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Someone clearly is attempting to provoke an all-out war between India and Pakistan and intercommunal bloodshed in both countries. Mumbai was just the beginning, it seems. The Pakistani Government does not have suzerainty over its own territory, that much has been clear for a while. The forces behind the heinous assualt on Mumbai do not wish to see detente between the two countries. The danger is that states become sucked into a war in which we will see a US-Indian-Israeli assault on Pakistan (the paranoid nightmare of monochrome propagandists in that country will then have come true and no doubt they will be ecstatic as a consequence); at some point its nuclear weapons will be 'taken out' - itself a hugely high-risk strategy - and the country will be partitioned. This is a recipe for a bloodbath in South Asia, but is also a sure-fire path to global obliteration. There must be political settlements in Kashmir and Afghanistan. Now.