IN OTHER WORDS

India’s 9/11:

We share the horror, the pain and the disbelief that Indians are feeling as they absorb the appalling details of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai that left nearly 200 dead. We

also recognise and understand the questions Indians are asking themselves, and the anger they are feeling, about what some are calling their own 9/11.

How can their government have ignored the warning signs? We fear that whoever was behind it, the carnage will unleash dangerous new furies between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan. However, India’s leaders must be very careful not to ignite a religious

war inside their own borders. Any military confrontation with Pakistan would be hugely costly in human life and damaging to India’s extraordinary economic progress.

Despite all of the recent horrors Pakistan has suffered, its military and intelligence services still do not understand that the terrorists pose a mortal threat to their own country. The United States is still learning the lessons of its own failures before 9/11, but it can help in the process. Washington’s most important role will be to urge the Indians and Pakistanis to step back from the brink. The next administration will then have to move quickly to encourage serious negotiations over the future of Kashmir and genuine cooperation to defeat extremists. — The New York Times