Immediately after assuming the Presidency, Mr. Obama announced that former Senate majority leader George Mitchell has been named a special envoy to the Middle East peace process, and that former U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke will be a special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Mr. Obama has rightly termed Afghanistand and Pakistan as “central front” in terror war. The President has carefully avoided to include India in this equation. This is a welcome development.
Pledging his best to undertake this daunting assignment, Holbrooke noted Afghanistan and Pakistan are “two very distinct countries with extraordinarily different histories, and yet intertwined by geography, ethnicity and the current drama.” That is an apt statement! It is an indirect way of saying that Islamic terrorism is central to the issue that plagues the two countries!

Mr. Holbrook has gained a reputation as a peace-maker and actually has been nominated 7 times for the Noble Peace Prize. If USA could bring some sanity to the this phenomenon of religious terrorism, and that too from the epi-center of Pakistan, the world would be a more peaceful place! What could we expect from India in this direction? Well, the chicken-hearted India has demonstrated very clearly that it is not willing to protect its boundaries and pitch, so expecting some thing tangible from India would be more of an imagination!