New York:
"The first 360-degree view of terrorism" - that's the promise the writer Fareed Zakaria makes at the beginning of "Terror in Mumbai," a new HBO documentary about the attacks in that city last November that left more than 170 people dead. In addition to the usual eyewitness interviews and surveillance videos, the film, which Zakaria narrates, makes use of hours of intercepted telephone conversations between the 10 gunmen and their controllers in Pakistan. "This time you are with the terrorists," Zakaria intones.
"Terror in Mumbai" is what's known as a tick-tock, untangling a large and confusing story and laying it out in chronological order, in this case trying to make sense of the nonsensical. It's a model of the genre, with a combination of clarity and breathless pace reminiscent (in a very distant way) of a Paul Greengrass "Bourne" movie. And the phone calls are a big part of that: the gunmen's updates on their movements, and the handlers' instructions, give structure to events unspooling simultaneously in multiple locations.
The calls have another effect, though, one that may have been unintentional but was also predictable: They humanize the killers. It's one thing to know that a young man facing a life of grinding poverty has been indoctrinated in jihad, taught to kill and promised a place in heaven for doing so. It's quite another to hear his voice as he sits trapped in a Jewish center and appears to stall for time when he's ordered to execute his remaining hostages.
"The thing is, Umer is asleep right now," the terrorist murmurs, referring to the partner with whom he had already killed four people inside the building. "He hasn't been feeling too well."
A similar process played out in real time, according to "Mumbai Massacre," an episode of the PBS series "Secrets of the Dead" next Wednesday. Survivors who came in contact with the gunmen, including some who were held hostage, express more sorrow than anger when describing them. It's not understanding or empathy, but a kind of highly grudging sympathy.
That could be a function of storytelling style and choice of interview subjects, though. The PBS show uses some of the same video footage, telephone recordings and interview subjects as the HBO film, but it's an altogether more conventional television treatment, employing re-creations and shading toward the melodramatic and sentimental. It focuses on Western survivors of the attacks, where "Terror in Mumbai" speaks mostly with Indians.
The biggest difference in the stories the two programs tell is that "Mumbai Massacre" glosses over the role of the Indian police while the HBO film addresses it head-on. "Terror in Mumbai" details the lack of preparation and organizational paralysis that forced brave but outgunned men into individual acts of courage they were unlikely to survive. A damning piece of video shows a large group of policemen huddling in the Victoria train station and watching as the two gunmen there kill 25 people; eventually most of the cops turn and run.
"Our brains just froze," one says in retrospect. "We didn't know what to do."
Indeed, the real story of "Terror in Mumbai" is not so much violence and survival as it is the incompetence and lack of resources that allowed 10 men with guns and grenades to throw a city of 14 million into chaos. Zakaria works hard to bring the threat home - "Their method of attack could easily be adapted to any American city," he says - and it's undeniable that committed terrorists will always be able to inflict heart-rending damage. In America, though, the police who face them won't be armed with bolt-action rifles, and when they call for backup, it won't take two or three days to arrive.