The presence of the foreign ministers of Japan and China, who are participating as observers along with the US, European Union and South Korea, marks the increasing global interest in the subcontinent.

China and Japan would inevitably draw the Saarc into the larger framework of Asian geopolitics. However, it is the presence of Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, which returns Saarc to its true geographic moorings.

The subcontinent’s north western corner has for ages defined the region’s external relations as well as the internal dynamics. Whether it was the 19th century Great Game between Britain and Russia or its continuation as the Cold War between Washington and Moscow in the 20th century, Afghanistan was the decisive theatre.

The Soviet Union’s decade-long occupation of Afghanistan from the late 1970s and the western response to it unleashed the forces of Islamic extremism and fused it with international terrorism. It encouraged Gen Zia ul Haq to push Pakistan towards Islamic extremism and construct a dangerous liaison between the Pak Army and the jihadis.

The withdrawal of the Soviet troops in the late 1980s and the anarchy that ensued resulted in the birth of the Taliban, with a little help from Pakistan. The rest — 9/11 and the international intervention in Afghanistan — is history in the making.

Thanks to the Afghan turbulence, the subcontinent saw the return of Pakistan to the centre-stage of world politics, a free run to its nuclear weapon programme, the destabilisation of Jammu and Kashmir, the unending terrorist onslaught on India, Indo-Pak military tensions, and the spread of religious extremism.

As the tectonic plates rumble again in Afghanistan, the story is no longer just about the resurgence of the Taliban. It is about the Talibanisation of Pakistan.

The Pakistan Army appears increasingly unable to control developments on either side of the Durand Line. The western troops in Afghanistan feel it necessary to mount cross-border attacks against the militant strongholds in Pakistan’s tribal areas. There is open war between foreign jihadis and local militants on Waziristan.

The writ of the Pakistani state, always tenuous in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, is now under threat in the settled areas of the North West Frontier Province. Emboldened extremist groups engage the security forces in armed confrontation, seen most recently in the border town of Taank, and have begun to impose their will on the civil society in Peshawar. Stick-wielding, burqa-clad female students of a seminary last week showed that even Pakistan’s capital is no longer immune.

The message from across the border is that the Afghan war, both in its military and ideological terms, has spilled over into Pakistan. For three decades, Islamabad was driven by a burning desire to extend its strategic depth into Afghanistan. The Pak Army is now confronted with the prospect of losing effective control in its own territories across the Indus.

As Islamic extremists threaten to take over Pakistan, India has three options. One, we could turn our back by saying the Pak Army has made a mess of the Great Game it had inherited from British India. We could let Pakistan stew in its own juice. Second, India could make life a little more difficult for Pakistan on its western frontiers. Islamabad already accuses India of supporting the Baloch nationalist movement and working with Kabul against Pakistan’s interests in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s paranoia apart, geography tells us that India can never overcome the reality of a long and open border between our two western neighbours.

The third and more sensible option over the longer term is for India to assist Pakistan in extricating itself from the trouble it finds itself in. A weak state in Islamabad, vulnerable to extremist forces, would be as harmful to India as an aggressive one.

When he meets the Pakistani premier Shaukat Aziz on the margins of the Saarc summit, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh must offer a genuine reassurance to Islamabad that it has no desire to take advantage of Pakistan’s problems in its trans-Indus territories. Manmohan Singh could also reaffirm India’s willingness to convert the current ceasefire on the Indo-Pak border, which is now more than three years old, into lasting peace and tranquility. With fewer burdens on its eastern front, the Pak Army should be better positioned to restore authority on its western frontiers. To lend credibility to its reassurance, India should promise to intensify the current efforts at demilitarising the Siachen glacier and resolving the Kashmir question.

Progress in transforming the Indo-Pak relations, in turn, allows New Delhi to encourage Islamabad and Kabul to arrest the rapid downslide in their bilateral relations. India needs to recognise that its interests in Afghanistan, including transit trade, cannot be realised until there is a measure of trust between New Delhi and Islamabad on the one hand and between Kabul and Islamabad on the other.

The best way of getting there is to begin a three-way conversation on the margins of Saarc, which in fact provides a framework for sub-regional cooperation between India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

New Delhi rightly sees Afghanistan’s entry into the Saarc as a major diplomatic achievement. But the real gains might emerge only when India restores the strategic unity of the subcontinent by reconciling India-Pak-Afghan discord. All Indian efforts in that direction are likely to find strong support from the US, Japan, Europe and probably China as well.

The writer is professor at the Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore