by J. Sri Raman,
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Terror strikes anywhere and everywhere have larger targets than lives and limbs. This is even more so in the case of
bomb blasts carrying the terror tag in the South Asian triangle of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. Every blast here
does not stop with creating trauma and tension in the country where it takes place. It also threatens peace among the
countries, triggering campaigns against each other.
We have the latest lot of lacerating illustrations with the blasts that shook Kabul and Karachi on July 7.
It was a cruel Monday for the Afghan capital, when a suicide car bomb just outside the embassy of India ripped through
reinforced walls and the iron gate, killing 41 instantly and injuring about 150 more. The toll rose soon to 58, with an
unforeseen tragedy striking many queuing up for Indian visas and women and children at shops on a heavily protected
street housing the Interior Ministry as well. India's Defense Attache Brigadier S.D. Mehta and press counselor V. V. Rao
were the two car-borne victims.
About 12 hours later, between 8 and 9 p.m., a series of seven "low-intensity" blasts struck a Pashtun residential area
in Karachi, killing one person and injuring 37 initially, including urchins playing in narrow lanes and by-lanes.
The blasts came a day after Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf, giving away prizes at the end of Asia Cup Cricket
Tournament in Karachi, condemned the suicide attack in Islamabad on July 6. The attack marked the anniversary of the
official offensive against Lal Masjid, a jihadi fortress that had come up in the country's capital and was functioning
with impunity as a fundamentalist force.
Responses to such blasts have always been predictable and Pavlovian through the entire region. The first outcry one
hears after every one of them is about the "foreign hand" behind it. In India, the expression is invariably a
euphemistic reference to the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan and "cross-border terrorism."
"Local jihadi groups" were added to the list of usual suspects after the Mumbai train blasts, of which July 11 marks
the second anniversary. Subsequently, these groups have been described as "sleeper cells" with cross-border connections,
as in the case of the Jaipur blasts of May 13, 2008.
Again, India figured as the victim and Pakistan as the "cross-border" conspirator after the Kabul blast. Afghan
President Hamid Karzai pointed an accusing finger at the ISI, stressing the point by saying that this was "pretty
obvious." The Pakistan government promptly denied the allegation, with Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani asserting that
terrorism was a common enemy of Kabul and Islamabad. Identical has been Pakistan's response to allegations of any ISI
involvement in terrorist strikes on India's soil.
Gillani's denial cannot be expected to end the dispute. The imprint of the Indian foreign service is evident in a
theory doing the rounds, which sees a specific meaning in Mehta's death. He belonged to the Indian Army's Intelligence
Corps. He had also served as the head of military intelligence in the insurgency-torn, India-administered State of Jammu
and in Kashmir. Opponents of the India-Pakistan peace process are likely to link this to a change in Pakistan's stance
on Kashmir in the post-Musharraf period.
Predictably again, the allegation has elicited a similar countercharge from the Pakistani side. The serial blasts in
Karachi have been seen as an Indian act of revenge for the Kabul strike. India's National Security Adviser M. K.
Narayanan has not exactly scotched such suspicions. In a television interview, he has blamed the ISI for the blast and
added, "We should pay them back in the same coin."
In the confused scenario of Karachi, however, this is not the only interpretation of the evidently coordinated
incidents. The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), a political party identified with Musharraf earlier, was the prime
suspect to some, though the MQM blamed the blasts on the Taliban. Jihadi clerics have, meanwhile, jumped in to accuse
"the Americans and the (official) agencies" of staging the strikes as a sabotage operation.
The Americans have chimed in with their reaction, too. US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said there was no evidence
that "foreign agents'' were involved in the Kabul blast. The White House denounced the Pakistani violence. National
security spokesman Gordon Johndroe said: "Extremists continue to show their disregard for all human life and their
willingness to kill fellow Muslims. We will continue to stand with the people of Pakistan as they face this common
enemy."
Neither the Afghans nor the Pakistanis, as distinct from their governments, concede that they and the US-led forces
have a common enemy. The "war on terror" is perceived widely as a war on the people, and not only because of allegedly
accidental strikes on Pashtun homes and hamlets in the border areas. The fact is that the antiterrorist credentials of
"the Americans and the agencies" lack credibility because of a pro-Taliban past.
Nor do the governments of the triangle see a common enemy in terrorism as such. On paper, New Delhi, Islamabad and
Kabul may be allies in a US-headed antiterror front. But, in practice, they have only been busy trying to turn the
alliance and its leader against each other.
There would seem to be no sound reason to hope for early arrival of a time when the region won't reverberate with
terrorist blasts.
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A freelance journalist and a peace activist in India, J. Sri Raman is the author of "Flashpoint" (Common Courage Press, USA). He is a regular contributor to Truthout.