"Everything is officially going to hell." The verdict of a reader quoted by All Things Pakistan said perhaps better than anyone else why the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore marked a defining moment in Pakistan's agonising descent into chaos.

Six Sri Lankan cricketers and their British assistant coach were wounded when gunmen attacked their bus as it drove under police escort to the Gaddafi stadium in Lahore.  Five policemen were killed.

The death toll was small by South Asian standards.  But what defined it -- beyond the audacity and apparent sophistication of the attack -- was the assault on the identity of a country where cricket, as in neighbouring India, is a national obsession.

"An ambush targeting the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore earlier this morning has literally sent waves of disbelief and shock across Pakistan," said a post on Metroblogging Lahore. "Citizens of Lahore are specifically terrified at the extent of sophisticated weaponry used by terrorists in an incident that caused unprecedented damage to the country's image and its cricketing future."

"Why can't we ever just have a slow news day ... every day there's something new," complained another post on Twitter.

South Asia is no stranger to violence, from the days of partition onwards. But there seems to me to be something qualitatively quite different in what is going on now, in which brutality and the alienation of the local population is not so much incidental but central to the method.

It's been there in the assault on traditional Pakistani music and culture, in the deliberately grisly videotaped beheading of a Polish geologist last month, in the targeting of girls' schools in the Swat valley and now in the attack on the Sri Lankan cricketers.

Even in darkest days of the Kashmir insurgency which set Pakistan and India at each other's throats you didn't see anything like this -- in fact one of the signs of normal life there came from boys out in the street playing cricket.  In Afghanistan, the hardline Taliban which banned most sports appear to have been less hostile to cricket, as Reuters Kabul correspondent Jon Hemming wrote in this feature about the country's fledgling national cricket team. I've even seen Pakistani soldiers spontaneously playing cricket the harsh terrain of the Siachen battlefield beyond Kashmir, bowling a few balls in the drizzling snow under the lee of steep mountain walls.

Pakistani officials are already speculating about Indian involvement in the attack on the Sri Lankan cricketers, in revenge for last year's assault on Mumbai.  This speculation will probably run and run -- it's echoing through comments on blogs and on Twitter. But it may obscure a more important point. When you attack a national institution like cricket, it's an expression of brute power, an assault on culture akin to the burning of books.

According to the Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, quoted by the Independent: "I think this is a deliberate attempt to undermine the government at the time when there is a huge political crisis in the country. They are trying to create a vacuum of power in which eventually they can take over."

(Reuters photo: Pakistan's Salman Butt in match against Sri Lanka)

Earlier this month, I wrote that the brief given to a South Asian envoy by President Barack Obama could prove to be the first test of the success of Indian diplomacy after the Mumbai attacks. At issue was whether the envoy would be asked to focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan or whether the brief would be extended to India, reflecting comments made by Obama during his election campaign that a resolution of the Kashmir dispute would ease tensions across the region.

That question has been resolved - publicly at least -- with the appointment of Richard Holbrooke as Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. No mention of India or Kashmir.

India has long resisted overt outside interference in Kashmir and argued - with great vehemence since the Mumbai attacks - that tensions in South Asia were caused by Pakistan's support for, or tolerance of, Islamist militants rather than the Kashmir dispute.  For India, a public reference to Kashmir following Mumbai would amount to endorsing what it calls cross-border terrorism.

So does that mean the end of the road for efforts to ease tensions in Kashmir? Analysts think not. Unlike British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who riled India this month by linking security in South Asia to Kashmir, the United States appears to have decided that by keeping quiet in public, it can achieve more in private.

In The Cable, Washington reporter Laura Rozen - who says India's U.S. lobby worked hard to make sure there was no reference to India in Holbrooke's brief - quotes Philip Zelikow, a former counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, as saying the omission might make things easier. "Leaving India out of the title actually opens up (Holbrooke's) freedom to talk to them," Zelikow says. In Pakistan's Daily Times, columnist Ejaz Haider writes that "Obama will not overtly offend India by putting in place a special envoy for Afghanistan-Pakistan-India. But discerning analysts in New Delhi know the fine print." Indian analyst Raja Mohan made a similar point when he wrote before Holbrooke's appointment that, "although in deference to New Delhi’s objections, Obama might not name Kashmir as part of the special envoy’s mandate, reworking the India-Pakistan relationship will be an inevitable and important component of his initiative."

