By the accounts published in Indian newspapers the Mumbai attackers were alleged to have been trained by former officers of the Pakistan Army and its powerful Inter-Services Intelligence. Though no specific connection has yet been found between the terrorists and the Pakistani government. Visits of Gordon Brown, Condoleezza Rice and Admiral Mike Mullen to India and Pakistan were to ease tension caused by the terrorist attack. Ms Rice, however, warned Pakistan that it needed to act with resolve and urgency and cooperate fully and transparently. The terrorist blitzkrieg on Mumbai, wrote Sitaram Yechury (CPI-M Politburo member), had chillingly numbed and outraged the nation. The anger, revulsion, distress, shame and initial helplessness, rising to a crescendo of revenge, had all been captured in images that would continue to torment the Indians.

Pakistani nuclear physicist Pervez Hoodbhoy reviewing Stephen Cohen's book The Idea of Pakistan asked the enigmatic question can Pakistan work? Dispelling the idea of Pakistan's founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah to form a secular country, Hoodbhoy writes, "with time Jinnah's Pakistan has became weaker, more authoritarian and increasingly theocratic. Now set to become the worlds fourth most populous nation, it is all of several things: a client state of the United States yet deeply resentful of it, a breeding ground for jihad and al-Qaeda as well as a key US ally in the fight against international terrorism, an economy and society run for the benefit of Pakistan's warrior class, and an inward- looking society that is manifestly intolerant of minorities".

The reports of the Mumbai terrorists being trained by former army officials opens up the possibility of the army's reluctance to accept the present democratically elected civilian government, of the existence of terrorist training camps in areas beyond the writ of the government, that the entire territory of Pakistan is not under the control of the government or that a part of the governmental institutions continues hate-India policy, the raison d'etre of the creation of Pakistan, with the firm belief that Afghanistan shall provide strategic depth in case of war with India. The worst case scenario for South Asia will be if Pakistan were to become a failed state.

Failed nations have been described as incapable of sustaining itself as a member of the international community and also facing serious internal problems that threaten their continued coherence or significant internal challenges to their political order. Events of nine-eleven have given acute importance to the problems of failed and failing states as they can both be hospitable and can harbor non- state actors, warlords and terrorists and of the need to understand the dynamics of the nation-states failure as being central to the war on terrorism. Effectively failed and failing states are unable to deliver political goods such as security, education, health services, economic opportunities, law and order and a judicial system to administer it, or provide infra structural facilities to its citizens.

It is often fallaciously assumed that failed states are generally asphyxiated dictatorships like Taliban Afghanistan, Mobutu's Zaire or Barre's Somalia. Though these were undoubtedly failed states, some are adorned with democratic institutions though flawed. The logical question asked is why do states fail? Robert Dorff of North Carolina University traces the failed state phenomenon to the collapse of the colonial order following the Second World War. Suddenly many states without having the required institutions and without the experience of self-government, as they were colonies, found themselves free from external dominance. The cold war competition compounded the malaise as competing super powers showered the failing states with economic and military assistance. They thus ignored the fundamental premise of democratic peace which stipulates that democracies do not generally go to war against other democracies because internal democratic norms promote external democratic behavior and institutional checks and balances of democracies place constraints on the aggressive behavior of the leaders.

The end of the cold war that dried up economic assistance pushed many of the failing states into the black hole of politico-economic disaster. Since failed states by definition denote ungovernability the consequent rampant criminality gives rise to sweeping despair and hopelessness. But when national ungovernability becomes global it starts to adversely affect the neighboring countries and as nine-eleven demonstrated even powerful distant lands. Oslo Conference on Root Causes of Terrorism found, among others, failed or weak states leaving a power vacuum for exploitation by terrorist organizations to maintain safe havens, training facilities, and launching terrorist attacks.

Despite the re-establishment of democracy in Pakistan, notwithstanding the pre-eminence of the army considered a constant factor in Pakistani body politic, Pakistan authorities appear reluctant to heed global demand for strong actions for elimination of terrorist camps within its territory. The twisted ideology of the Islamic extremists pose a problem for Bangladesh as it does for India and no less for Pakistan itself. One hopes Pakistani leaders would match their words with deeds as Pakistan's prosperity is equally dependent on the end of terrorism. South Asia cannot afford to waver in its pledge to give the poverty stricken people a better life than what they have been used to for generations.