terrorist squad] environment is nowhere near as powerful or effective as Egypt’s – and whether that is a good thing or not is beside the point. Imo.

The station security was low grade and probably had been trained not to shoot and was at a disadvantage from a determined enemy.

I do not believe for a second that there were only 10 raiders. According to fisherman 10 came off one inflatable boat and there were four more boats plus two mother ships. This attack had at least 40 raiders and I do not know the reason they say there is only 10. I doubt it is because some got away. There are a lot of bodies and I am sure more of the raiders were killed. The police did shoot back in the streets but ineffectively.

The advantage was training, planning, surprise and speed for the raiders and those advantages were a multiplier effect.

The slowness in taking back a 400 room hotel that was burning and not knowing who was a bad guy and who was a guest will take time and probably a couple of days. The Indian government waiting for military units to arrive before taking on the room-to-room situation.

This is a 9-11 moment for India. Coast Guard apparently had accosted the raiders and the Coasties were invited on board and killed and thrown overboard so another warning was lost. Another problem with communications that the death of two Coast Guards and missing ship was not noticed.

The obvious response is to upgrade training of police to go active and respond to military tactics. Operational procedures before getting onboard a vessel will need to be addressed so I not heard from then superiors know something went wrong.

India is very unlike America and the mindset is quite different. We are steeped in violence and think quickly to fight back. Ten percent of Americans are armed every day in states that allow that. So other than in cities DC, New York, Chicago, there is a percentage of armed civilians that tend to react aggressively to crime. If we perceived a military style attack, our people would fight back very quickly against a perceived foreign attack. India is very passive and controlled or over civilized. There inherent violence of Americans in crowded India would not work. It is the same in Japan, this type of attack would succeed among the civilians but Japanese response would be better controlled and commanded.

But US security is better trained and has better reaction speed. Remember that a lot of Americans after 9-11 did buy guns and prepared for violence on their own since they did not know when another AQ attack would happen in the US. Thankfully none have happened.

I doubt that repercussions will fall against India’s 115 million Muslims, but better intelligence is needed about these groups that perpetuate these attacks.

These raiders are not state sanction groups of Pakistan; they are a criminal military organization within Pakistan. Pakistan did not invade India, but a forceful diplomatic complaint to crack down on this group is legitimate. The US did that for years with Taliban crossing the border into Afghanistan until we finally figured that Pakistan government did not have the ability to crack down in the NW Frontier and it was up to us to take care of the bad guys within Pakistan. But that took years of intelligence gathering to target the AQ in Pakistan with the drones. We did not have that info in 2001 and 2002.

India will have to do the same to gather intelligence of locations and the people within the structure of this group to target them for elimination. This is where the police detective and intelligence work is done. To get names and places to verify the info and then decide how to act.

I saw where at least some Indians are claiming that the entire terrorist force was only 10 men. I suspect someone in the government is trying to downplay it as the demands for revenge get louder. We know that 3 or 4 terrorists died in the taxicab bombs way up north by the airport. We also know that in addition to attacks on the Main Cinema and Central Train Station, they took and held 5 widely separated locations [Oberoi Hotel and Nahriman House on Nahriman Point, Taj Hotel near the Colaba police station and the cafe that were hit, and the Cama and the St. George Hospitals up north near the Airport.] Each of these captures involved dealing with numbers of hostages, including sorting out Americans, Aussies, Brits, and Jews. Further, these locations were large buildings with multiple access points that had to be defended on a 360 degree threat access, plus against heli-borne assault. They successfully did this for a period of about 12 hours [the hospitals] to close to 4 days against constant attack by trained, equipped, and well motivated military forces. And in the midst of that, they had time to booby trap the hotels and Nahriman House with explosives throughout.

I cannot see 6-7 terrorists doing that. My back of the envelope calculations are 70-100 terrorists actively engaged, and a huge infrastructure for the preparations and pre-positioning of ammunition and explosives. I also note that a number of terrorists were found to be carrying documents for multiple identities and sums of currency in dollars, rupees, and pounds. That would imply both the involvement of a government agency [ISI ?] and planning that included the option of at least some of the terrorists to slip away in the confusion and regroup with the help of the infrastructure.

It was noted in another post here at BC, by a Marine Officer, that the terrorists at the Central Train Station duplicated the two man tactics of the Marines effectively; which would allow so few terrorists to kill so many. I don’t argue with Marines over tactics, if only because I have a nephew who is a Gunny in Iraq right now. The two man teams may have been used effectively in the attacks in the open, but that does not explain the ability to defend large buildings from assault by heavily armed, motivated, and trained personnel for so long. The numbers just do not add up.

I have submitted my calculations to an acquaintance with far more than passing knowledge of, and decades of experience with, specialized small unit operations. He replied agreeing with me, saying his calculations are for 90 active terrorists, plus infrastructure. Right now, unless there are indications of 70+ Tango’s KIA/prisoners; I will assume there is a substantial risk of a second wave of attacks soon from those not neutralized. I will leave it to everyone to consider the reaction in India if that were to come to pass.

Subotai Bahadur