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Nevertheless, the initiation or persistence of a number of processes of negotiation with terrorist and insurgent groups through 2004 was responsible for some - though in many cases, possibly temporary - relief. Circumstances emerging from the qualified Indo-Pak détente have made the erection of an effective fence along the Line of Control and international border in J&K possible, and this, along with the increasing difficulty of maintaining 'deniability' on Pakistan's support to terrorism, has been the primary factor that has resulted in the very significant declines in fatalities in J&K. According to the Union Minister for Home Affairs, infiltration in the State had declined by as much as 60 per cent during the year. Parliamentary elections were also held in the State between April 20 and May 2004, and were marred by a campaign of terrorist intimidation and violence to impose a boycott. A total of 31 persons were killed during the four phases of polling, and there were as many as 109 incidents of terrorist violence across the State during this period. Despite the campaign of terror, intended to discredit the elections, a voter turnout of 35.11 per cent was registered in the State. The Manmohan Singh Government, which assumed power at the Centre on May 22, 2004, continued efforts to push forward a dialogue with separatist elements in J&K, but the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) and the splinter group headed by hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the Tehreek-e-Hurriyat, have refused to come to the table. Pakistan has also made significant efforts to forge unity between the Hurriyat factions to strengthen its own position in the dialogue with India, but has also failed to secure its end.

The peace process in Nagaland in India's Northeast has held out for nearly seven years now, and the Indian Government is actively seeking the engagement in peace processes of a number of other insurgent groups in this troubled region. In the State of Andhra Pradesh - long the heartland of Left Wing extremist (Naxalite) violence particularly by the erstwhile People's War Group [PWG, or Communist Party of India - Marxist-Leninist - People's War, now renamed Communist Party of India-Maoist following its merger with the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) in September 2004] - the most significant actors in the insurgency are currently in negotiations with the State Government. However, the Naxalites continue to exploit the opportunities of the 'peace' to consolidate and expand their activities across dramatically wider areas, and have repeatedly reiterated their commitment to 'armed revolution'.

In Sri Lanka, the 'peace process' survived through its third year, though here, again, the LTTE has been using the opportunities of the peace to consolidate its activities. There have been continuous reports of recruitment - both voluntary and coercive, including the widespread recruitment of children - and training, arms smuggling, expansion of military bases, as well as a campaign of selective assassination and violence to confirm the LTTE's position as 'sole representative' of the Tamil people of Sri Lanka. The peace process, in the meanwhile, has remained 'frozen' for well over a year now. There is, nevertheless, a acute sense of relief on the survival of the peace process - despite its ambiguities - since the years preceding it saw annual fatalities in the thousands (2001: 1822; March - December 2000: 3791).

By and large, the future of the various peace processes in South Asia will depend on the relative strengths of the parties in engagement. If the terrorists are able to widely consolidate their positions and secure an advantage over the state - as is the case in Sri Lanka - they will be an irresistible temptation to escalate demands to the point of a breakdown, and a reversion to violence. On the other hand, if these groups weaken with the passage of time as a result of both internal and global factors, they will be inclined to use the opportunities of the peace process to rejoin the 'mainstream' with some negotiated advantages.

Nepal remains the state most vulnerable to the threat of imminent collapse in the near term, with violence by both the Maoists and the state Forces escalating substantially. Fatalities increased significantly among civilians (2003: 214; 2004: 380) and Security Forces (2003: 307; 2004: 481), though they remained at roughly the same level in the 'terrorist' category (2003: 1584; 2004: 1590) indicating that a degree of fatigue had possibly taken over the Royal Nepalese Army (RNA) and the Armed Police Force (APF).

The question that remains crucial to the near-term prospects of peace over the wider South Asian region and its neighbourhood relates to the intentions and capacities of the two primary state sponsors of terrorism in the region - Pakistan and Bangladesh. The major conflicts in India - with the exception of the Naxalite movement, which accounted for just 8.9 per cent of total fatalities in 2004 - rely directly on support from these States. This is true of the insurgency in J&K which is directly propped up by the Musharraf regime, and the multiple insurgencies in India's Northeast, which receive succour from Bangladesh, as well as from Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence through Bangladesh's Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI).

The enterprise of Islamist extremist terror is, of course, destined to eventual failure, even as it increasingly targets Muslim populations as well as elements within its sponsoring states. Nevertheless, the decisions of its current state sponsors and sympathisers will remain critical in determining how long it will take to arrive at its predestined termination, and how many lives it will consume before it does so. It is clear that the state sponsors of Islamist terrorism in the South Asian region remain, at present and at best, ambivalent in their attitudes to the activities of the Islamist terrorist enterprise, and supportive of its ideological presuppositions.

The external environment has been crucial in making such ambivalence and support possible, even as it will be in creating the potential spaces for wider terrorist activities. Within factors located outside the immediate region, the successes or failures of US policy in Iraq will prove pivotal in defining the future capacities of Islamist terrorism in South Asia. The experience in Iraq has, over the past year, been a severe disappointment for the US and for various nation's that have a stake in the success of the Global War on Terrorism, even as it has been a source of encouragement to Islamist terrorist forces across the world. These trends have been compounded by the indulgence that has been extended to Pakistan over the past years, not only in terms of the very significant and unhampered access to financial and (increasingly) military aid, but also in the tolerance of its two-faced approach to terrorism and Islamist extremist mobilisation. Pakistan simply brushed under the carpet the entire issue of its illegal nuclear proliferation, and the efforts of prominent national scientists to provide nuclear know-how even to the Al Qaeda, with President Musharraf shielding and exculpating Abdul Qadeer Khan "the hero of the country" and its primary proliferator, in February 2004. The much-celebrated 'Madrassah reforms' and the reform of state-sanctioned text books in the public education system have also failed comprehensively, and the ideology of jihad continues to be taught in a majority of educational institutions in the country even today. Extremist forces in Bangladesh have also flourished under the shadow of the international community's benign neglect.

There are lessons in all this. Clearly, nations that create terrorist camps and exploit the instrumentalities of terror for strategic advancement have found that, eventually, their own people - and the leaders who create these Frankensteinian monsters - become their targets. A corollary is that these entities evolve capacities of their own, and do not remain subservient instruments of their state sponsors in perpetuity. Significantly, while terrorism can be contained, even defeated, democracies have, by and large, found it difficult to amass the political will, the resources and the strategies of response that are necessary if they are to prevail over terror.

Thus, even while we celebrate the decline in violence in some parts of South Asia, it is necessary to understand that the war is infinitely far from being won and, indeed, that, aided by general political and military incompetence, this could - in many cases - easily prove to be the lull before the storm.

COURTESY: South Asia Terrorism Portal

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