Cutthroat Capitalism: Somali Pirates and Insurers Share the Booty

Off of the coast of Somalia close to 1000 armed men troll the seas praying for a chance to score some booty. Since 2007 Somali piracy has caught the world's imagination and the number of hijacked boats has skyrocketed. But the pirates don't work in isolation. Piracy exists in Somalia not only because the nation is in a near constant state of revolution, but because the people charged with controlling piracy are actively helping to promote the underlying conditions that make hijacking ships so profitable. Not only have ransom payouts begun to routinely top $1 million (a Donald Trump-like fortune in Somalia), but whole anti-piracy industries have sprung up in response to piracy and created profitable business models of their own. Security contractors, insurance companies and maritime lawyers don't have any incentive to curtail the brigands when they reap millions in cash for every vessel they free.

In this month's issue of WIRED I've crunched the data and shown how the rise in ransom payouts in the last year has corresponded with a rise in insurance premiums, hijackings and shipping costs. And while hundreds of innocent crew members are held at gunpoint on their ships, the people who control the shipping industries have written it all off as a business expense.

Check out Cutthroat Capitalism here.

A Photographer who Captures India's Soaring Hights and Crashing Lows

When photographer Tom Pietrasik caught a flight from Delhi to Chennai he was long overdue for a vacation, but he thought he would bring his camera with him, just in case. A British journalist on the same flight laughed when he saw Pietrasik weighed down with a heavy bag of lenses and camera bodies, saying that there was no way that he would be able to relax if he brought his work with him. Two hours later when they landed an earthquake off the coast of Sumatra sent its massive tidal wave across Asia killing more than 225,000 people and laying waste to the coasts of seven countries. Pietrasik was glad to have his equipment with him.

Just a month after losing their parents to the Asian Tsunami, children play games at a government orphanage in Cuddalore. Tamil Nadu, India 2005.

Unlike many journalists who came in for a week and left when the news turned to other events, Tom Pietrasik has repeatedly returned to India's coasts to follow on the lives of a group of orphans growing up as refugees in Cuddalore. The picture above is one of my favorites of that series.

For the last eight years Tom Pietrasik has documented the soaring heights of India's economic boom as well as the nation's most vulnerable moments. His pictures have appeared in National Geographic Adventure, Newsweek and in an ongoing project with UNICEF. I've had the opportunity to know Pietrasik for the last several years and am eagerly awaiting a chance to collaborate with him on a project. It hasn't happened yet, but hopefully will soon.

Juhu Beach carnys amuse India's rising middle-class, 2002

He's allowed me to post a few of his pictures on this blog, but there is a lot more interesting work on his website http://www.tompietrasik.com.

Ruhelin Bai Bagdaria is among a handful of literate women in a village where only one in four can write their name. Maharashtra, India 2008.

Somali Pirates' Homemade Video

For the last three months I've been working on a story for WIRED that will explore the economic linkages that keep piracy in Somalia a profitable business. Last week I began interviewing pirates and pirate contacts and came across a small trove of videos that pirates took on board the hijacked Yasa Neslihan. According to my sources, this video was taken by the hijackers to prove that the ship was in good condition before final delivery of ransom. To my knowledge, this is the first such video that has been released to the public, though the practice of recording while on board is commonplace.

What is most interesting to me in this is that the pirates seem to have cordial relations with the captured Japanese crew. You can see them mingling with the pirates while on the bridge. It's also striking that it only took a handfull of lightly armed men to capture several hundred million dollars of equipment and cargo.

Above is the edited version that aired on WIRED News on April 10, 2009. To see the unedited footage follow this link: Somali Pirates Homemade Hijacking Video.

William Morrow (Harper Collins) Picks Up "Red Markets"

William Morrow, publishers of Freakonomics, has agreed to publish my first book. Tentatively titled "Red Markets", the book is going to explore the economics of death and the movement of body parts between people and across the globe. Spare Parts will offer an expanded view of stories that I've written for WIRED, Mother Jones and Nerve.com.

