The Mumbai Parallels

The parallels between the two outrages are striking, and not just in the terrorists’ methodology of using small teams to attack simultaneously multiple “soft” civilian targets in carefully chosen, symbolically significant locations. 

In both cases, some or all of the terrorists had received professional military-style instruction. The Mumbai terrorists had learned their lethal craft at camps in Pakistan run by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a militant group associated with that country’s intelligence agency, ISI. Just 10 of them were able to hold off some of the best of India’s armed forces for almost four days. As for the Paris terrorists, it seems likely that at least some were veterans of ISIS’s campaigns in Syria and Iraq, and it’s possible they had been specifically trained for urban terrorist missions in Europe.

In any case, both sets of terrorists were highly proficient killers. A photographer who witnessed the methodical slaughter in Mumbai’s CTS Terminus told me that the two terrorists fired with consistent, lethal accuracy at the upper bodies of their victims. In Paris a survivor of the Bataclan theater massacre said they were “shooting at us like if we were birds.”

In Mumbai and Paris alike, the terrorists employed deliberate cruelty, both as a means of stunning hostages into inaction and to amplify the impact of their attacks. In both cities, the jihadists had no intention of surviving their attacks. (Although the Mumbai terrorists were not equipped with suicide vests, as were all eight of the known Paris attackers, some of them carried cyanide capsules.) 

They also made the same tactical choice to use guns and grenades rather than massive bombs, preferring to kill their victims up close or even one by one. This was presumably because, while gunning people down is less efficient than blowing them up, it is more intimate and therefore more psychologically disturbing when contemplated by the society that has been attacked. No one should underestimate the psychological sophistication of the planners of the Mumbai and Paris attacks: They understand very well just how terrifying and demoralizing the idea of slaughter by bullet and blade is for civilized, prosperous people who have the good fortune to be unfamiliar with extreme violence. 

They also understand how social media and 24-hour news coverage can not only powerfully amplify the fear they instill, but can also project it across great distances, even around the world.

(As modern as all this sounds, there is a theory that the terrorists were employing a strategy that goes back to the days of the prophet himself. Among the methods his numerically weak forces used to demoralize and conquer great cities and long-established regimes was to send small groups of disguised fighters into marketplaces, where they would sow panic by suddenly attacking and slaughtering unarmed civilians.) 

The planners of both attacks put considerable thought into choosing targets whose violation would be particularly damaging to a city’s morale and sense of security. 

In Mumbai, although the targets included a train station, a hospital, a cinema, a Jewish center, and a café popular with backpackers, the primary objectives were two five-star hotels long favored as social and business hubs by India’s small political, cultural, media, and business elites. The terrorists knew that by attacking these institutions they would send a chill through the entire Indian ruling class.

The Paris attackers, on the other hand, seem to have been more concerned with shaking the confidence of French society as a whole than with striking a blow at the heart of the French establishment, although they surely knew that President Hollande was attending the international soccer match they targeted with suicide bombers. Moreover, their attacks were about more than demoralizing the “crusader” enemy or demonstrating their ability to cause mayhem. 

That is because for ISIS, unlike LeT, the targets were also attractive for ideological and religious reasons. They were attacking activities as well as people: sports, drinking, music, the free mixing of the sexes, all of which are deemed by the Islamic State to be hateful and deserving of harsh punishment. (Because at least some of the terrorists were locals, they knew precisely which were the most suitable “cool” neighborhoods to attack.)

Killing people in restaurants, on bicycles, in bars, a stadium, and a concert hall therefore represents a symbolic victory regardless of its effect on enemy morale. And like all ISIS victories it attracts more recruits and reassures Islamist fighters who may have been unnerved by battlefield reverses in Syria and Iraq.

In both Mumbai and Paris, the terrorists exploited the carefree atmosphere of liberal, orderly urban polities in which people are used to moving around without imagining they might be in danger. You simply could not carry out a similar attack in those restricted, untrusting societies in which social and family life are hidden behind high walls.

It’s also worth noting that the planners of both attacks apparently hoped that a great many more people would die. The terrorist captured in Mumbai reportedly said that his team wanted to kill 5,000. If even one of the three suicide bombers who blew themselves up outside the Stade de France had managed to get into the stadium before detonating, the resulting carnage and panic could have killed thousands.

In general, we don’t expect history to repeat itself or a terrorist spectacular to be copied both closely and successfully. Every time terrorists carry out a new kind of attack, it ceases to be inconceivable; those who would use the same methods therefore lack the advantage of complete surprise. The police forces of the world’s great cities analyzed what happened in Mumbai between November 26 and 29, 2008, and thought about how to respond to such a challenge. This certainly was the case in Paris, where the French government developed what it called Plan Rouge Alpha in early 2009. 

France’s security services, moreover, had apparently been warned of the possibility of an ISIS strike in the days before the attack, and in any case had good reason to be on alert given the Charlie Hebdo atrocity in January. Similarly in Mumbai in 2008 terrorist attacks had been predicted—bombs had been set off in Jaipur, Bangalore, and Ahmedabad earlier in the year, killing at least 130 people—and security had supposedly been tightened. 

And that is one of the most chilling things about this weekend’s horrors: Paris was probably as prepared for such an attack as any Western capital, and hundreds of innocents were killed or wounded anyway. 

The terrorists were able to wreak dreadful carnage even though France’s police forces are vastly more competent, better trained, motivated, and equipped than those whose job description was maintaining law and order in Mumbai. 

The effectiveness of the French police is one of the reasons the Paris attacks were over within three hours—rather than dragging out for four days, as they did in India’s commercial capital. (Few contemporaneous reports captured the full extent of the fecklessness and disarray of the various local and national police and military forces that responded to India’s most infamous terrorist attack.) Many lives were undoubtedly saved by the courage, skill, and sacrifice of the special forces team who stormed the Bataclan theater. 

But the awful truth is that this kind of attack is all but impossible for even the best prepared police forces to snuff out without loss. 

The only way to defeat such an attack is to prevent it. And the only to way to do that is through intelligence and surveillance. They, however, are less effective than previously thanks to Edward Snowden’s publication of the techniques and technologies previously used to track terrorists. As one intelligence official said of the Paris attackers, “They don’t use their mobiles anymore.” 

Jonathan Foreman is the author of Aiding and Abetting: Foreign aid failures and the 0.7% deception.