by Charlie Edwards | Nov 26, 2008 | Conflict and security, South Asia
If you need emergency information, try the Mumbai Help blog – it has a consolidated list of contact numbers. British nationals in Mumbai should call +91 11 2419 2288. In the UK, call +44 207 008 0000.
Mumbai has been rocked by a series of shootings and explosions. The violence has the hallmarks of a coordinated attack. For the breaking news go to Twitter, then go to the BBC or CNN.
Below is an example of the feed from Twitter user @BreakingNewsOn, as news of the crisis initially emerged.
BreakingNewsOn
A car bomb, reportedly a taxi, has exploded at a “domestic airport” in Mumbai, Al Jazeera reports while quoting local media. 1 minute ago from web
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CAR BOMB EXPLODES AT MUMBAI AIRPORT – TV. (BULLETIN) 3 minutes ago from web
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Some gunmen are still holed up in buildings, police chief tells Reuters; reports of “confrontation” between police and gunmen at a hospital. 6 minutes ago from web
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Police say gunmen attacked at least 7 locations with K-47 weapons, explosives; new attacks reported at cinema, hotels, hospitals; 27 dead. 11 minutes ago from web
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An explosion is being reported at the Taj hotel in Mumbai where gunman had earlier opened fire – NDTV. 21 minutes ago from web
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Update – Alex adds: See this Wikipedia page on the bombings, which is being updated in real time. (Same happened on 7/7 – see Charlie’s post on this a few months back.) Also a Google Map of locations under attack here, and a Flickr photostream here. But the #Mumbai feed on Twitter remains the key place to look for news (plus @mumbaiattack for a more filtered version).
Update, 7:43 am (David): The news keeps getting worse. Indian TV reports a fresh explosion at the Trident just a few minutes ago. It was deeply shocking this morning to hear the BBC interview a man who was barricaded inside the hotel. A few minutes later the presenters had moved onto a joke item about Christmas carols. Pathetic.
Update, 8:28 am (Alex): Summary of how mobile and social networking channels are covering the crisis – together with discussion of some of the dilemmas this throws up – here. The biggest dilemma of all: widespread concern that the attackers themselves are making use of media and social network coverage in order to anticipate what the authorities are up to. In such circumstances, much can hang on individual users’ sense of personal responsibility on what to report – and what not to. No such thing as a DA Notice on Twitter…
Update, 8:44 am (Alex): Coverage is starting to converge on agreement that the attackers came to Mumbai by sea, leading to much speculation and rumour about where they may have come from. Plenty of people on Twitter, the blogosphere and (more gradually) the mainstream media (e.g. Indian Express here) are speculating that the attackers came from Karachi (in Pakistan). This is not confirmed, though; other reports suggest that they came from Gujurat (in India). As Gideon Rachman notes, the answer to this question will be highly significant:
The development of a terror campaign with truly domestic roots would be a really ominous development. On the other hand, if the terror attacks originated on Pakistani soil, then regional tensions would spiral. How unpleasantly ironic that all this should happen, just days after the Pakistani prime minister, issued a bold appeal for peace between his country and India. One might almost believe that these attacks were designed to scupper the Zardari peace initiative – were it not for the fact that it must take longer than a couple of days to put something like this into action.
Update, 11:32 am (David): The siege of Mumbai is now into its twentieth hour. Terrorists are reported to be being interviewed live on Indian TV. IBN is claiming we’re into the endgame. Let’s hope so before night falls. The live IBN stream is here…
Update, 11:54 am (Alex): The BBC is reporting that the Indian government has asked for all live Twitter updates from the scene to cease immediately. A tweet reading as follows is proliferating on Twitter as users re-post it on their feeds: “ALL LIVE UPDATES – PLEASE STOP TWEETING about #Mumbai police and military operations”. Various twitterers reply indignantly that if they’re to stop posting the details, the broadcast media should do the same. As I write, the IBN video stream that David links to above is issuing real-time updates on which floors of the Oberoi Hotel have been cleared by security forces.