Two Radio Appearances for Adoption Story

The response to "Meet the Parents: The Dark Side of Overseas Adoption" has been overwhelming. People from all over the world have been writing in expressing their support for Nageshwar Rao and Sivagama and wishing for a positive ending. Several people have pledged money, and an adoption agency in New Mexico has offered to help with legal services. I saw Nageshwar Rao and Sivagama two days ago and they were very happy that the story had come out, but were still very sad that they have had no contact with the family in America. "We just want them to call," he told me again.

In the next week I'm going to post an update on Mother Jones about the case and show how the adoption agency in Amercia has been invovled in several questionable adoptions here in Chennai. In 1999 an adoption agent in this city is said to have been involved in as many as 20 similar cases. These children are presumably all across America.

In the meanwhile, I've done two radio appearances that you might enjoy listening to.

The first, was on Here and Now, a nationally syndicated program across the United States that devoted a full half-hour to the topic.

The second, was a shorter (and unfortunately, less coherent) piece that aired on Free Speech Radio News.

(photo: funkypancake @ flickr)

Meet the Parents: When Adoption Means Kidnapping

Meet the Parents
After hours hunched behind the wheel of a rented Kia, flying past cornfields and small-town churches, I’m parked on a Midwestern street, trying not to look conspicuous. Across the way, a preteen boy dressed in silver athletic shorts and a football T-shirt plays with a stick in his front yard. My heart thumps painfully. I wonder if I’m ready to change his life forever. . . (Read the story at Mother Jones)

Between 1999 and 2002 dozens, if not hundreds, of children were kidnapped off the streets of Chennai by a corrupt orphanage and sold into the international adoption stream. In August, I reported on the story of Zabeen who had been picked up by an employee of the orphange Malaysian Social Services, and wisked away and held until she was ultimately sold to an adoption agency in Australia. A few days after I met Zabeen's parents, I met Nageshwar Rao and Sivagama, in the Puliantope slum on the North side of Chennai. Their story bore distrubing similarities to what happened to Zabeen. On February 19, 1999, according to my investigation, their son was snatched away from them while he played at a nearby waterpump and sold to an unsuspecting American family who believe they were adopting, not buying, a child. In October I followed court documents and leaked files from police sources to the American mid-west where I found the pre-adolescent boy who seemed to be the spitting image of Nageshwar Rao.

That story, which appears in this month's issue of Mother Jones, is my first attempt and understanding the vast and lucerative market in kidnapped children. These incidents are not confined to a few corrupt orphanages and officials. They are part of a global problem fed by first-world parents' desire for children and the handsome fees that they pay agencies to arrange adoptions.

It is difficult to know for sure how far the corruption goes up the ladder. Do American adoption services know when the children they bring to America have been ripped away from their birth parents? Or do they simply not ask the right questions when confronted by suspicious circumstances? In some cases, such as when the French agency Zoe's Ark attempted to smuggle 103 children of Chad, the charges of kidnapping stick without much problem. But in others the orphanage director's commitment to doing good puts blinders on their eyes when things start to go awry.

In the case of Nageshwar Rao and Sivagama's child Subash, the adoption agency in America is at least implicated in not trying to rectify the situation once they learned of the allegations against MSS in Chennai. They didn't even bother to notify the adoptive families that there could have been a problem despite admitting to knowing about the scandals when they first surfaced a decade ago. In fact, my subsiquent investigation of their case shows that at least two other suspicious adoptions handled by that agency. In the story that appeared in Mother Jones we chose to disguise their identity, but in the coming weeks as I sort through more documents, we may decide it is in the public interest to reveal that agency's name for other journalsits and enforcement authorities to follow up on.

Nageshwar Rao (center) spent so much money on finding Subash, that he wasn't able to afford an education for his daughter Sasala, 17 (right)

Underneath their reluctance to tackle the issue of smuggled children is the disturbing underlying assumption that as long as adopted children are put in good homes, they are better off living in America than they would be growing up in a third world slum. The crime of kidnapping is easy to overlook when the so-called "victim" gets the benefit of a Western education, health care and a loving family to watch over him. This logic has allowed the FBI and attorney general's office to drag its feet in processing an INTERPOL request to collect DNA samples that could conclusively prove the child's identity. It has also let State Authorities in charge of policing adoption irregularities look the other way.

