Resolving old rivalries

The deadly suicide attack last week on the Indian Embassy in Kabul has put Afghanistan in a familiar but unwanted position - a "back to the future" scenario, caught up again in the intrigues and suspicions of its neighbor, Pakistan, and Pakistan's neighbor, India. But this time around, the stakes are too high to replay old rivalries. President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan said that Pakistan's intelligence service, known as the ISI, was behind the Indian Embassy bombing. His government announced it would boycott a series of meetings with Pakistan until "bilateral trust" was restored. Indian officials said the attack was intended to send a stark message to India: Get out of Afghanistan. India's national security adviser, M.K. Narayanan, declared that the ISI must be "destroyed" and that if things continued in this manner, there... [read full story]