Atlantic Council

Our previous poll, "How should the U.S. and Europe address concerns over Russia?" drew surprisingly similar responses on both sides of the Atlantic, with solid majorities in both the U.S. and abroad preferring offering more integration in exchange for cooperation and only a third preferring a significantly harder line.

India-Pakistan experts suggested that last week's attacks on Mumbai were designed to provoke a war between the two countries, thereby scuppering President-elect Obama's plans for peace in the region, which has been at the top of his agenda. The Times:

Relations between India and Pakistan were on a knife edge last night amid fears that Delhi’s response to the Mumbai attacks could undermine the Pakistani army’s campaign against Islamic militants on the frontier with Afghanistan. Officials and analysts in the region believe that last week’s atrocities were designed to provoke a crisis, or even a war, between the nuclear-armed neighbours, diverting Islamabad’s attention from extremism in tribal areas bordering Afghanistan and thus relieving pressure on al-Qaeda, Taleban and other militants based there.

One analyst even described the attacks as a “pre-emptive strike” against Barack Obama’s strategy to put Pakistan and Afghanistan at the centre of US foreign policy. The United States and its allies now face a balancing act in supporting India’s efforts to investigate the Mumbai attacks, without jeopardizing Pakistan’s crucial support for the Nato campaign in Afghanistan.

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The Indian government is now considering a range of responses, including suspending its five-year peace process with Pakistan, closing their border, stopping direct flights and sending troops to the frontier, according to Indian officials and analysts.

With elections in May, India’s government is under enormous pressure to respond to the attacks, which it believes was carried out by the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba. Yesterday Pakistan threatened to deploy troops to the border with India in response to what a Pakistani security officer called a heightening of tensions. Troops may be diverted from the tribal areas the official said, leaving the troublesome Afghan border vulnerable to greater militant activity.

Tensions between India and Pakistan have risen dramatically as a result of the Mumbai terror attacks.  WSJ:

A Pakistani official warned Saturday that troops would be diverted from its war against al Qaeda and Taliban militants and deployed on the Indian border if Pakistan felt threatened by its neighbor in the wake of the Mumbai terrorist attacks. A senior security official accused India of heightening tension between the two nuclear-armed nations by blaming "elements from Pakistan" for the coordinated terrorist attacks against Indian commercial capital which killed 195 people. "The next 48 hours are critical in determining how things unfold," the top security official told a group of journalists. He said the war on terror wouldn't be Pakistan's priority in the event of India military buildup on eastern borders.

Indian officials see Pakistan's complicity for the worst terrorist attacks on their soil which they said were carried out by Islamic militants with links to Pakistan. Pakistan has demanded that India present hard evidence and has strenuously condemned the attacks. President Asif Ali Zardari also said that nobody backed by Pakistani state was involved. "If they have evidence they should share it with us," Pakistan's foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said Saturday on his return from Delhi. "Our hands are clean."

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Pakistan said it was willing to help India into the investigation into last week's grisly attacks and share intelligence, but won't be brow beaten. Mr. Zardari on Saturday warned India of any "overreaction" and vowed to take action against Islamic militant group found involved in the attack.

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Pakistan is facing a serious economic crisis and terrorist attacks present most serious threat to the country's internal security. "It is not an ideal situation to go to war, but we will have no choice but to defend ourselves if threatened by India," the security official said.

Derek Reverson's call for India-Pakistan intelligence cooperation should be heeded; it's looking rather unlikely that it will.

As mourning of the Mumbai attack continues, one thing is certain—intelligence cooperation between India and the rest of the world must increase. This is not only due to the transnational nature of terrorism, but also because states increasingly rely on international cooperation to combat terrorism.