Update, 14:38, (David): Switch from the Twitter feed to Al Jazeera’s comments thread and you’ll find that sympathy for those caught up in the attacks is not universal, while some suspect that the culprit will not turn out to be an Islamist group:
Maria Costa, Governador Valadares, Brazil: “While few enjoy the sight of “innocent” victims being caught up in the struggle against the imperialists and their collaborators, nobody should ever forget that these desperate acts of martyrdom are the direct result of the actions of the imperialists and their lackeys. If India wants to avoid future tragic incidents, they need to re-think their actions in Occupied Kashmir and their nuclear alliance with the Yankees.
mewrite, Banglore, India: the killing of Hemant Karkare(chief of Mumbai’s anti-terrorism squad) gives a clue who might be behind this heinous crime. Karkare was spearheading the investigations into Malegaon blasts and was instrumental in unveiling the Hindu terror network. Initially, as usual, Muslims were blamed for those blasts, & many were punished on false charges. But the recent investigations done by Mr Karkare revealed that it was actually the handiwork of Hindu terrorists belonging to Shiv Sena who with the help of some army persons conducted blasts in many Indian cities during the last few years.
proudpathan, Batley, United Kingdom: The US, Uk, Israel and laterally the Indians all lie in the same bed. These countries are upto something. What it is I don’t know. I hope the Indians don’t associate themselves too closely with these countries, otherwise the rest of the world will see them as they see the US, the UK, and Israel as being imperialistic, oppressors and occupiers and the murderers of innocent Muslims.
by Charlie Edwards | Nov 25, 2008 | Global Dashboard, Off topic
Do we need to call ‘time out’ on global risk analysis? The NIC report on global trends 2025 is one of a plethora of recent publications on global risks and security challenges from think tanks, Government departments, the defence community, NGOs, business, academia, and the media. Do we really need any more?
3 questions spring to mind:
1. Are we suffocating under the weight of all this analysis?
2. Should we consider having a period of consolidation and reflection?
3. Do we need a transformational shift from analysis to action?
How many times do we need to be told that:
- Since the end of the Cold War, the international landscape has been transformed.
- During the next 30 years, every aspect of human life will change at an unprecedented rate, throwing up new features, challenges and opportunities.
- The unprecedented transfer of wealth roughly from West to East now under way will continue for the foreseeable future.
- The formidable acceleration of information exchanges, the increased trade in goods and as well as the rapid circulation of individuals, have transformed our economic, social and political environment
- New players—Brazil, Russia, India and China will bring new stakes and rules of the game to the international high table.
- Increase in global population will put pressure on resources—particularly land, energy, food, and water—raising the spectre of scarcities emerging as demand outstrips supply.
- There are a set of interconnected set of threats and risks, including international terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, conflicts and failed states, pandemics, and trans-national crime.
Surely it is time to complement existing analytical work with some ideas for action or even, as someone suggested earlier, divert our focus to analysing potential ‘solutions’ rather than identifying the same ‘problems’ time and again. Given the vast number of reports and papers in the system, surely now is the time to consider what improvements and upgrades can and need to be made to the global system in response to the myriad of issues the international community faces.
In order to do this we need to move away from the comfortable exercise of scene setting, describing the world around us and instead take a different approach. One simple way would be to look East and see what Indian & Chinese thinkers and academics are developing. Analysis obviously plays a crucial role in thinking through issues and in policy-making but the very process of analysis can be seductive; providing us with breathing space when we actually need to be pushing on and debilitating by creating ever greater complexity which can often lead to inaction.
In the words of the King:
A little less conversation, a little more action please
All this aggravation ain’t satisfactioning me
A little more bite and a little less bark
A little less fight and a little more spark
by David Steven | Nov 15, 2008 | Global system, London Summit
In our paper on Bretton Woods II (pdf), Alex and I provide rather a gloomy assessment of financial crisis – which we suggest is going to last longer than many think…
Given that we now face what Gordon Brown has described as “the first truly global financial crisis of the modern world”, our bet would be that it takes as long as a decade to bring it fully under control.
Let’s unpack the assumptions behind our pessimism. We start from the premise that, six months back, experts were overly optimistic about how far-reaching the meltdown would be. This is based, in part, on April’s Progressive Governance summit, where heads of state were (a) clearly freaked out; (b) fairly sure they grasped the problem, if not the solutions; (c) not acting as if they expected any further big surprises.
