If security sector reform can generate results only over the longer term, India’s second element — mobilisation of international pressure on Pakistan — must necessarily be a short-term venture. After Mumbai, the international community has urged India to avoid a military escalation and promised to get Pakistan to act against the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks.

There is no doubt that the international pressure — from the US and the United Nations — has begun to deliver a few results. The Pakistan government shut down the offices of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, detained its leaders and put restrictions on others like Masood Azhar of the Jaish-e-Mohammad. Keeping its fingers crossed on the exact nature and consequences of these actions, India needs a lot more sustained and purposeful international action aimed at dismantling Pakistan’s expansive terror infrastructure.

But sooner than later, Mumbai will begin to fade from the list of international priorities as other inevitable crises intrude into the global agenda. Indian diplomacy must, therefore, press for quick and decisive actions from the international system.

Although it welcomes the current global support on Mumbai, India might soon discover that not all international attention will be helpful. Given the impending change of guard at the White House, American President-elect Barack Obama’s repeated references to a new “integrated regional approach” to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir and India do raise concerns in New Delhi. Besides a potential change in US policy after President George W. Bush, sustained involvement of the UN Security Council is also likely to bring in other great powers, especially China, into the South Asian terror theatre. Although China has finally supported the sanctions against Jamaat-ud-Dawa after resisting them for long, New Delhi is unlikely to see Beijing’s future role in shaping the Indo-Pak dynamic in a positive light.

... contd.