You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This compact volume is a compilation of chapters written by a group of eight writers, journalists all, except Julio Riberio. It sets out to gain a deeper understanding of the most recent terrorist attack on Mumbai by focusing on the journey of a group of 10 Pakistani young men recruited and trained by Lashkar-e-Taiba, believed to be a metamorphosing Pakistani terrorist organization, that masterminds their entry into Mumbai and remotely directs their carnage in the heart of the city over three days. Several chapters are, therefore, devoted to the details of how the 10 terrorists reached their destinations - Victoria Terminus, the iconic railway station that was built during the British Raj, the Jewish Center, two luxury hotels that reflect the emerging face of the Indian economic miracle, a fashionable East-meet-West café and, oddly, a hospital that hardly fits into this readily identifiable list of symbolic targets. These chapters provide the reader with riveting descriptions of how the men wreaked havoc at each of these places and how they were ultimately secured by Indian security men. Other chapters focus on brief bio-sketches of selected police and security personnel who lost their lives in fighting the terrorists with a distracting allusion to the politicization of the process of posthumous award selection, a relatively superficial description of the Pakistani political subterfuge that abets the terrorist network in that country, the unpreparedness of the Indian security apparatus, the “soft state” analogy, the reasons for it and some prescriptions for the future. There is also a curious chapter on the resilience of Mumbai masses that reads like a speech designed to instill hope at a political rally. The book, therefore, clearly tries to accomplish too much and suffers as a result. It comes across as an incomplete attempt to delve into complex issues and reads more as a bunch of poignantly crafted newspaper editorials or articles aimed at a weekly magazine read