Mumbai attacks impede Indo-Pakistan relations
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Relations between India and Pakistan have been plagued by decades of mistrust and suspicion, and now it still can not be changed after 10 terrorists launched attacks on Mumbai in November last year.
Political analysts here said that for several years prior Mumbai attacks, India had tried to forge a "friendly" relation with Pakistan although the two nations fought three major wars since the Partition in 1947. But the Mumbai terror attacks destroyed it all and is now an impediment in the peace process between the two countries.
"As a neighboring country, India always wants a peaceful and prosperous Pakistan because it knows if there is a fire in Pakistan, the heat would be felt in this country too. But post Mumbai terror attacks, the situation has changed," said political analyst Ajay Singh.
India believes that the 10 terrorists who carried out the Mumbai attacks, which claimed more than 170 lives, had handlers in Pakistan. On hearing that the Pakistani government conducted a serial of investigations on the event and arrested a number of suspects.
However, India claimed that Islamabad was reluctant to bring all the perpetrators of Mumbai mayhem to justice even after a year, despite New Delhi handing over seven dossiers containing evidence against those responsible for the attacks. But Pakistan said that there was not enough evidence from India over its claims. This further impeded the bilateral peace process between the two countries, Ajay Singh said.
Although Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met separately with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani this year, no concrete improvement of the bilateral relations has been seen so far.
"After Mumbai terror attacks, the confidence building measures and other initiative to bring peace to South Asia have landed in vain," Indian internal security expert Ravi Dawa pointed out.
Some analysts also held that Indo-Pakistan's animosity is the product of not only terrorism and territorial disputes over Kashmir, but also the past three full fledged wars, especially the 1971 War over Bangladesh in which Pakistan was fully humiliated.
Dawa warned that "though India has got many options in front of them in the future, care should be taken by New Delhi to diffuse the situation and not to escalate the situation into a full- fledged war that will only foment more instability in the subcontinent already plagued by terrorism."
As a wounded nation, Pakistan was again subject to the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, which has added the destabilization of the whole South Asian region, and the internal politics of Pakistan in particular, said political analyst Pratap Bhanu Mehta.
He criticized the Indian government for being "blind-sided by the allure" of a U.S.-Indian strategic relationship against terrorism in South Asia when handling its relations with Pakistan, which he said is "risking more political and military entanglement than is wise."
Some analysts also said that India is in the meantime frustrated with U.S. strategy in South Asia and should not blindly follow the anti-terror ideology of the West while solving its disputes with Pakistan.
"In fact, the U.S. is playing a game in South Asia. On the one hand, it's saying that Pakistan should act on India's Mumbai attacks dossiers, on the other hand it wants the Pakistani Army's cooperation in its fight against the al Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan," political analyst S.K. Gupta said.
For solving the dispute over Mumbai attacks, India and Pakistan should count on bilateral efforts to reduce tension rather than allowing the situation being further complicated by other issues such as the U.S.-led Afghan War, said some other analysts.
"Both India and Pakistan should realize one truth: outside powers will complicate the politics of this region, not help solve it," said Mehta in an article published in a leading local newspaper recently.