And India may actually be less defensive about U.S. involvement in Kashmir than it was when Obama first raised the idea. It has since concluded elections in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, conducted in conditions of relative peace that many reckon would not have been possible without the active cooperation of Pakistan in restraining militants from disrupting the polls. 

There's a window of opportunity there that Raja Mohan says should persuade India to embrace U.S. involvement in the region, but on its own terms. "India has no reason to deny that during the Kargil war with Pakistan in the summer of 1999, the military confrontation with Islamabad during 2001-02, and in the effort to pressure Pakistan after the Mumbai terror attacks, the US role has been a positive one."

India's terms, especially with a parliamentary election coming up in India, are likely to include a requirement that the United States avoids public involvement in Kashmir. Instead, Raja Mohan is quoted as saying in this article, it should help create the conditions in Pakistan for a resumption of back-channel diplomacy between India and Pakistan that before Mumbai was beginning to bear fruit.

The United States appears to have conceded the first point by quietly dropping public references to Kashmir following the Mumbai attacks. Can Holbrooke now pull off the much trickier task of working behind the scenes to reach private understandings to ease tensions in the region?

(Photo: U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at the State Department in Washington January 22, 2009. From left are Richard Holbrooke, envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, Vice President Joe Biden, Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Mideast envoy George Mitchell/Kevin Lamarque)

In the space of a decade, the United States and India have travelled far in a relationship clouded by the  Cold War when they were on opposite sides.

From U.S sanctions on India for its nuclear tests in 1998 to a civilian nuclear energy deal that opens access to international nuclear technology and finance, while allowing New Delhi to retain its nuclear weapons programme is a stunning reversal of policy and one that decisively transforms ties.

America has also 'soberly' after decades of differing over counter-terrorism priorities become a vocal 
supporter of India's concerns over the use of Pakistani territory for Islamist militant groups, says the Asia 
Society in a report laying out a blueprint for an expanded India-U.S. relationship ahead of 
President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration on Tuesday.

Indian and U.S. interests have converged and "never in history have they been so closely aligned," the  report by an Asia Society Task Force says, arguing for a still deeper security and economic engagement between the two large democracies.

Click here for a PDF of the report

The Obama administration must keep India as one of its top foreign policy priorities, Richard Holbrooke, chairman of the Asia Society and who has been talked about as a possible envoy to South Asia, and Vishakha N.Desai, president of the Asia Society, say in a joint foreword

Besides the players involved, the report is also interesting because it adopts a rather different tone on India's relations with Pakistan and especially Kashmir to some of the policy prescriptions offered by some other influential U.S. think tanks such as the Center for American Progress.

This is how the task force suggests the incoming administration  boost security engagement with India: 

• Establish the closest possible consultation on all security issues in the entire region
• Reiterate commitment to “dehyphenation” (meaning U.S. ties with India and Pakistan are not a zero-sum game and must be carried on over different tracks)
• Discuss Afghanistan and Pakistan strategies frankly and in deep detail
• Listen closely on Kashmir, encourage the India-Pakistan composite dialogue, but do not try to mediate.

Music to New Delhi's ears? Yes, but the Asia Society also cautions that the old "Great Game" suspicions over Afghanistan remain, and Pakistan sees India’s engagement there as a threat to its vital interests.

"The United States may well have to play a role in making certain India clarifies its objectives in Afghanistan and transmits those to Pakistan, while ensuring that our own dialogue with India addresses India’s role in Afghanistan and how it can be most constructive. By the same token, the U.S. will need to be forthright with Pakistan about its consultations with India and India’s importance in stabilizing Afghanistan," it says.

