Mumbai: why al-Qaeda cannot be ruled out

Who exactly planned the attacks in Mumbai will be a mystery for days to come, but one thing is already clear: in its range and complexity, this a major step change in the way Islamist extremists operate.

The news that the militants arrived in fast boats from the open sea and the fact that they could attack in so many locations - almost all 'soft' targets, admittedly - shows there was a sophisticated tactician behind it. The pattern of recent terrorist operations suggests that we can expect copy-cat attacks in the weeks to come.

So far we have had admission by one group, the hitherto unknown Deccan Mujahideen. As Jason Burke reports for The First Post today, among the prime home-grown suspects are the Indian Muslim militant Abdul Subhan Qureshi, a computer engineer now believed to be responsible for multiple attacks in Delhi, Jaipur, Bangalore and Ahmedabad earlier this year, and, significantly, with no known links to al-Qaeda.

Experts like Professor Bruce Hoffman have been quick to rule out connections with mainstream Islamic militant groups such as Lashkar i Toiba, an affiliate of al-Qaeda who want the Indians out of Kashmir. "It's even unclear if this is a real group or not," he said of Deccan Mujahideen.

Like-minded terrorists learn from each other, borrowing from each other’s playbooks

Christine Fair of the Rand Corporation, which specialises in strategic thinking for the Pentagon, said overnight, "There is nothing al-Qaeda-like about it. Did you see any suicide bombers? And there are no fingerprints of Lashkar."

Not so fast. In four decades of covering terrorism, I have heard much the same thing from experts immediately after a new kind of attack - from the IRA and Red Brigades to the al-Qaeda cluster of groups.

The fact is like-minded groups learn from each other, they borrow from each other's playbooks. The methods vary – and in Mumbai we have hostage-taking and the use of gunfire as much as bombs as well as the commando-style arrival by sea – but the message of attacking British and American citizens is a variation on a constant theme, for London and Washington are historically al-Qaeda's axis of evil.

This is why Western agencies, and academics, have got to be far more agile. Like Hydra, al-Qaeda has many heads and many shapes. Instead of obsessing with the decreasingly relevant old leaders like Osama bin Laden, Western intelligence must focus on the new groups with new tactics, which have attacked twice in Mumbai in two years – the new threats of today, and tomorrow.