The United States is aiming to send 20,000 to 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan by the beginning of next summer, according to the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.  The plan is not unexpected, and from a military point of view is meant to allow U.S. and NATO troops not just to clear out Taliban insurgents but also to bring enough stability to allow economic development, as highlighted in this analysis by Reuters Kabul correspondent Jon Hemming.

But does it still make sense after the Mumbai attacks -- intentionally or otherwise -- sabotaged the peace process between India and Pakistan?

As discussed many times on this blog, most recently here, a crucial element of President-elect Barack Obama's Afghan strategy was to combine sending extra troops with a new diplomatic approach looking at the Afghanistan-Pakistan-India region as a whole. The argument was that Pakistan would never fully turn its back on Islamist militants as long as it felt threatened by India on its eastern border and by growing Indian influence in Afghanistan on its western border.  India and Pakistan, so the argument went, should therefore be encouraged to make peace over Kashmir, to reduce tensions in Afghanistan and pave the way for a successful operation by the extra U.S. troops.

Where does that plan stand now? India-Pakistan relations are extremely strained and vulnerable to any second militant attack on India. It's hard to imagine the two countries sitting down any time soon for serious peace talks, and certainly not at the United States' behest, given that outside interference on Kashmir has always been anathema to India.

Yet as the Soviet Union discovered during its failed occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, no matter how many troops you send in, you can't win there as long as the Islamist mujahideen have sanctuary in Pakistan.  The United States knows this too having backed the mujahideen against the Soviets (this being a war that America has fought on both sides), which is presumably why it had begun to look at Afghanistan in a broader regional context.

So have the Americans reverted to a piecemeal approach with this plan to send in the extra troops? Are they just pushing on regardless and hoping for the best, perhaps thinking they have no other choice? Or should they have gone back to the drawing-board post-Mumbai and come up with a different plan?

In the immediate aftermath of the Mumbai attacks, India's response has been to look to the United States to lean on Pakistan, which it blames for spawning Islamist militancy across the region, rather than launching any military retaliation of its own. So after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice's trip to India and Pakistan last week, have the Americans done enough for now?

According to Pakistan's Dawn newspaper, Rice told Pakistan there was "irrefutable evidence" that elements within the country were involved in the Mumbai attacks. And it quotes unnamed sources as saying that behind-the-scenes she “pushed the Pakistani leaders to take care of the perpetrators, otherwise the U.S. will act”.

India's Business Standard said the Indian government was pleased with the U.S. warning. "This is exactly what India wanted," the newspaper said.

The Times of India, however, fretted the U.S. action against Pakistan appeared to be "turning tepid", in public at least. It attributed the U.S. approach to the perceived need to avoid backing the civilian government led by President Asif Ali Zardari into a corner. (India has specifically not accused the Pakistan government of involvement in the Mumbai attacks, pointing instead to militant groups supported by Pakistan's powerful spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI.) It also said the United States was wary of destabilising a partner on which it depends crucially as a transit route for supplies to Afghanistan, while also being hobbled by the change of administration in Washington.

So which way is the pendulum swinging -- towards firm U.S. action that will allow Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to say he was right to put his faith in American diplomacy, or a lukewarm response that will either force India to act alone or leave its Congress-led government looking on in helpless frustration as it heads into a general election due by next May?

U.S. pressure has succeeded in pulling India and Pakistan back from the brink in the past.  When fighting erupted between the two newly declared nuclear-armed powers in the Kargil war in 1999, U.S. President Bill Clinton persuaded then Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to pull Pakistani troops back. (Sharif paid a high price. Later in the year he was overthrown by then General Pervez Musharraf, a lesson unlikely to be lost on the current civilian government which is seen as wary of making too many concessions to India for fear of alienating the powerful Pakistan Army.)

Then after an attack on India's parliament in December 2001 triggered the mobilisation of close to a million men along the two countries' borders, the United States dived into another round of frantic diplomacy to persuade Pakistan to crack down on Kashmiri militant groups and the Indians to stand down.  Much of that diplomacy went on behind-the-scenes, though for an interesting Pakistani view of how close the two countries came to war in 2002, here is a link to an article written in January that year by the current Pakistan High Commissioner to Britain.

So what are the prospects in the current crisis?

Unlike in previous years, the Americans have become much more forthright about the extent to which they are willing to support Indian assertions that the roots of Islamist militancy lie in Pakistan.  When the Indians blamed the ISI for bombing its embassy in Kabul in July -- a charge Pakistan denied -- the Americans delivered by leaking reports of ISI involvement to U.S. newspapers, as I discussed in an earlier post.

After the Mumbai attacks, the New York Times has brushed off Pakistani denials of involvement with an op-ed boldly headlined The Pakistan Connection.