Consider, too, what the IMF’s Dominique Strauss Kahn was saying at the time. He was as worried by inflation, as he was by economic slowdown. Although he was forecasting a “rather important, serious slowdown in economic growth” – the expected pain wasn’t really that bad:
Something around 0.5 percent as a rate of growth for the United States in 2008 and a slight recovery during 2009-an average of 0.6 percent for 2009, which is both linked to the financial turmoil, of course, but also the business cycle.
Next, we look at the lessons of earlier banking crises that, in developed countries, have tended to take four or five years to unravel, cost around 12% of GDP to resolve, and lead to a cumulative loss in output equal to almost a quarter of GDP. The figures are drawn from this useful chart prepared by PIMCO’s Michael Gomez:
Then add in what we know about the banking crisis that gripped Japan in the 1990s, which the IMF ascribes to “accelerated deregulation and deepening of capital markets without an appropriate adjustment in the regulatory framework”. Hiroshi Nakaso’s account is worth reading in full – seven years of crisis management and fire fighting as a senior manager at the Bank of Japan.
“When the bubble burst in the early 1990s, no one expected it was going to usher in such a prolonged period of weak growth in Japan,” he writes. Policy makers underestimated the seriousness of the problem, while banks lacked the ‘foresight and courage’ to confront their predicament head on.
At the time there was considerable schadenfreude in the West about Japan’s failure to get to grips with its crisis. It was eight years or so before its policy makers even found the levers that would begin to inch the crisis towards a solution. Are we right to assume that we’ll now do better? (more…)
by Alex Evans | Nov 13, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Cooperation and coherence, Global system, London Summit
Ahead of this weekend’s G20 summit, David and I have published a short paper entitled A Bretton Woods II worthy of the name. Key points:
– The summit is unlikely to be able to live up to its billing. Leaders do not yet understand the nature of the problem well enough to be able to implement viable solutions. However, the problem is more fundamental than a simple lack of shared awareness.
– History suggests that leaders will only think the unthinkable on institutional reform once the challenge they face has really hit rock bottom. But history also suggests that we are wrong to think that the worst of the crisis is now past, given that many past banking crises have taken five years or more to unravel.
– Bretton Woods 1 looked across the whole international economic waterfront in 1944, while this weekend’s summit will be much more narrowly focused. Leaders will make a big mistake if they try and tackle finance in isolation, given the growing impact of resource scarcity, and that 2009 is supposed to see another ambitious global deal – on climate.
– We need to recalibrate what we expect from globalization through a serious debate about subsidiarity. Where has globalization gone too far, too fast? Where do we need more integration at a global level? These were exactly the questions that preoccupied Keynes in 1933, when he weighed the relative benefits of global versus local across a range of variables. We need a similar debate today as a precursor to serious international economic reform.
– Leaders need to extend their horizons in (at least) five directions: onto longer time scales; beyond financial regulation into wider resource scarcity challenges; into other international processes, especially climate; towards grand bargains with emerging powers; and beyond government, to non-governmental networks.
Full version after the jump, or better yet here’s the pdf.
(more…)
by Alex Evans | Nov 13, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Conflict and security, South Asia
It’s a while since stories started to emerge about the possible evacuation to New Zealand of the population of Tuvalu, a Pacific small island state, as rising sea levels begin to make themselves felt.
But this week’s news that the Maldives is actively planning for the same scenario represents an upwards shift in gear. For one thing, we’re talking about a lot more people – over a quarter of a million, as opposed to 9,000 with Tuvalu.
Moreover, the shape of the plan looks rather different: rather than presenting themselves as environmental refugees, the Maldives’ new president intends to establish a sovereign wealth fund to use tourism revenues to purchase land in a third country – India and Sri Lanka are both mentioned in coverage – for the whole population.
The really big question, though, is the one posed by Scott Leckie of Displacement Solutions, a refugee consultancy:
We don’t know where they plan to buy this land or whether they have thought it through … are they actually asking to re-establish the Maldives elsewhere?
One to add to the rapidly growing list of new climate-driven sovereignty dilemmas for the 21st century, along with access rights to a newly melted Northwest Passage, ownership rights over newly available Arctic oil and the rest…
(For more on this and related issues, see the new issue of Forced Migration Review, which is a special edition on the issue of climate change and displacement.)