A book released by the United States Institute for Peace focused on Afghanistan also stresses the key role Kabul's neighbours play on the security situation in the country. "Regional competition continues to undermine Afghanistan's long-term prospects, whereas renewed regional cooperation could provide a significant security and economic boost in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the region as a whole," the book titled The Future of Afghanistan argues, according to this note.

But there are no barriers to India and the United States sharing a close relationship on dealing with militancy, the Asia Society report says, arguing that the two countries vastly expand their ties in this area on the lines of cooperation with the UK, Germany, or Australia.

 In the mid to long term, America could think of expanding the “Five Eyes” (Canada, US , UK, Australia, and NZ) intelligence-sharing network to six,  bringing India on board, it says.

And on nuclear issues, it endorses the far-reaching deal signed by the Bush administration and calls for implementing the promise of nuclear trade between the two countries immediately. It also says New Delhi must be given membership in security and nonproliferation regimes such as the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Missile Technology Control Regime, the Australia Group and the Zangger Committee.

A bit of irony there actually, given that the Nuclear Suppliers Group came into being following India's first set of nuclear tests in 1974 with the idea to clamp down on nuclear exports.

The Asia Society report also calls for including India in the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty  (NPT) review conference in 2010, which is equally interesting given New Delhi's long-standing position that the NPT is discriminatory. So is this the end of nuclear apartheid as far as New Delhi is concerned now that it is being given a seat on the nuclear high table ?

Ultimately, the United States has to approach India as an equal partner if the relationship has to be taken further, the Asia Society report says. "India is an ancient, proud land and a great civilization; it is an emerging global power and it seeks respect. India is also intensely political—as are we," the report’s authors say. There will be disagreements just as the United States has with countries such as France, but there is a "strategic interest in seeing India evolve into a democratic, independent power center."

[Reuters pictures of an Obama sand sculpture in eastern India, U.S and Indian naval sailors on an Indian navala ship near Goa and test site in Pokharan where India conducted nuclear tests in 1998.]

There's much talk about President-elect Barack Obama possibly appointing Richard Holbrooke as a special envoy to South Asia. The New York Times says it's likely; while the Washington Independent says it may be a bit premature to expect final decisions, even before Obama takes office on Jan. 20.

But more interesting perhaps than the name itself will be the brief given to any special envoy for South Asia. Would the focus be on Afghanistan and Pakistan? Or on Pakistan and India? Or all three? The Times of India said India might be removed from the envoy's beat to assuage Indian sensitivities about Kashmir, which it sees as a bilateral issue to be resolved with Pakistan, and which has long resisted any outside mediation. This, the paper said, was an evolution in thinking compared to statements made by Obama during his election campaign about Kashmir.

Before last year's Mumbai attacks, Obama had suggested that the United States should help India and Pakistan to make peace over Kashmir as part of a regional strategy to stabilise Afghanistan. In this he was supported by a raft of U.S. analysts who argued that Pakistan would never fully turn against Islamist militants threatening the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan as long as it felt it might need them to counter burgeoning Indian influence in the region. Obama's suggestion raised hackles in India, and broke with a tradition established by the Bush administration which had tended to be -- publicly at least -- hands-off about the Kashmir dispute. 

But since the Mumbai attacks, India has argued that any attempt to link these to the Kashmir dispute would be to reward what it has called cross-border terrorism from Pakistan. Pakistan, which denies involvement in the Mumbai attacks, has in turn insisted that the best way to resolve tensions with India would be to seek a solution on Kashmir. So the brief given to a South Asia envoy could turn out to be one of the first clear tests of how successful Indian diplomacy has been post-Mumbai in trying to convince the United States to see Pakistan, rather than Kashmir, as the problem. 

Of course, in the way of diplomacy, it may not turn out to be quite so simple.  India has just held elections in the state of Jammu and Kashmir which produced a turnout of more than 60 percent despite a boycott call by separatists. According to former Indian diplomat M K Bhadrakumar India may be feeling far more confident about its standing on the Kashmir issue following the success of the elections and therefore be ready to show flexibility on the role of a South Asian envoy.  The election campaign was also remarkable for its absence of violence, in marked contrast to the previous polls in 2002. As discussed in an earlier post, this suggested to some that Pakistan had cooperated by making sure that Pakistan-based militants did not disrupt the election -- again offering a small window for progress.