Bruce Riedel at the Brookings Institution has argued that "the most dangerous terrorist menace (to India) comes from groups with intimate connections to the global jihadist network centered around Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda and its allies in the Pakistani jihadist culture."  Exploring links between the ISI and militant groups he says it nurtured to fight India in Kashmir, he says that Zardari's ability to get control of the ISI "is still very much in doubt."

At the other side of the world, The Australian has challenged what it calls "The dangerous illusion of independent terrorists" -- the misconceived notion, it says, that perpetrators of attacks are non-state actors operating beyond the control of governments. "The radical increase in the lethality, range, political consequence and strategic influence of terrorists comes not from their being non-state actors at all. Instead it comes from their being sponsored by states," it says.  Then in language that could have come straight from the Indian government, it says: "Pakistan has for many years been a significant state sponsor of terrorism."

All that sounds like the kind of response the Indian prime minister was looking for when he said that "We expect the world community to recognise that the territory of the neighbouring country has been used for perpetrating this crime."

But how will it play inside Pakistan, where a weak civilian government is delicately balanced against a powerful army that has run the country for much of its life, and which in turn is battling militants on its border with Afghanistan? And what too will it mean for the ordinary people of Pakistan, caught in the middle?

Wow, Thomas Friedman writing in the New York Times let fly with a zinger with his opinion piece “Calling all Pakistanis“, presumably aimed at stirring compassion in Pakistani hearts over last week’s horrifying attack in Mumbai.

Pakistanis were ready enough to take to the streets to vent their anger and indignation over cartoons in Denmark, why can’t they demonstrate a shared sense of outrage over the cold-blooded killing of 171 people in the country next door, asks Friedman.

Of course, anyone would like to see spontaneous public displays of grief and empathy for the people of Mumbai. Can it happen in Pakistan, a country that has fought three wars against India? The army doesn’t trust India and the people have been fed an anti-India diet by governments and media since 1947.

I think we can understand why it won’t happen in Peshawar, or faraway Quetta — cities where conservative, religious forces have a lot of influence.

But why not Karachi, Mumbai’s twin across the Arabian Sea, or Lahore, Pakistan’s cultural capital? After all they host the most progressive, liberal sections of Pakistan’s deeply fissured society. A few bravehearts from that tiny minority might risk some candle-lit vigils.

The trouble is that they also have a strong Islamist presence, which is why thousands of people turned out to protest against the cartoons in both cities.

Even remembering the genuine warmth that was shown to Indian visitors during the heady days of cricket diplomacy in spring of 2004, expecting a sudden, collective outpouring of sympathy from ordinary Pakistanis is probably expecting too much.

What people looking from a distance don’t understand, and I’ll risk including faraway news editors in this, is that reactions in Pakistan are often politically engineered, and delayed rather than spontaneous.

It probably has something to do with the fatalism of people who’ve seen generals overthrow their governments, who’ve been brutalised by bombs and suicide attacks in their own towns, who are so confused by their own powerlessness that they readily believe the most outlandish conspiracy theories.

Look at those cartoon protests in 2006. Yes they were big.

Indeed the protest in Lahore, to the shock of most Lahoris, turned violent and destructive along the city’s famous Mall road.

But it took weeks for the Islamist parties, some say egged on by rogue anti-Musharraf agent provocateurs in the agencies, to mobilise their cadres in Karachi and Lahore.

The demonstrations in Pakistan were bigger than elsewhere in the Islamic world, but came far later and appeared contrived.

In contrast, the displays of public support in 2007 for the Supreme Court Chief Justice who Musharraf dismissed were genuinely impressive as he criss-crossed the country addressing bar associations.

Yes, the lawyers and Sharif’s party, and to some extent Bhutto’s People’s Party, organised these too.

But they generated a groundswell of public support in a way that cartoon issue never really did — look how Islamist parties were wiped out in February’s election.

So Pakistanis clearly respond to injustice, if someone gets them going.

Which political party is going to risk filling them with compassion for Mumbai, given India’s suspicions that the killers were trained by the Pakistani military.

Remember the politicians are in the middle of a transition from military rule, that the army chief has himself supported.

Still, perhaps the politicians should risk getting people involved. After all, it would fit nicely into the government’s avowed campaign to turn people against militancy and religious extremism.

Perhaps that was Friedman’s purpose.

Because otherwise an article that only a few well-read people in Karachi and Lahore are likely to see could simply play to the anti-Pakistan gallery, and harden attitudes of ordinary good-hearted Pakistanis who feel outsiders take cheap shots to malign them.

Let’s see, maybe the President Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party will recognise this is an opportunity to reach out to India in a common war against jihadis who’d like to take over Pakistan and break up the Indian federation.

Maybe Kayani could lay a wreath.