But ignoring the problem only makes matters worse. Children who need adoptive families are crowded into orphanage dirty cribs two at a time, and are often malnourished and dying. However, western families don't want sick children. They want cute kids who won't cause them problems. So the orphanages look outside their walls for a fresh supply. The children kidnapped off the streets of Chennai had homes and loving parents and are exactly the sort of comodity that will draw in substantial adoption fees. The adoption industry has done little to help India's actual needy children, rather it just treats adoption as a business, and tries to source the best possible products for its customers.

Previous reports in America on child kidnapping an adoption irrecularities have fallen on deaf ears. They have been relegated to the realm of urban myth in the same way we tend to think that kidney thieves don't exist. But other countries are taking notice. After reports in TIME magazine and ABC, The Australian government is taking issue seriously. Officials have begun investigating the role of MSS and other orphanages in illegal adoptions and are currently looking at 30 possible cases of kidnapping and adoption fraud form Chennai. Lawmakers are informing adoptive families who have fallen victim to predatory adoption practices and will likely encourage reunions with the stolen children.

I'm hoping that this story in Mother Jones is a first step in raising awareness of the problem faced by internaitonal adoptions and kidnapping. At some point we need to stop looking the other way, and ask tough questions about our own complicity in creating incentives to support kidnapping rackets.

Chief Minister Refuses to Eat in Response to Riot

Now in its fifth day the struggle between thousands of disgruntled lawyers and the police has drawn the attention of the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu M. Karunanidhi who says he intends to fast until the two groups sort out their differences. The octogenarian politician is currently recovering from a spinal surgery in a local hospital and is apparently guilt-tripping both sides to stand down. He isn't actually taking a stand to resolve the differences that have led to a "shoot on sight" by the police order and severe unrest around the High Court that has resulted in a destroyed police station and the burning of dozens of vehicles.

The lawyers outside the court are of two minds about the Chief Minister's actions. One group of 300 lawyers has decided to follow his lead and start their own fast to shame the police into submission. Another group has kept on with its riotous activities and stabbed a police constable.

Meanwhile the courts have been shut down until next week when they will open up to record case backlogs and the business-as-usual approach that has made a travesty out of the Indian legal system.

Police Orders to Shoot Lawyers on Sight

The police have issued a shoot-on-sight order to kill any lawyer caught attacking public property in Chennai. The order comes as a response to a riot that broke out between the police and lawyers near the High Court on Thursday and Friday. During the incident hundreds of lawyers from the high court set fire to a police station, four city buses, several rickshaws and motorcycles. The cause of the riot is ostensibly because of the lack of government support towards the embattled LTTE in Sri Lanka, however the rage pent up by lawyers across the state to seek remediation in their cased through the law seems to be the underlying reason for the unrest.

To my knowledge, the police have not actually shot anyone, though there have been several newspaper photographs of bloodied lawyers who had been hit on the heads by riot police.
While I am not an expert on court politics in Tamil Nadu, it seems to me that it is a bad sign for the state of the government. Lawyers presumably have access to the wheels of justice and it is shocking that they would resort to violence rather than attempt to push their disagreements through official channels.

But their actions show that the legal system in India is badly broken. Cases languish in courts. And there is a backlog that can take decades to even get a hearing, and the near endless appeal process means that no decision is ever truly final. While the lawyers I know speak highly about the ideals of the legal system, they are hopelessly bogged down by its processes and rarely believe that courts can effective deliver justice.

With courts impotent, organized crime syndicates have flooded the market with their own brand of justice, and allowed underworld figures to adjudicate decisions on their own. I wrote about this happening in Bangalore for WIRED last year.

The current riots in Tamil Nadu (which are said to be spreading to Madurai and Trichy) are a natural outgrowth of the current system. If the law is completely broken, what incentive do lawyers have not to riot? When lawyers are reduced to street thuggery what does that say about the functioning of the state itself?

Of course the police's current order to shoot lawyers on sight shows the low esteem in which the government holds the legal profession.

