Dubbed as India’s 9/11, the recent attacks in Mumbai left almost 200 dead and the world reeling. While criticism has been levelled at India’s government for their slow response to the attacks as well as their failure to act on intelligence, Lashkar-e-Toiba – a Kashmiri extremist group based in Pakistan – are being blamed for carrying them out.
What will these attacks mean for the ongoing "war on terror" and will India now be seen as a soft target? Will deteriorating relations between Pakistan and India be brought closer by a new co-operation to work together in the aftermath of the attacks and a joint desire to bring the perpetrators to justice? Or will these attacks simply fuel the existing tensions between these two nuclear powers?
David Loyn is the BBC’s International Development correspondent, and formerly their Delhi correspondent.
Vikram Dodd writes for The Guardian and was in Mumbai shortly before the attacks took place, and returned there the following day to report on them.
Edna Fernandes is a British Indian journalist who was born in Nairobi and grew up in London. She is a former foreign correspondent for the Financial Times in New Delhi as well as political and international business correspondent for Reuters and Dow Jones in London. Her first book Holy Warriors: A Journey into the Heart of Indian Fundamentalism was shortlisted for the UK’s Index on Censorship TR Fyvel prize and nominated for India’s Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Best Book Award. Most recently, Edna has written about the fallout from India’s 9/11 on her website.
Owen Bennett-Jones is presenter and correspondent for the BBC and former Islamabad correspondent. Owen’s coverage of the events in Pakistan in 2007 and 2008 included interviews with Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif and President Musharraf, reporting on the country’s corruption, Benazir Bhutto’s return and on the aftermath of her assassination. In 2003 he wrote Pakistan: Eye Of The Storm, a modern history of the country, and he is currently working on a second edition.