At the same time, India is keen to have its voice heard in Afghanistan -- it sees itself as an important regional player along with Russia and Iran, and denies Islamabad's assertions that the primary motive of its expanding Afghan presence is to threaten Pakistan from both west and east. Pakistan,  however, would resent any attempt by the United States to encourage Indian influence in Afghanistan -- especially if Kashmir and India were specifically dropped from the brief given to a South Asia envoy.

So if Obama's team is gong to bring what Slate called "a return to professionalism" in defence and foreign affairs, it's going to have to weigh every single word carefully before announcing not only who will be the South Asia envoy, but what exactly he will do.

(Reuters photos: Preparing for the inauguration in Washington; new Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir Omar Abdallah)

Not long ago India was basking in the glow of a new-found strategic partnership with the United States, one that pitched it as a global player. A breakthrough civilian nuclear deal that virtually  recognised New Delhi as a nuclear weapon state after decades of isolation was the centrepiece of this new relationship.

But the attacks in Mumbai have tested this partnership and some of the lustre is fading. America has been unequivocally telling the Indians to exercise restraint   in responding to the attacks which New Delhi says were orchestrated from Pakistan. (This while U.S. Predator drones
carried out more attacks on the militants in Pakistan's northwest)

In recent weeks, much to the Indians' dismay, the mantra of  restraint has now moved to the suggestion from some U.S. analysts that both India and  Pakistan must resolve their dispute over Kashmir to help bring stability to the region. One U.S. editorial suggested India must let go of Kashmir,  thus freeing up Pakistan's military resources so that it can focus on the war on its western front. And although other analysts are saying the idea - floated long before the Mumbai attacks - is misguided, the American response to the assault on India's financial capital has left many disappointed.

"India was sold a dream that Washington was determined to  make it a first class world power. The dream lies broken. The carpetbaggers who peddled the dream are nowhere to be seen," wrote M.K.Bhadrakumar, a former Indian diplomat, in Outlook magazine.

India is back to being hyphenated with Pakistan, something it has long railed against. And talk that the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama may appoint a special envoy  on South Asia has also raised hackles. India bristles at any suggestion of mediation on Kashmir  which it considers a non-negotiable part of the country. After  having fought off such proposals for years, it finds itself back battling them despite warming ties with the United States.

"The question that no one seems keen to answer in Delhi is: Whatever happened to the strategic relationship with the US, the  cornerstone of the government's foreign policy? Did Delhi forget
to include Kashmir in India's strategic map?" asked former  newspaper editor and political commentator M. J. Akbar.

Pakistan, perhaps because of its much longer relationship  with the Americans, had been better at dealing with them, argued Bhadrakumar.  He said Islamabad had calculated that U.S. pressure had run its course and that soon attention would turn to the transfer of power to Obama on January 20.

But what of the attacks themselves and making sure they don't  recur?  Some people in Delhi must be   wondering if the communists were right when they opposed the nuclear deal on the grounds that friendship with America was a kiss of death.

(Reuters photos - the Mumbai waterfront/Arko Datta and Snowfall in Srinagar/Danish Ishmail)

Sheikh Hasina, the leader of an avowedly secular party, is set to return to power in Bangladesh, the 
other end of South Asia's arc of instability stretching from Afghanistan through Pakistan to India.

And because the teeming region, home to a fifth of the world's population, is so closely intertwined 
Hasina's election and the change that she has promised to bring to her country will almost certainly have a bearing across South Asia, but especially for India and Pakistan.

Bangladesh, as far as New Delhi is concerned, is the eastern launching pad for Islamist militants hostile  to it, complementing Pakistan on the west. So even if the heat is turned on the militants in Pakistan as India is  demanding following the attacks in Mumbai, they or their controllers can unleash groups such as  Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami  (HuJI) based in Bangladesh.

India's new Home Minister P. Chidambaram told a parliament debate this month that Bangladesh had a  responsibility to control the  HuJI.

