As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh heads to the White House next month, there is a variety of proposals for elevating Indo-US cooperation to the next level. None of the issues on the table — from high-technology cooperation to mitigating the effects of global warming — is more important than the shared challenge of stabilising Afghanistan and Pakistan.

By the time Dr Singh arrives in Washington, President Barack Obama would have unveiled a new US strategy for Afghanistan. The president’s decisions on a new course would no way alter the reality that managing the badlands across the Indus river has become the single-most important foreign

policy burden for Obama.

Pakistan, which is at the heart of US strategy in Afghanistan, is sliding down a slippery slope. Note the militant attacks on military and civilian targets across Pakistan over the last few days aimed at undermining the GHQ’s commitment to America and the world on confronting the extremists in their Waziristan redoubt.

Meanwhile, as the first anniversary of the Mumbai carnage

approaches, there has been no progress in Pakistan on bringing those who plotted the attack to book. Nor has Islamabad given any credible assurances on preventing its soil from being used against India.

Despite New Delhi’s unfolding war of words with Beijing on Tibet and Tawang and Kashmir, it is the rapidly deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan that poses the real and present danger to India. The recent bombing at the Indian Embassy in Kabul — the second in about 15 months — is an ominous signal that another spectacular attack on soft urban targets in India may be round the corner.

... contd.