Risk Factors.(The Talk of the Town)(terrorism in Pakistan and India)

A few days after well-armed men mowed down scores of helpless people in Mumbai, an American commission released a report on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. "World at Risk" is one of those conscientious, bipartisan efforts, its importance signalled by publication as a trade paperback, whose sober findings and pragmatic recommendations momentarily give you the sense that every problem--even one as alarming as the likelihood that "a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013"--has a common-sense solution. The report includes chapters on biological and nuclear risks, and one titled "Pakistan," which would seem to suggest that the nation itself is a kind of W.M.D.

According to intelligence reports, the attacks in Mumbai were carried out by terrorists who had received extensive training from the Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Taiba, or Army of the Pure. Its agenda has been to force India to give up control over the disputed northern mountain region of Jammu and Kashmir. More recently, the group's leader, Hafiz Saeed, spoke of creating a Muslim south Asia--thus, the band that carried out the killings called itself the Hyderabad Deccan Mujahideen, implying a holy war extending down to the south-central Indian region that, in the late eighteenth century, marked the farthest limit of the Mughal empire.

The name has the ring of nostalgic grandeur common among jihadist groups elsewhere, with their historical claims on far-flung places like Al Andalus, also known as Spain. And the designated targets in Mumbai suggested an ambition on the terrorists' part extending well beyond the local troubles of Kashmir: hotels, a cafe, a hospital, a train station; foreign visitors, well-heeled Indians, Jews. The terrorists tortured their Jewish victims. They demanded to know the caste and home state of Indians. They held conference calls with their superiors in Lahore and Karachi to determine whether or not a certain hostage should be killed. When the goal is a Muslim south Asia, the answer is almost always yes.

The operation was so skillful and deadly, complete with a maritime landing by inflatable craft, that one security expert said that Navy SEALs would have had a hard time pulling it off. The sophisticated tactics, as well as electronic evidence, point to the involvement of top Lashkar figures, and also, according to Indian sources, of current or former officers of Pakistan's intelligence and military. So the murders have led to a familiar volley of accusations, denials, counter-accusations, and threats between the nuclear-armed governments of India and Pakistan. They have also inspired a degree of restraint on India's part and pledges of cooperation on Pakistan's that are less familiar and more encouraging.

In one sense, the most appropriate response--articulated by commentators and ordinary people after the terror was over--is to express solidarity with the victims, and also with the idea of Mumbai, which, like the idea of New York, represents a vision of society that is the opposite of the vision behind names like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hyderabad Deccan Mujahideen: impure, secular, modern, open. But moral revulsion doesn't suggest an intelligent course of action. The attacks in Mumbai reveal the vexing complexity of the interconnected conflicts throughout south Asia. At the urging of the United States, Pakistan had moved six divisions from its eastern frontier with Indian Kashmir to fight militants on its western ...