A comment on HBO's documentary on Mumbai.
After watching a compelling and incredibly disturbing HBO documentary, Terror in Mumbai, narrated by Fareed Zacharia, the meaning of the so-called War on Terror (a phrase glibly coined by the Bush administration) came clear.
The massacre took place on November 26, 2008 and provided the world with a most frightening reality. Eight down and out Pakistanis committed to carry out the attack remotely directed from a site in Pakistan by Laksha-e-taiba (literally The Army of the Righteous).
The most chilling aspect of the attack was the cell phone communications between the terrorists and their leader. The conversations, some explicitly suggesting how to murder their victims, were a curious mixture of dispassionate and fervent exhortations. There was a sense of casual and indiscriminate killing on one hand and promises of martyrdom on the other.
Laksha-e-toiba, formed with the help of the suspect Pakistani intelligence service, was originally focussed on the conflict in Kashmir but has stepped dramatically onto the world scene with the Mumbai massacre.
One of the closing comments from the leader of the attack was a warning that:
“This was just the trailer. Just wait til’ you see the rest of the film."