HBO’s Terror in Mumbai is especially chilling because of a successful operation by Indian intelligence — they managed to pass along a number of SIM cards to Pakistani militants, and three of those cards were being used by the Mumbai attackers in their cell phones. So the documentary includes actual conversations between the young killers and their controller back in Pakistan:
The phone intercepts provide a grotesque running commentary as the controllers, watching events unfold on live TV, direct the gunmen, telling them where the security forces are, which of their hostages should be killed and how to do it. With the killers wounded and asking what to do next, the tapes reveal the controllers calmly urging them to fight to the death and not allow themselves to be taken alive.Guests from the Taj Mahal and Oberoi hotels tell how the terrorists first staged mass executions, then worked their way through the corridors, killing whenever they managed to enter a room. An elderly couple recounts how they were spared by the terrorists when it was realized they were fellow Muslims, while all around them were mowed down in a hail of bullets. Perhaps the most unsettling testimony comes from Ajmal Amir Kasab, the sole surviving terrorist, who answers his captors’ questions with startling frankness from a gurney soon after being captured.
The documentary inadvertently makes the case for the importance of leadership and strong morale in combat, as the terrorists, with their controller exhorting them on the phone, maintain the initiative and keep advancing toward their objectives, and the Indian police freeze, unable to react, let along to seize the initiative.
Dave Grossman makes the case that it is difficult to get soldier to overcome their innate resistance to killing. This may be less true of rural Pakistani boys than of suburban American kids, but the terrorists clearly used the proper techniques for overcoming any such resistance:
Religious martyrs with a strong “brother” on the line can and will fight to the death — and if they don’t die, and they lose that reassuring voice, they break down like the poor lost boys they are.