India Today's 10 Crore Fake Rupee Boondoggle

Are Pakistani spies flooding vast amounts of fake cash into the Indian economy with the intend ot devaluing the rupee? That the question that India Today wants you to ask this week with its cover story titled Fake Currency, The New Threat. It's a solid topic for an investigative piece, too bad they don't have any evidence for the claim.

Quoting a mid-level minion on Maharashtra's Anti-Terror squad named Param Bir Sing, reporter Malini Bhupta claims that 8 out of every 1000 notes are counterfeit. Never mind that the anti-terror squad doesn't have jurisdiction over currency matters, the rate of .8% isn't exactly staggering.

Which is to say, in absolute terms, peanuts.

The real story killer comes when you start to read the data they've collected. In 2007, when counterfeiting in the country was at its absolute worst, the police seized about Rs. 10 crore (about $4 million) worth of fake notes. In addition to those busts, all commercial banks in the country combined reported receiving rs 5 crore ($2.5 million).

By contrast, in 1993 alone, the US seized $120 million in counterfeit currency.

Even if they were off by a factor of 10, and there was $70 million worth of fake rupees changing hands in a year, it would barely be a hiccup on India's road to development.

Given that India's GDP is $3.319 trillion. It would take billions of fake notes to even come close to making a dent in the economy. Counterfeiting isn't much of a problem at all. In fact, the total fake currency detected by the government between 2001 and 2007 comes to just 61.7 crore rupees, or about $15 million. Which is to say, a little less than a nice apartment in Mumbai.

There is no way that a story like this should pass through even a rudimentary fact checking process, let alone end up on the cover of a national magazine. India Today is becoming the Fox News of South Asia. The claim of a counterfeit menace doesn't even stand up to its own internal logic and seems only aimed at scaring readers into believing that Pakistan is up to no good dirty tricks.

Pakistan’s Spies Aided Group Tied to Mumbai Siege

WASHINGTON — Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani-based militant group suspected of conducting the Mumbai attacks, has quietly gained strength in recent years with the help of Pakistan’s main spy service, assistance that has allowed the group to train and raise money while other militants have been under siege, American intelligence and counterterrorism officials say. From the New York Times

With intelligence agencies backing up the links between ISI and lakshar e toiba it seems like only a matter of time for the Pakistani government to crack down hard on its rogue elements or risk destabilizing the entire region. It will be interesting to see the response in the coming days. Stay tuned.

The Observer also reports that it has located the family of captured Mumbai terrorist Ajmal Amir Kasab in a small village in Pakistan's Punjab state. By reviewing electoral lists and cross referencing regional maps, Saeed Shah met the family of Kasab and found that the local people there say that they knew his identity immediately after shootings. It is notable that a journalist tracked down the family before Pakistani law enforcement was able to. It shows how slow the wheels are turning despite rhetoric to begin investigations of their own.

When Rats Ate My Engine

My car has been acting a little funny lately. At low speeds was jump and was real shaky until I got moving at a steady clip. The alarm stopped working and I could never seem to keep any water in the windshield wiper reservoir. I don't really know much about cars, so for a while I blamed it on the rain. Or maybe, I thought, I needed to change the oil. Just in case it was something serious, I decided to send it over to the Hyundai dealer to see if he could sort out the problems.

Yesterday morning I got a call.

"Hello, Sir?"
"Yes"
"You have rats in your engine."
"Rats? Are you sure?
"Yes, many rats. They have eaten most of the wiring? There are droppings everywhere."
"Can't you think of a better excuse to void my warranty, what's the proof?"
"I'll send you a picture, hold on."


Five minutes later he takes a picture of my spark plug caps and e-mails it to me. Yes, those are teeth marks. Some time in the last couple months the giant raccoon-sized rats that feed on temple scraps downstairs (this is a real problem, there are festivals every other day sponsored by the temple in my building and they leave lots and lots of food (aka rat food)in my parking lot overnight...but I digress) climbed into my car's engine and snacked on the tasty plastic bits.

