And, despite a decade and a half of concentrated Pakistani efforts to give Kashmiri militancya pan-Islamist character, and despite the operational alliances and linkages that may have emerged with pan-Islamistorganisations such as al Qaeda and various Pakistani terrorist formations, it is still the case thatnot a single Kashmiri or any other Indian has yet been found to have been involved in a single act ofinternational terrorism anywhere in the world outside India.
The enormity of this fact is little understood. There are close to a hundred and fifty million Muslims inIndia - more than the entire population of Pakistan. And while much smaller communities of Muslims, even inthe 'advanced' Western nations - such as the US, France, UK and Germany - have been significantly radicalisedand have produced volunteers for acts of international terrorism, not a single Indian Muslim has yet beenseduced by this creed of hatred, or by the enormous inducements its practitioners offer.
It must, equally, be understood that the world is changing, and the world of Islam is not immune to suchtransformation. There is evidence, today, of the Organisation of Islamic Countries finally questioningPakistan's role in international terrorism; and questioning, simultaneously, the character of extremist Islamand the ethos of terror that it has produced in many parts of the world. There is, equally, a greaterrealization that these countries need to accept the realities of the outside world, and cannot continue toexist in their self-imposed cocoons of historical isolation.
There is mounting evidence, moreover, of the crippling impact that Pakistan's own misadventures in thisdirection have had on that country's future, and these must not be under-estimated. Pakistan's competitivestrength in the present and protracted competition with India has declined dramatically over the past twoyears, and cannot be revived, or even sustained, within the prevailing global context, despite occasional andgenerous infusions of American aid as a reward for reluctant 'cooperation' in the Global War against Terror.
The difficulty is that Pakistan refuses to change - and its intransigence is rooted in the failure ofdemocracy and the persistence of militarism in that country. Nevertheless, those who are charged with shapingevents in this region - and particularly its areas of conflict, such as Kashmir - must realize clearly thatthe imperatives of the evolving global order will eventually force change, or engineer the destruction ofentities that resist the tide of time.