Today's serial blasts through portions of India may spell distraction for Pakistan's already busy military.
The government of India's Prime Minister Singh will figure out who soon enough, and whatever the call, it will have to defuse popular action based on animosity and suspicion involving Pakistan.
Security analysts and military intelligence officials said the Assam blasts, the worst attack in the troubled northeast, bore the hallmarks of strikes by militants. “These blasts look like the handiwork of terrorist groups from Bangladesh, as you need sophisticated militant groups to carry out such coordinated attacks,” Major General Ashok Mehta, a security analyst, told media in New Delhi. “It is quite possible that separatist groups are not involved at all,” Mehta added. [1]
Pakistan's government, which maintains a delicate balance between modernizing its culture and tolerating or taking advantage of anti-American, anti-western sentiment in general, may have the tougher job of making a decision about how it feels about its American and western allies and whether it can, because it must, lead its 165 million people on to a new track, a process that may start with reversing old assumptions about the state's so-called enemies, Israel included, and taking on other equally pernicious habits of mind, including the misguided notion that democratic, even "worldly" governments somehow displace the central importance of religion, including Islam, in everyday life.
Good government strengthens the presence of the divine and the importance of religion in the lives of the pious.
For mischief, militants point their accusing hands and words always toward others.
Reference
1. Correspondent: "Serial bombs kill 65 in India." The Frontier Post, October 31, 2008: http://www.thefrontierpost.com/News.aspx?ncat=ts&nid=2803
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