Or, as this New York Times article on the engine rat problem in New York suggests "“They hang out, and during the night they must get bored, and they eat the wires.” Indeed, a rat expert Paul D. Curtis, an associate professor at Cornell University who specializes in wildlife management, said rodents in general tend to be attracted to plastic tubing and wires. “They do need to chew constantly to wear down their incisors,” he said, “and there’s something about the texture of the plastic that they really like.”

So the question on the table now is does anyone know of a substance that I can sprinkle on my engine to make it taste bad.

The New Indian Express "Bobitises" Itself

Amid the array of conflicting stories in the Indian media over the Mumbai attacks last week comes an article that tests the true strength of the local newspaper industry. I'm reprinting it here as it appears on page 9 of today's New Indian Express. Tell me if you think anything is amiss.

Lady dentist bobbitises lover

Bangalore: A city-based private dentist bobbitised her lover with whom she continued to have a relationship even after her marriage.

"Arshad Ali, 33, a Mysore-based practicing doctor, was bobbitised by his lover Syeda Amina, 32, a dentist running her own clinic in Bangalore, on Saturday." Deputy Commissioner of police, South-east division, Soumendhu Mukherjee said on Tuesday.

"Though the motive could be jealousy or sudden change of mind, it is still surprising, since Ali who has known Amina for the past ten years had informed her about his marriage. His wife infact knew of their relationship, which continued even after the marriage," Mukherji said.

"It could be a sudden feeling of jealousy, a perverted mind which made Amina call Ali, who had come home to Bangalore on some work to her clinic. She gave him a glass of juice with sedatives and then bobbitized him in a state of semi-consciousness," he said. Amina then admitted him to a private hospital here on November 20, he added." - Press Trust of India

____

So it's official, "bobbitise" has been accepted as a verb by the Indian news media. Did the reporter just not know what the word "bobbitise" meant, but decided to write the story assuming that his readers would, or was PTI so squeamish about printing its meaning that they decided that only readers familiar with the famous John Bobbit case should know the news of the day.

Addendum: I've noticed a surge in traffic from people looking for the official meaning of "bobbitize" and I realize that I haven not answered their pressing questions. The word comes from the famous incident in 1993 when Lorena Bobbit cut off her husband John's penis with a kitchen-knife and threw the member out the window of her car. For more information check out the Wikipedia entry.

The Danger Ahead

Within hours of when the last bullet was fired in Mumbai Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi began positioning himself for his own attack on the sitting government. His request for a review of internal security is likely a continuation of his campaign to crack the whip on domestic Muslims. In 2007 Tehelka reported that Modi had inside knowledge of the planning of the Gujarat riots where an estimated 2000 people--mostly muslims--lost their lives. His visa to the United States was denied in both 2003 and 2008 on allegations of genocide.

Modi and the rest of the Hindu right--from Bal Thakery's Shiv Sena to the RSS cadres --will use the assault on Mumbai to shore up support for their parties and direct communal fervor against millions of innocent Muslims in India. Even if the sequel to the Gujarat riots does not happen, we will likely see the passage of a POTA like law (India's stronger version of the Patriot Act) and an internal and arbitrary crackdown on suspected terrorists.

And this, of course, is exactly sort of result that the elements in the ISI that most likely planned the attacks would have wanted. I have already written on how these attacks play into the ISI's strategic advantage. In the last eight years India's economy has boomed and it's military position has strengthened, putting Pakistan's own position in South Asia much weaker. The assault on Mumbai was planned and executed by trained professionals, not random rural jihadis who just picked up their first machine gun.

However, if the Hindu-right takes the bait, they could easily spin the events of the last three days into something far more sinister. By passing laws that crack down on innocent populations in the name of combating terror and possibly drumming up support for violent pogroms, there is a chance that India could end up cannibalizing itself.

The Case Against Pakistan

Terrorist in Victoria Terminal Sebastian D'Souza / Mumbai Mirror

As the siege on lower Mumbai stretches into its third day it has become clear that that attacks were not orchestrated by an unknown terrorist group, but that they had been planned, financed and carried out by elements within the Pakistani Intelligence agency known as ISI. It is still unclear if the intelligence agency acted alone or if high level members of Pakistan’s government had signed off on the operation, or whether individuals within the agency broke away with their own agenda. However, if the Pakistani government does immediate action against its rogue agency this assault could be considered an act of war.

