The crucial factor which has created a parallelism of concern and interest between India and the US on the issue of terrorism is that both countries face terrorist violence from the same geo-strategic location and by the same leadership of Osama bin Laden. The US is conscious that the Mujahideen force which it had supported in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union had transformed itself into a multinational Islamic monster. Since 1992 when India captured Muslim mercenaries diverted from Afghanistan inside Jammu and Kashmir, India realised that Pakistan had widened its net to hire foreign elements to destabilise Jammu and Kashmir. ISI's stagemanaging the diversion of mercenaries operating in Afghanistan to Kashmir had three motivations. First, these foreign mercenaries would not have any compunction of emotional, cultural or sociological feeling about the people of Jammu and Kashmir while leadingviolent operations. They would be a ruthless instrument of Pakistani subversion. Secondly, foreign Muslim mercenaries getting involved in terrorist activities in Jammu and Kashmir could give a Pan-Islamic character to the so-called struggle for self-determination engineered by Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir. Third, Pakistan would not have to finance these mercenaries, who are financed from other countries and other entities like bin Laden. At the same time, non-Pakistani mercenaries operating in Jammu and Kashmir could be disclaimed by Pakistan. Their activities could be described as a broader struggle affecting Afghanistan, Central Asia and Jammu and Kashmir in the cause of Islam.

Discussions between Brajesh Mishra and his US interlocutors over the last year and the extensive exchange of views between Jaswant Singh and Strobe Talbott resulted in Ambassador Michael Sheehan, a senior US official dealing with countering terrorism, visiting India in early September. His discussions with officials of ourexternal affairs ministry, the home ministry and intelligence agencies has led to the decision to establish a Joint Working Group to take co-ordinated action against cross-border terrorism.

Terrorist violence to disrupt stability of states, or to remedy real or imagined political rights and wrongs, has been a significant phenomenon of international politics since the beginning of this century. The assassination or Archduke Ferdinand and his wife at Sarajevo by Serbian political activists led to the First World War. Various national groups like the Palestinians, the Chinese communists and the Indonesians are engaged in violent activities to achieve their political objectives. What is of relevance in terms of the phenomenon of contemporary terrorism is sub-national, ethno-linguistic and religious groups resorting to terrorism. Organisations like those of the Basques, the Chechens, the Dagestanis, the Kashmiri militant groups, the militant groups operating in the Northeast of India, the LTTE, fall into adifferent category of violent movements because all of them aim at disrupting state structures and constitutionally organised polities. They also fall into a different category because most of them have been used as instruments of subversion by one state or the other. The consequence is that such groups get strength and wherewithals to continue their violent activities through financial support, through the supply of weapons and even intelligence/information. Such groups should be considered more lethal and dangerous because they pose a collective threat to international stability and peace. These are quite different from terrorist movements indulging in violence within different states on ideological and internal political grounds.

Other factors which compound their lethal capacities are the incremental trend of such groups networking with each other and supporting each other's activities across national frontiers. Secondly, international criminal networks get involved with their activities as these groupsseek their support for finances and supply of arms. This is where the phenomenon of narco-terrorism contributes to the strength and sustainability of secessionist terrorist organisations. Terrorist organisations facilitate the movement of narcotics across national frontiers all over the world. International narcotic smuggling networks return the favour by financing and supplying weapons to such terrorist groups. The network of Islamic terrorist groups whose activities have stretched from Algeria in the northwest to Philippines in the southeast have emerged as a major destabilising force in the last two and half decades. Their operations and violent subversive activities do not recognise any legal or human rights limitations. What makes matters more difficult is that democratic states, responding to this pressure, have to reconcile to the requirements of human rights standards, and the legitimacy of democratic dissent, with the imperative of responding to intensive violence. Subverting democracy is part of theobjective of such terrorist groups, apart from disrupting the territorial integrity of states, particularly with pluralist civil societies like the US and India, and now the Russian Federation.

The decision by the US and India to constitute a joint working group is therefore timely and if in the process India and the US along with other like-minded countries can jointly generate pressure on states sponsoring and supporting terrorism, it would contribute to generating international pressure to counter this major challenge to international stability and security.