Maximum City Under Seige

The terrorists have struck again in Mumbai. The city has been under seige for almost twelve hours, as gunmen armed with AK-47s and grenades have stormed close to a dozen targets throughout India's largest city.

Among the notable locations attacked allegedly by the Deccan Mujahideen are the monumental Victoria Terminus (Chhatrapathi Shivaji Terminus) train station, the iconic Taj Palace hotel, and popular Leopold's Cafe. These symbolic sites were struck because they represent the centers of elite life in Mumbai, where wealthy Mumbaikars, tourists, and Western expatriates mingle. The unprecedented scope of the attacks caught the city completely off-guard, as the gunmen entered into the city from boats that docked next to the Gateway of India.

VT station is where two million commuters come and go every day of the week. This is the primary transit hub for the residents of India's financial capital. The assaults inside this station come two years after a series of six blasts in the first class compartments on trains across Mumbai killed 200 people.

But the scale of last night's attacks went far beyond the crowded railways. Attacking tourist haunts, the Cama Hospital, a movie theater, and the creme de la creme hotels make this strike the most bloody and unusual series of coordinated terrorist actions that India has ever experienced.

Mumbai awoke Thursday morning to the shocking sight of the Taj Mahal Hotel burning and army snipers waiting atop the adjacent Gateway of India for the terrorists to emerge. Commandos attempted to end hostage situations at several locales across South Mumbai. Jamshetji Tata's jewel was crackling with the flames of a war initiated by a mysterious terrorist organization. Along with the Trident Oberoi hotel, the Taj is truly a landmark of opulence. Striking at this symbol of affluence makes an enormous statement. Combating so many centers of power with this new kind of terror sets a horrific precedent for the future.

Mumbai is a powder keg, and this explosive series of actions has shocked anti-terror security forces, whose leader was actually killed in gun battles with the terrorists. The level of planning that went into this operation is astounding, and the security forces need to bone up on their intelligence gathering.

Whether the goal of this multi-faceted operation was to destabilize Indian society, kill Westerners, or free Islamic prisoners, terrorism in India has been taken to the next level. It is baffling to try piecing together images of blood splattered across the floor of VT and multiple reports of middle-class, uncharacteristic hostage-takers. Although Western expatriates are disproportionately represented among the victims of the prolonged agony, many questions have yet to be answered.

Does this operation emerge in the anti-Western ideas of Pakistani madrasas? Has it boiled over from the deep poverty of Mumbai's overcrowded slums? How wide is the terror network that carried out the attack? What is the essence of their message?

My home for nine months has been victimized by political violence. But, my hope is that fear and hatred will not prevail in the city of dreams. While train services are running, stock exchanges, schools, and offices will remain closed on Thursday. The young perpetrators of these acts have caught a city that was not well-equipped enough for attacks of this scope, but the city will quickly rebuild.

Jai Mumbai!

Holy Bombs & Heffers

Just a few short days ago, some fellows associated with a terror org called Indian Mujahedeen struck 8 different locales in the city of Jaipur, located in the northwestern state of Rajasthan. This so-called Pink City was the unfortunate victim of an ongoing and rather obscure campaign to create a more religiously polarized subcontinent. Dozens of people, representing at least three faiths, died in the blasts. These pictures are a tribute to the Jaipur that I visited, months before these attacks transpired.
To what end? What nihilistic purpose did these cycle bombs serve? Whose ego was stroked by these acts of destruction and rage? Whose mental flames were stoked by carnage and grief and ire? Responsibility is diffused. Law enforcement cannot quite grapple with the consequences and the necessary preventative measures. And another tier-two Indian city will fall prey to the same story in just a few months.
Holi in Rajasthan is a holiday for all. Or at least almost all. Color squirting galore renders the place a veritable bath of orgiastic hues, distributed alternatively by sadistic, egalitarian, and fraternal means. The act of dousing a stranger in sharp tones is cathartic to the max. Holidays that involve any means of connection with absolute strangers in a visceral, sincere, and vibrant experience are the best. Every day is a Holi day!
These Jaipur bombers must have missed out on Holi. Or, maybe they have had too many bad Holi experiences. Perhaps, as many allege, they are from elsewhere and never had the good fortune to engage in the glorious Rajasthani Holi festivities. Nihilism need not be channeled into creating combustible devices that wreak havoc on body parts and other contiguous matter. Use Holi for moderately outrageous but ultimately harmless color wars, stop the senseless terrorizing, and Jai Jaipur!

