THE seven years since September 11, 2001 have been remarkable for the absence of any truly innovative terrorist attacks on a par with that day’s tragic events. However, Wednesday evening’s co-ordinated assault on Mumbai has changed that.

Since 2001 there have been bombings in Bali, Istanbul, Madrid and, of course, London among other places, but the vast majority of terrorist incidents have been confined to established zones of conflict such as Israel/Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and, more recently, Pakistan. For the past two years India has also been repeatedly targeted by terrorists, but the Mumbai attacks were of a completely different magnitude and intensity. And they are likely to exert a profound influence on future patterns of terrorism.

First, the co-ordinated, assaults by armed men carrying automatic weapons and hand grenades has shattered whatever complacency may have existed anywhere about a receding terrorist threat.

The death toll in Mumbai, already exceeding 195, and the more than 290 casualties, cannot but introduce renewed disquiet about terrorism’s power to kill and maim large numbers quickly and easily, to command worldwide attention and to radiate global paroxysms of fear and anxiety.

Second, the attacks unpick theories about the diminishing role of terrorist organisations in orchestrating violence. The idea that the main threat now comes from informal networks of self-radicalised, self-selected and self-trained wannabe terrorists with a limited capacity for violence has been overturned.

Beyond any doubt, the Mumbai operation was planned and executed by teams functioning under a command and control apparatus that orchestrated their deployment and co-ordinated their assaults.

In this key respect, the attacks diverge significantly from the pattern of a lone suicide bomber entering a hotel ballroom or riding a train or bus and blowing himself up, or of simple, home-made bombs triggered from a distance by timed or remote-control detonators.

Mumbai saw disciplined teams of well-armed, well-trained terrorists simultaneously spreading throughout the city to execute their mission on at least 10 different targets. In each case, they stood their ground and inflicted the carnage and bloodshed they were doubtless trained to accomplish. And, in the cases of the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower and the Trident Oberoi hotels, not only effectively resisted counter attack by Indian security forces, but inflicted serious loses on those forces.

Third, the Mumbai attacks demonstrate how a group of armed and trained terrorists can paralyse a city, stymie the security forces, undermine public confidence in the ability of government and the authorities to respond, and generate worldwide attention and publicity.

The lesson of how easily India’s financial capital can be brought to a standstill, and the immense challenges of responding to multiple, co-ordinated urban assaults is likely to preoccupy state and local authorities across the West for years to come.

Fourth, terrorism is today increasingly as much about the economic effects of the attack as it is about death and destruction. Targeting the economic nerve centres of financial capitals has been

an emerging pattern of terrorism since the first attempt to destroy the World Trade Center in New York in February 1993, the bombings that convulsed Mumbai that same year and, more recently, the 9/11 attacks in New York, the Madrid train bombings and the Istanbul and London suicide bombings.

In this respect, terrorism has become fixated as much on the bottom line as it is on the death toll. Undermining consumer confidence and investment, scaring workers about their daily commute and inhibiting foreign travel have become part and parcel of terrorist strategy.

Finally, hotels now appear to be emerging as terrorism’s favoured targets. In recent years, luxury or upscale hotels popular with foreign visitors and locals alike have been brutally attacked in Amman and Islamabad, Sharm-el-Sheikh and Kabul, Jakarta and Netanya among other places.

Unlike embassies or other government facilities that can be hardened and enveloped with highly restrictive access controls, hotels are, by definition, public venues, usually in crowded urban areas.

Securing and hardening this now indisputably popular terrorist target will prove difficult, expensive and necessarily inconvenient.

Indeed, hitherto, travellers generally had only to worry about braving the gauntlet of security barriers at airports and to fear some act of terrorism while they were

in the air. Once they arrived at their destination they could relax with a soothing massage in the hotel health spa, unwind with a drink at the bar or slip into a comfortable bed with fresh linens, assured that the most dangerous part of their journey has passed.

After the Mumbai attacks, that comforting sense of having arrived at one’s destination unscathed is likely to prompt second and third thoughts, not least as guests emerge from taxis or tour buses to navigate a new maze of security measures paralleling that of the airports from which they have recently departed.

The author is a professor at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the US Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center. He is also the author of Inside Terrorism (2006).

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