Hasina has said she wouldn't allow her nation to be used to attack other countries, and her election has been welcomed in New Delhi. In particular the defeat of the Jamaat-e-Islami, the  largest Islamist party and an ally of Hasina's bitter rival Khaleda Zia, is seen as a sign that the country wants to stick to a secular democratic path. In that, New Delhi is hoping Hasina would act against the hardline forces who have attacked her as well .

But how far can she really go? She has a huge parlimentary majority but no politician in Bangladesh can been seen as doing India's bidding. India, which was instrumental in Bangladesh's birth as an independent nation from what was then East Pakistan, has over time been seen as a big brother, a hegemonic power.

Tensions are rarely far from the surface, with New Delhi routinely accusing Bangladesh of allowing tens of thousands of people to cross into its territory and live as illegal immigrants. Dhaka, in turn, accuses border guards of killing innocent Bangladeshis on the frontier, in the name of curbing infiltration.

This month the nations were feuding over the maritime border in the Bay of Bengal.

What of Pakistan? It has, as has "all weather ally" China, cultivated close ties with all of India's neighbours including Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. How will it, and especially the military-intelligence establishment view Hasina's return to power and her promise to crack down on hardline groups? The links of some of these groups such as the Huji go all the way to Pakistan, the Indians say.

And New Delhi is on a diplomatic offensive at the moment, trying to convince governments worldwide of the threat posed by these Pakistan-based  organisations.

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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?

Indian newspapers are reporting that Russian intelligence says underworld don Dawood Ibrahim -- an Indian national who India believes is living in Karachi in Pakistan -- was involved in the Mumbai attacks.

The Indian Express quotes Russia’s federal anti-narcotics service director Viktor Ivanov as saying that Moscow believes that Dawood’s drug network, which runs through Afghanistan, was used to finance the attacks. Ivanov said these were a “burning example” of how the illegal drug trafficking network was used for carrying out militant attacks, the paper said, citing an interview in the official daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta.

The stories caught my eye not just because of the alleged link to Ibrahim, but because it highlights the extent to which Russian and Indian intelligence may be cooperating over Mumbai and on the wider issues over Afghanistan and the heroin trade. (A colleague in our Moscow bureau tells me that Ivanov is close to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and has good connections in the Russian intelligence community.)

"The gathered inputs testify that regional drug baron Dawood Ibrahim had provided his logistics network for preparing and carrying out the Mumbai terror attacks," the Asian Age quoted Ivanov as saying. "The super profits of the narco-mafia through Afghan heroin trafficking have become a powerful source of financing organised crime and terrorist networks, destabilising the political systems, including in Central Asia and the Caucasus."

The Times of India also quoted the special representative of the Russian president for international co-operation in the fight against terrorism, Anatoly Safonov, as saying the drug network was a joint problem for India and Russia.

Pakistan has historic reasons to fear any strengthening of Indian-Russian cooperation in Afghanistan. India and Russia both supported Afghanistan's Northern Alliance when it was opposition to the country's Pakistan-backed Taliban rulers, before they were thrown out by the U.S.-led invasion following 9/11.  Their close relationship during the Cold War left Pakistan feeling particularly vulnerable during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 and 1989, when it faced India on its eastern border and Russian troops on its western border. 

But back then Pakistan could rely on U.S. backing to fund the mujahideen who helped drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan. Nowadays it faces intense pressure from the United States to crack down on Taliban and al Qaeda militants on the Pakistan-Afghan border; growing Indian influence in Afghanistan, and -- since the Mumbai attacks -- a belligerent India which has blamed them on Pakistan-based groups.

So the Russian report about Ibrahim, who India has accused of masterminding serial bombings in Mumbai in 1993 which killed at least 250 people, is likely to hit a raw nerve in Pakistan.  So too would any evidence that Russia and India are working more and more closely together in Afghanistan, which Pakistan has traditionally tried to bring under its own sphere of influence to give it "strategic depth" in the event of war with India.

One to watch.

(Reuters photo: A fishing boat passes the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai/Jayanta Shaw)