Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani writer and journalist, in the Wall Street Journal:
South and Central Asia is the most explosive region in the world today, especially in the aftermath of the Mumbai massacres in late November, which have indefinitely stalled the four-year-long hesitant peace process between India and Pakistan. Now both countries are playing war games with each other and trading accusations about the perpetrators and their connections to the Pakistan military and intelligence agencies.
India, the U.S. and Britain have said that the extremists behind the Mumbai attacks belong to Lashkar-e-Taiba, an al Qaeda-affiliated group that in the past has acted as an arm of the Pakistan military’s Interservices Intelligence (ISI). Pakistan’s weak and barely empowered civilian government is being pushed hard by the army to take an ultra-nationalist line against the Indians. This crisis is likely to continue well into the new year.
Also by Ahmed Rashid in WSJ:
Hot spots: Afghanistan
Two years ago, the Taliban insurgency was confined to a few provinces in the south and east. Today the Taliban have expanded to the gates of Kabul and have a growing presence in the west and north of the country. The Afghan Taliban’s secure bases in Pakistan and, increasingly, in Iran — which provide logistics and innumerable recruits — have created a regional dimension to the Taliban’s expansion. The creation of Pakistani Taliban and even a Central Asian Taliban, all linked to al Qaeda, have created new transnational bases of operations.
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