Suspicion that the Mumbai terror attacks were in some way backed by Pakistani intelligence services are threatening to end recent cooperation between India and Pakistan.  Chris Brummit for AP:

India has not singled out Pakistan as being linked to the strikes, but Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday said militants based outside his country carried them out. That was widely understood in Pakistan to be an accusation of its involvement. Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar said Pakistan "should not be blamed like in the past." "This will destroy all the goodwill we created together after years of bitterness," he told The Associated Press. "I will say in very categoric terms that Pakistan is not involved in these gory incidents."

Deteriorating relations between Pakistan and India, which have fought three wars since 1947, would greatly complicate U.S. foreign policy in the region. Incoming President-elect Barack Obama has said normalizing ties between the two South Asian neighbors will be a major plank of his broader campaign to stabilize Afghanistan and beat al-Qaida in the region.

"You can't cozy up to a country that is accusing you of complicity in terrorism," said Shaun Gregory, an expert on South Asian terrorism at the University of Bradford in Britain. "Any sign of Pakistani involvement would be extraordinarily damaging."

The fact that there's even serious suspicion, of course, isn't a good sign, either.

At least four people have been killed in a Predator strike into Pakistan's North Waziristan region this morning, according to numerous reports.   Jason Burke, writing for The Guardian, says that, contrary to conventional wisdom, these attacks are working marvelously.

Though the attacks have killed a number of high-profile militant leaders, civilian casualties and wounded national pride has led to outrage in Pakistan. The Pakistani government has been forced to repeatedly deny reports that a secret pact has been agreed with the US to allow the missile attacks from Afghanistan territory to go ahead.

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Intelligence officials in Islamabad have told the Observer that the strikes have demoralised militants, forcing many to sleep in different locations every night or even sleep under trees for cover rather than risk staying in a house. The heightened rate of attrition among the militants has sparked a hunt for a suspected spy within their ranks, diverting attention and resources from offensive actions, the officials said.

Transatlantic cooperation is a work, too: "As MI6 has neither the capability nor the legal right to undertake lethal operations in Pakistan, intelligence is passed to the Americans who run a fleet of drones fitted with Hellfire missiles powerful enough to destroy a mud-walled home and burn everyone inside."

Transcript by Federal News Service, Washington, D.C.

General David D. McKiernan, the Commanding  General of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan and NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Commander, spoke tonight at the Atlantic Council as part of the Commanders Series organized by the Council's Program on International Security.

A Pakistani security measure is threatening NATO's ability to supply troops in a key Afghan region, AP reports.

A Pakistani decision to temporarily bar some trucks from a key passageway to Afghanistan threatened a critical supply route for U.S. and NATO troops on Sunday and raised more fears about deteriorating security in the militant-plagued border region.  The suspension of oil tankers and trucks carrying sealed containers came as U.S.-led coalition troops in eastern Afghanistan reported killing five al-Qaida-linked fighters and detaining eight others, including a militant leader.

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Last Monday, a band of militants hijacked around a dozen trucks whose load included Humvees headed to the foreign forces in Afghanistan. Renewed security concerns prompted officials to impose the temporary ban late Saturday, government official Bakhtiar Khan said. He said it could be lifted as early as Monday.

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Many of the supplies headed to foreign troops arrive in the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi in unmarked, sealed shipping containers and are loaded onto trucks for the journey either to the border town of Chaman or the primary route, through the famed Khyber Pass.

This is yet another indication of the complex interrelation between the two neighbors. 

Pakistan has agreed to the restructuring necessary to secure a large IMF loan, Reuters reports:

Pakistan has agreed with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on a stand-by credit facility of at least $7.6 billion to stave off a balance of payments crisis, the country's top economic adviser said on Saturday.  The international community is concerned that an economic meltdown in the nuclear-armed state could play into the hands of al Qaeda and allied Islamist militant groups seeking to destabilize the Muslim nation of 170 million.

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The rupee has lost 23 percent in value against the dollar since the start of the year, and foreign investors have fled a stock market which is down around 35 percent. Stocks would have fallen further but for an artificial floor authorities placed under the Karachi market's benchmark index at the end of August, and almost certainly will fall further once the floor is removed.