Other companies have also launched security services. The Indian building firm DLF has formed TerraForce, its own security outfit, trained by the Israeli army and the US marines, to patrol its properties. Infosys, the IT giant, and the country’s largest private-sector firm, Reliance Industries, have both been allotted permanent protection from India’s state Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), whose officers, unlike those in private security firms, are permitted to carry firearms.
Hiring private security is arguably necessary, given the evident failings of the Indian state security forces during the attacks. The police were armed with nothing but bamboo “lathis” or sticks when they had to face the militants. Members of the elite National Security Guard (NSG) took eight hours to travel from their base in the state of Haryana to the hotels, and then it took two more days to defeat the 10 gunmen.
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Well there’s your problem India. You don’t bring bamboo “lathis” to a gun fight. lol All kidding aside, it will be interesting to see what comes out of the meeting of the minds during this security summit. I certainly hope Incident Command is at least given a mention during this summit, because if they have any hope of defeating an attack like this, it will come from unity of effort and a fast and efficient means of getting everyone on the same sheet of music in the beginning stages of an attack. The private guards like Terraforce, or the police units, military units and fire units all should have radios that can be programmed or are set up already to communicate with one another. An Incident Commander on scene, needs to take the reins of the situation, and bring to bear the necessary resources to deal with the developing situation. And when seconds and minutes count, all the little details of command and control need to be hashed out, well before another Mumbai attack. That is how you prepare for this. I can’t stress enough how important it is to get everyone under the same umbrella of Incident Command, in order for this system to properly work. Your first responders are the ones that will be able to confront and defeat the attack before it gets worse. And if they are organized and know what to do in order to take control of a situation, then you will see a disaster/attack go from chaos to organized chaos, giving everyone involved a higher chance of survival.
On a side note, I am interested in this whole TerraForce thing? That must be a typo about the US Marines training them? I just couldn’t find anything to support that claim and perhaps what the article meant to say is that it was ‘former US Marines’. Maybe some Embassy guys, or some unit came in to train them, and I could be wrong. Either way, if any of the readers have any input about TerraForce, let me know. -Matt
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Richard Orange
October 24. 2009
Early next month, the head of London’s Metropolitan Police, the former secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security, and a panel of international security experts will gather in Mumbai’s Trident Hotel for a “security and resilience summit”.
That some of the world’s foremost experts on terrorism, including Sir Paul Stephenson of the London Met and the former homeland security secretary Michael Chertoff, are willing to spend a day and night in a hotel where militants killed more than 30 people just a year earlier is a sign of how much the city has recovered. (Many of the same faces were in the Trident for a similar conference as early as January).
In the time since 10 Pakistani gunmen brought terror to Mumbai for two days starting last November 26, India’s main business hub has bounced back. Read the rest of this entry »
