Word: mumbai
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Before the attacks on Mumbai, the U.S. had been eager to see a reduction of Indo-Pakistani tensions in the hope--openly voiced by President-elect Barack Obama--that such changes would free Pakistan to conduct more effective counterinsurgency operations against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in its northwestern tribal areas. Washington fears that Indo-Pakistani rivalry will make its own task in Afghanistan more difficult. Obama therefore called a rapprochement between India and Pakistan a key objective of U.S. foreign policy. But he will find few takers in India for continuing a peace process with a government that does...
...useful ally of the U.S. In addition to lowering the temperature with India, he was cooperating tacitly with Predator strikes against the Islamic extremists in the Afghan borderlands, much to the resentment of pro-Islamist elements in his military. This cooperation has now been jeopardized by the assault on Mumbai. As tensions with India ratchet up, the hard-liners in Islamabad's army headquarters will have the justification they need to jettison a policy they dislike and move their forces away from the border with Afghanistan, where the U.S. wants them, so as to reinforce the border with India instead...
Washington's frustration is understandable. But with Pakistan denying all responsibility for the Mumbai attacks, India has no good options. All New Delhi can do is demand that the well-intentioned but ineffective government in Islamabad crack down on terrorist groups, dismantle their camps, freeze their bank accounts, and arrest and prosecute their leaders. There is little appetite in Pakistan for such action. And the fear remains that expecting Zardari to fulfill even India's minimal demands might be asking him to sign his own death warrant...
...India seethes with impotent rage, Pakistan belligerently asserts its innocence, and Washington despairs that its task in Afghanistan has just gotten harder. Meanwhile, in Mumbai the fires of a hundred funeral pyres shoot their flames up into a glowering...
...pictures of Mumbai sifting through the rubble...