either India nor its partners put up the kind of intellectual fight necessary to counter the pernicious arguments that turned the victim into a part-culprit.
The global response to the Mumbai attack was characterised by confusion. The picture shows an old woman outside the Taj Mahal hotel on November 30, 2008.
In the wake of the 2008 terrorist attack on Mumbai, many observers predicted that the outrage would prove a turning point in the global struggle against terrorism. A year on, however, it is far from clear if the attacks, and the lessons they hold out, have in fact changed the world’s perception of the problem of terrorism — and the responses it necessitates.
Few things today are, superficially at least, as consensual as the need to fight terrorism. International public opinion was indeed shocked by the Mumbai attacks; commentators articulated their outrage; leaders expressed their condemnation. If there was any such thing as a global impact of the Mumbai attacks, its nature was at the very least ambiguous.
True, messages of sympathy did abound. At the practical level, many countries offered their services as soon as the Indian government started articulating its technical needs for counter-terrorism. Proposals for equipment and training of special forces did multiply. But it is not clear that India has received the kind of effective solidarity that the genuine sense of a common threat should have generated.
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5:38 AM
Moderate Islamist here
