July 11, 2006
Seven pressure cookers packed with 2.5 kilograms of RDX each are placed in rising middle class compartments of seven outbound Western line trains in Mumbai. Within moments of near-simultaneous explosions realtime global media streams begin transmitting live footage. Rerouting a city with a population of 12 million resulted in cellular grids crashing, road transit overloading and public services going down. 209 died, 700 were injured.
Recent History
The nodes of the urban transit network have been assaulted with the intent to maximize shock value several times:
- When the underworld coordinated thirteen bombings on March 12, 1993, an additional two unexploded car bombs were found days later outside of major railway stations.
- A decade later, a bomb exploded at Ghatkopar railway station on December 2, 2002.
- Four days later, a bomb exploded in an air conditioning duct at Bombay Central Railway Station’s food plaza.
- A bomb-laden bicycle exploded next to the Vile Parle Railway Station on January 27, 2003.
Any network disruption as a result of these attacks was not a mission objective, but rather a byproduct that served as a reminder and a fear-multiplier.
Shifting Tactics
Each attack on the urban railway network increased the number of human fatalities by, on average, 311%, though this differential reached as high as 1096%. This is an unsustainable growth rate and attackers require growth in order to make an impact.
A new trend emerged 2003 in which network edges, or links between nodes, are targeted rather than the nodes themselves.
- A bomb placed in a first class ladies compartment exploded just prior to hurtling into Mulund railway station on March 13, 2003. Mulund is a critical link for trains leaving or entering the city.
The July 11, 2006 bombings approach the critical threshold for symbolic terrorism on Mumbai’s urban transit network. The potential for minor incremental improvement is most likely negligible. Instead of symbolic besting, evidenced by higher and higher bodycounts, the trendline indicates that secondary network effects and cascading failures will increase both in number and in impact and will progressively play a central role in terror mission planning.
Resiliency and Response
While the densely clustered nature of the July 11, 2006 attacks allowed Railway officials to rapidly bring the network back on line that same night, this could not be said of the brittle framework of a modern city – the cellular, road and service networks. Cellular nets may have been brought down by the government so as to prevent the possibility of remotely detonated explosives. If so, given that peer to peer connections are central in disaster response, the results were likely deadly. Secondary network effects, like the decreased margins of the outsourcing industry due to the costs of building resiliency into their systems, are still at play.
Ongoing economic attrition is troubling given that Mumbai plays an important role as India’s financial hub. It contributes 40-60% of tax revenue, routes 40% of India’s foreign trade and Rs.40 billion in corporate taxes.
Into the Future
As metro transit systems are built in major urban areas, like in Delhi, operational resiliency and rapid threat reaction will need to be developed. Senior National Security Guard officers I met with say that they understand and are preparing for the eventual targeting of these new systems. This is a good first step, but a real strategy will have to be utterly localized and implemented in the design process of the new faster systems instead of relying on central units.
