South Asia has become a more explosive region than ever before. The Mumbai attacks by terrorists have once again become successful in fueling Indo-Pak conflict, augmenting the level of mutual suspicion and misunderstanding.
The US and India view Pakistan with apprehensions because a certain section of Pakistani political gamblers have been nourishing fundamentalism, a problem not new in India itself. India does have old hostility with Pakistan as it separated from India in 1947, the year of Indian independence from the British colonialists.
More recently Pakistan also remains more watchful of India after Washington and New Delhi struck a nuclear deal in October. Although the US might have had a more commercial goal of selling more nuclear services and accessories to India, Pakistan does not take it that easy. Moreover, India has not been able to specify for what purposes it buys US nuclear technologies.
While India and Pakistan have tensions, the US Administration does either as regards Afghanistan because it has failed to convince the majority of Afghans.
Afghanistan, always unstable since its inception, still remains too vulnerable. Rich in war culture, Afghans have always found their democratic route too obfuscated to sight. Americans and their allies, with the help of pro-US Afghan groups, succeeded in militarily outdoing the blind and narrow-minded Talibans who tortured and enslaved Afghans. But the external aggressors, while they attempted to rapidly Westernize Afghan politics, markets and culture, failed in managing major contradictions and conflicts in the country.
Nobody knows if Americans and Europeans, busy in their Afghanistan mission, really have an intention of managing conflicts in Afghanistan. Rather the evergreen divide-and-rule formula is being apparently maintained there.
As the number of innocent civilians dying of air attacks by allied forces is growing in the country, the Taliban comeback is becoming easier as Afghans are developing hostility towards American and European forces occupying their country.
When Talibans step up their resistance efforts, the allied forces are also likely to intensify their military aggression, further victimizing more civilians.
In reality, wars and civil wars in different parts of the world prove that the most likely victims in blind actions are civilians. Afghanistan has not been and will not be an exception to it.
Naturally, a longer occupation of a country develops strong feelings among the suffering people, who wish to immediately get rid of such foreign occupation by foreign forces. This sense of independence further heightens the level of violence.
Above all, the 21st century cannot always tolerate the military occupation by democracy gurus. Military aggression is not what democracy learners wish to learn from democracy educators in the cyber age.
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