Internally Pakistan is in chaos. The government has almost no presence in its Northwest Frontier Provence (NWFP) and has sacrificing its military sovereignty to American forces for the war on terror. After almost 60 years of stalemate on the Kashmir issue, Pakistan has begin to fall behind India. As its claim on Kashmir is losing strength hard-line Islamic militants and Taliban remnants are setting up shop across the country.

While at present, Pakistan is a major rival to India, ten years down the line the country could well be obsolete. India is becoming a major regional power, with a booming economy, a recently passed nuclear deal and a growth rate that touches on 10%. From an intelligence and security perspective, Pakistan has to either take strong measures to improve its domestic situation or hope that its rivals similarly falter.

With little hope of improving the problems within its own borders, ISI has opted to pull a card from the CIA’s former playbook and attempt to destabilize the region.

For almost forty years from 1960s through the 1990s the Central Intelligence Agency planned and executed several operations in South America, Asia and Eastern Europe, aimed at destabilizing the regions. Always operating under a guise of plausibly deniability, and without the broader support of the American people the CIA was successful at clandestine operations. By financing a war by proxy in Afghanistan, a guerilla army in Tibet, assassinations in Chile, a failed coup in Cuba and arming Contras in Nicaragua, the CIA bet that by destabilizing competing nation states the could further secure America’s position in the world. And, despite some terrible public relations, the CIA’s efforts worked.

The ISI has every motivation to do the same thing in India.

In the past six months there have been ten major terrorist attacks across India, the highest rate of violence in more than a decade. Bombings in Hyderabad, Jaipur, Varanasi, Bangalore, Delhi and Bombay spread panic across the country, and the groups claiming responsibility were new and apparently homegrown. These so-called “Indian Muhajaddin” use hit and run tactics and claim to have fundamentalist politics—but released very little information about its political demands claiming that it was practicing Jihad for Jihad’s sake. At best their ideology is just meant to signal general Islamic discontent. In other words, the ideology is a thin veil for ISI to claim plausible deniability.

The Indian versions of these so-called Islamic fundamentalists do not appear to have a legitimate ideological base. This separates them from every other terrorist group in the last 40-odd years that had specific political demands. The IRA strove for independence from Ireland, Basques from Spain, Hezbollah for an independent Palestine, the LTTE for an independent Tamil State, and Naxalites for a communist revolution. Even Al Qaeda’s rabidly fundamentalist politics expressed a political ideology for independence from the west and establishing a government according to sharia law.

Local terror groups in India did not seem to have any concrete ideology apart from spreading violence, and perhaps inter-ethnic conflict. At best they have the political savvy of the Columbine school shooters. Their motivations are ultimately inscrutable—and patently false.
Many reports show shady linkages kept to Pakistani immigrants and ISI funding, not local radical mosques preaching jihad. Only a few months ago even the CIA fingered ISI behind the bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul. At best the half-hearted proclamations of the Indian and Deccan Muhajaddins to “free Islamic fighters from Indian prisons” were only a thin veil to disguise their real agendas.

Now, with a tactical attack on southern Mumbai that used military tactics, and even satellite communication with a base in Karachi it is clear that there is no homegrown anti-India Islamic agenda. Instead, it seems that Pakistan’s intelligence agency has been trying to spread instability across India to achieve its own strategic ends.

India now must contemplate a response to the actions of ISI. Many segments of Pakistan’s government want peace with the India, and it is likely that the agency has been acting on its own without approval from elected officials. But unless the government is able to regain control of ISI the recent attacks on Mumbai could be construed as an act of war.

**UPDATE: Some changes have been made to this post. In the original version I was more certain about the role of ISI, but reader feedback has made me reconsider some points. While it is apparent that the assailants on Mumbai had help from Pakistan, and likely from members of the intelligence service, it could be that factions from within the security agency acted without authorization from the top-brass.