King Nasrallah and Sheikh Ahmedhaniyassad

The iconic power of the men who currently lead fundamentalist Islamic movements in the Middle East is incredible. They are atop a system of clan-based rule over sheepish masses, in which a valiant attempt is made to capitalize on anti-Western sentiments, for good or for ill. By and large, the people who favor these leaders over more pacifist, reasonable, and moderate alternatives make such a radical political choice because of a deeply rooted tribalistic mentality that pits pan-Islamist supranational ideology against the West in all its incarnations. The Arabian tribal concept and its loyalty to the Meccan core is at the heart of this international movement, but in many ways the movement has become more of a political alliance than a religious quest. Religious justification for allegiance to the various manifestations of Iranian sphere of influence has replaced the dominance of Arab supranationalism/pan-Arabism as the region's most potent alternative to Western-style government and society.

In an age when all Middle Eastern societies believe that they are under siege from one direction or another, many countries crave a leader who functions as an omnipotent or least symbolically impregnable father of the people. As a patriarch who exercises power in an authoritarian and often arbitrary manner, the superman reigns supreme. Is this the fundamental nature of Arab political culture? Are Arab societies truly not ready for open democracy? Is it an excessively cultural relativist judgment to state that some societies merely need this form of rule? Posting gigantic images of Assad, Nasrallah, and Ahmadinejad across Syria, Shiite areas of Lebanon gives these places a sense of order and bestows them with the notion that some strongman is protecting them from the malevolence of Israel, Christians, and the West in general.
One notable phenom that pertains to this wrangling about loyalties and constantly shifting allegiances is the Shi'ite-Sunni rift. It seems that most of this intra-Islamic conflict is about the political might of Iran, not about theological differences. Most Shi'ites, at least in Iraq and Lebanon, have deep historical ties to Iran, either because they became Shi'ite due to Iranian missionary activity or because they have ancestral ties to Iran. Much of the current geopolitical struggle between the icons of Shia Islam and the West is over the tense Cold War developing between Iran and its proxies and the U.S. and its satellites. The influence of Sunni-inspired fundamentalism is perhaps waning. One curious phenom is that Palestinians themselves often refer to Hamas as the Shi'ites or Persians merely due to the source of the movement's funding, suggesting that the region's struggles are often more a function of material conflict and Machivellian political alliances rather than a truly ideological or religious clash.
As far as these tribalistic leaders go, the masses might be right to support movements that actually work towards their interests in terms of social welfare, physical defense, and national pride. In most of these cases, the propertied and educated elites will not support the people's Islamic choice because they have a vested interest in propping up regimes that are more friendly to their materialist inclinations and that maintain their bourgeois status. This is not to say that wealthy scions throughout the Islamic world do not support scores of Islamist movements. However, in the cases of Iran, Lebanon, and Gaza, it is evident that these movements possess true power because the masses of uneducated, disenfranchised citizens have found their voice. But, at the end of the day, the Islamist alternative typically is reckless in offending the West and places the masses in even greater danger. Aggressively Islamist forces often receive the terrorist appellation, thereby endangering their supporters in the international clash of civilizations.

Palestine, Lebanon, and Iraq are failed states that do not function as unified national entities in the international arena. The national governments maintain sovereignty over, at most, half of the country's territory. Moreover, these places are wracked by the regional tug-of-war that divides their land into sectors that are controlled by various regional superpowers. Each has a contingent that leans to the West and a contingent that leans towards Teheran and/or Mecca. The power of iconic strongmen in these societies is quite strong. Perhaps some societies simply need to be ruled by some supermen and perhaps other countries (Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Israel) are entitled to seal themselves off from these other relatively backward and fundamentalist places. Does Gaza simply need to Hamas to control Gazan society and provide security, meaning, and legitimacy to the government? Must the world continue to boycott governments that are favored by the people and are thus a legitimate democratic choice? Maybe it is time that the neocon gospel is discredited once and for all. Democracy is not the goal, and democracy exists nowhere. Certain societies have the right to retain anti-Western prejudice, as long as the fundamental stalemate exists between the dueling expansionist/hegemonic Western and Islamist ideologies.