President Bush and India

President Bush is now in South Asia, making an unannounced visit to Afghanistan.

The agreement with India reached last summer concerning cooperation on nuclear energy will be a very visible aspect of this trip to India, but security will also be an important opportunity for finding common ground.

India has directly experienced terrorism, and not just in the Jammu/Kashmir region.

The South Asia Terrorism Portal has tracked 715 fatalities from terrorist violence in India's northeast in 2005.

Just this past week, Maoists killed 50 in a single attack.

Grieving villagers whose relatives were killed by a Maoist land mine attack in remote central India hit out on Wednesday at local officials they say have brought them into the frontline of a worsening conflict.

Maoist insurgents in Chhattisgarh state set off a land mine under a truck on Tuesday as members of the government-backed Salwa Judum (March for Peace) group were returning from an anti-Maoist rally, killing at least 50 people and wounding another 20.

There was more violence in Kashmir.

Suspected Islamic rebels shot dead two members of a police counter-insurgency unit and a suspected informer the previous day in revolt-hit Indian Kashmir, police said.

The shooting came as police and paramilitary forces stepped up security ahead of the visit to India and Pakistan by US President George W. Bush.

Bush was due to land in New Delhi late Wednesday as part of a swing through the region but was not slated to travel to Kashmir.

The two policemen were killed in a busy market in Sopore town, 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian Kashmir where Islamic militants have been fighting since 1989 against New Delhi's rule.

Suspected militants also shot dead an alleged informer in southern Doda district late Tuesday, police said.

Islamic terrorism has been on the rise in neighboring Bangladesh. Bill Roggio had an informative post at Threats Watch a month ago on Bangladesh.

After the fall of the Taliban, al-Qaeda is believed to have shifted assets to Bangladesh, and it is believed al-Qaeda’s second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, as well as hundreds of al-Qaeda fighters took shelter in the county.

Al-Qaeda has had a vested interest in the troubled nation, and has provided “seed money” to Harakat ul-Jihad-I-Islami/Bangladesh (HUJI-B), a terrorist group that now plays a crucial role in training jihadists “from southern Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia and Brunei” and providing manpower for al-Qaeda’s affiliates in “Jammu and Kashmir… Afghanistan… Indonesia, the Philippines and Chechnya.”

As we stated last year, the situation in Bangladesh is much like that in Pakistan; “The rise of Islamist extremism is compounded by the problems of the government courting Islamists for political gain (much like the problem in Pakistan). Bangladesh’s government contains two Islamists ministers, and local police are reluctant to act against extremists for fear of government reprisals. Terrorist leaders such as Bangla Bhai remain on the loose despite their known affiliations with the jihadis. And, also like Pakistan, the madrassa remain an integral part of the support mechanism for Bangladeshi terrorists.

Bangladesh may be close to taking down another important terrorist leader.

Bangladeshi security forces closed in on a house in a northeastern town where the leader of a militant Islamist group was believed to be hiding, officials and witnesses said on Wednesday.

Some 500 members of an elite police force had surrounded the two-storey house in Sylhet in an overnight siege where Shayek Abdur Rahman, supreme leader of the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen group, and his associates were believed to be holed up.

At least four small explosions were heard from inside the building and smoke could be seen, a Reuters reporter said.

Shayek's group and another radical Islamist organization, the Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh, have been blamed for a wave of bombings in the impoverished nation since August that have killed 30 people and wounded 150.

The crackdown came a day after a district court sentenced 21 activists of the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen to death for their role in nationwide serial bombings last August 17.

India has plenty of good reasons to align itself with the US. Iran and China will not stand against terrorism the way the US will. True, being there in the region, with real energy needs, India wants to maintain ties to Iran.

However, the US would make a natural ally. India is a democracy, it has a growing economy, an improving military, there is no language barrier, and India is moving away from its socialist past. President Bush's visit has long-term implications.