India's New Terror Age

Victoria Terminal in Mumbai after a blast last night AFP/Getty

A coordinated series of terrorist attacks in Mumbai today signals a new age of extremism and sectarian violence that will likely increase over time. Since 2001 there have been 24 major terrorist strikes in India resulting in at least 966 deaths. The last five months have been the most harrowing with 302 dead from ten different attacks. As a hostage standoff continues in Colaba that number could rise even higher before the day is out.

What is most troubling about the recent assault on southern Mumbai is the sudden change in tactics. In the last several years most terrorist attacks have come in the form of coordinated small explosive charges, mostly left in nylon bags in commercial districts or IEDs made out of tiffin containers placed on the backs of bicycles in crowded shopping areas. What happened today doesn't fit the pattern of previous events. This wasn't a terrorist attack, this was a coordinated military assault on southern Mumbai executed with precision and calculated to inflict economic, civic, human and symbolic causalities.

Insurgents armed with automatic weapons ran lose on the streets, raided upscale hotels, took hostages and may have specifically targeted foreigners. They set fires in buildings and hijacked police vehicles. Unlike in previous events they weren't afraid to show their faces. These isn't hit and run tactics. This is urban warfare.

Police outside the Taj Hotel in Collaba, Mumbai Prashanth Vishwanathan, NYT

While there is no clear indication of who is behind the most recent string of attacks they must have had significant training and solid financial backing to carry them out. Armed with AK-47's, several boats, satellite phones, grenades and high explosives the group was able to take lower Mumbai completely by surprise and outwit anti-terrorism squads that have been on high alert for months. This level of coordination shows that terrorists here are most likely well networked with other insurgent groups and that they probably share materiel and tactical knowledge. They also have the manpower to embark on large scale operations without putting their entire organization at risk.

While the previous bomb blasts around India could have been carried out by a few dozen dedicated assailants, this attack shows that there must be at least several hundred people planning, training and carrying out logistical missions.

One possible--and even likely--explanation is that whomever is behind this is has been sharing experience and material with any one of the other dozen armed separatist movements across India. The attack today resembles the organizational resilience of other veteran separatist movements in India like the Naxalites, Lakshar e Toiba or even the Sri Lankan LTTE.

This sort of knowledge sharing is not unprecedented. In the past, the LTTE and Naxalites have shared tactical information with groups as far away as the FARC, and while there are vast ideological differences between these groups they are all involved in similar tactical operations and urban warfare. Rediff.com reports that the attackers were in contact with people in Karachi, Pakistan via satelite phone during the operaiton and that the e-mail that claimed responsibility for the attacks had been sent from a source in Russia.

While instances of direct links between terrorist outfits are often difficult to establish concretely, in 2001, three members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) were arrested in Columbia after sharing bomb making and tactical information with the Farc. These two totally different organizations saw it to be mutually beneficial to share resources, even though there was no ideological connection.

It will be interesting to know what sorts of explosives were used in the attacks last night. Some reports have indicated that they used the explosive RDX, which has both military and industrial applications. A little over a year ago Naxalites stole several tons of explosives from an Essar Steel mine in Chhattisgarh that have been used repeatedly in operations across the country. (At the left is a photo of captured explosives recovered from an unexploded IED that I took while visiting police outposts on the front line of that conflict. Other photos from that story can be found at this link). The haul captured by the Naxals would have been far too much for them to use in their operations against the police and paramilitary forces that the combat in the jungles of central India. There is likely a market for their excess explosives. And what better customer is there than another insurgent group that is trying to destabilize the government?

There is every indication that there will be more attacks to come and that even police successes in capturing terrorists have little impact. When Delhi police raided the house of several suspected terrorists belonging to an outfit called "The Indian Muhajaddin", they found a laptop had illustrated the organization's hierarchical structure. The police conducted dozens of raids across the country and for a while everyone here breathed a little easier.

But the structure of the organization was far from destabilized. Within three months they have been able to mount the most destructive attack in years. The sad fact is that terrorists are gaining ground in India and whomever is behind planning their operations is safe and celebrating the success of their operations.

If anything, this is only the beginning of a new age of terror in India.