Maybe that would give people confidence to show their true feelings of horror an sympathy for what happened in Mumbai.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

PHOTO: Peace activists hold placards as they demonstrate for peace between Pakistan and India in Lahore December 5, 2008. REUTERS/Mohsin Raza (PAKISTAN)

– Brahma Chellaney is professor of strategic studies at the Center for Policy Research, New Delhi. The views expressed are his own. –

The brazen Mumbai terrorist assaults are just the latest example of how the world’s largest democracy is increasingly coming under siege from the forces of terror.

The attacks, which bear the hallmark of al Qaeda, are also a reminder to U.S. President-elect Barack Obama that even as he seeks to deal with the financial meltdown, the global war on terror stands derailed, with the scourge of terrorism having spread deeper and wider.

International terrorism threatens the very existence of democratic, secular states. Yet the U.S. occupation of Iraq not only helped fracture the post-9/11 global consensus to fight terror, but also handed a fresh cause to Islamists and gave a new lease of life to al Qaeda.

The Obama administration will need to bring the anti-terror war back on course by building a new international consensus.

The Mumbai attacks were exceptionally brazen and daring, even when viewed against the high level of terrorism now tormenting India. Indeed, since 9/11, the world has not witnessed terrorism on this scale or level of sophistication and coordination.

The most troubling questions arising from the latest terrorist attacks - the eighth in a spate of attacks in India in the past five months - relate to why the country has become an easy target for terrorists.

Transnational terrorists, including those tied to Al Qaeda, are waging an open war on India, yet the Indian leadership is unable to declare a war on terror.

What the country needs is a credible counterterror campaign. But what its harried citizens get after each major terrorist attack are stock platitudes, such as a commitment to defeat the designs of terrorist forces. Empty rhetoric is eating into the vitals of internal security.

Indeed, after the government’s ritual condemnation of each attack and the standard promise to defeat terror, India puts the strikes behind it and goes back to what now defines it - partisan politics and scandal. That is, until terror strikes again.

Worse, the fight against terror has been increasingly politicized and got linked to communal, electoral and vote-bank considerations.

Combating terror demands at least four different elements — a well-thought-out strategy, effective state instruments to implement that strategy, a credible legal framework to speedily bring terrorists to justice, and unflinching political resolve to stay the course.

India is deficient on all four.

Unlike other important victims of terror in the world, India has no published counterterror doctrine. And a retiring Chief Justice of India was compelled to remind fellow citizens that, “We don’t have the political will to fight terrorism”.

Weak leadership, political one-upmanship and an ever-shifting policy approach indeed have spurred on more terrorism. Not a single case of terrorist attack in recent years has been cracked, yet in the Malegaon bombing probe, the nation has witnessed the bizarre spectacle of authorities deliberately leaking tidbits of information on a daily basis.

Indian system has become so effete that terrorists have again exposed the woeful lack of adequate training and preparedness on the part of those tasked to fight terror. Such was the level of police ineptitude that several high-ranking law enforcement officials, including the anti-terrorism squad head, were killed soon after the terrorists struck. As a result, the army had to be called in to deal with the situation.

Against this background, India serves as an exemplar of how not to fight terror. In fact, through its forbearing approach, the country has come to accept terrorist strikes as the ostensible products of its unalterable geography or destiny.

Its response to the jihadist strategy to inflict death by a thousand cuts has been survival by a thousand bandages. Just as it has come to brook a high level of political corruption, it is willing to put up with a high incidence of terrorism.

Turning this appalling situation around demands a new mindset that will not allow India to be continually gored. That in turn means a readiness to forge a bipartisan consensus to do whatever is necessary to end the terrorist siege of the country.

An attack of the scale and sophistication unleashed on Mumbai would not be possible without months of planning, and yet it completely went below India's intelligence radar.

Indeed, so unaware were the security agencies that even when the attacks began, the first reaction was these were probably gangland shootings that India's financial capital is known for.   So if the agencies have been so clueless about an attack so mammoth in its sweep, the question experts are beginning to ask is how safe are India's vital assets?

The nuclear facilities for instance ? A chilling thought but one that must be answered, says B. Raman, a former top officer at India's Research and Analysis Wing. "I shiver and sweat at the thought of what is waiting to happen tomorrow and where. The mind boggles as one tries to think and figure out how the terrorists could have planned and carried out terrorist strikes of such magnitude, territorial spread and ferocity without our intelligence and police having been able to get scent of it," Raman, one of India's foremost intelligence experts, wrote. "I could not sleep the whole of last night. One question, which kept bothering me again and again was : how safe are our nuclear establishments and material?"

Of course nuclear installations are far more heavily guarded than a public place such as a hotel, hospital or a railway station and Raman probably means to rouse what he thinks is an establishment gone into deep slumber. But after the attacks on Mumbai, no longer can Indian experts be be going around saying Pakistan is unique in not having a grip on the militant threat. After repeated attacks beginning in Varanasi last year to Jaipur, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Delhi twice this year and finally Mumbai, and still no wiser as to who is behind them,  New Delhi looks as much at sea as its counterpart in Islamabad.