Terrorism has been wracking Jammu & Kashmir over the last two decades and the state has seen various shades of terrorist activities - from the violent aggressive phase involving fidayeen attacks on the camps of the security forces (SF) to the car bomb attacks that were witnessed last year to the present phase of grenade attacks, which can be considered a low cost but high impact option for the terrorists. Terrorist activities are presently more pronounced in the Kashmir Valley, whereas the number of terrorist initiated incidents have reduced in the Jammu region.

Pune, the Oxford of the East and the cultural capital of Maharashtra, is known for its educational institutions and manufacturing industries and as a home for retired service personnel. Lately, it has also become the hub for the automobile and IT sectors in western India. At the same time the city has now emerged as a link in the terrorist chain after the recent 7/11 Mumbai blasts.

As expected, a lesser-known terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the July 11 Mumbai blasts. After four days, the Lashkar-e-Qahhar claimed responsibility for the seven serial blasts that ripped through Mumbai commuter trains killing at least 228 and wounding approximately 900 people. It is believed that this is a sub-set of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). According to an email received by a TV channel, Lashkar-e-Qahhar has links with the LeT, which is an armed outfit of Markaz-Dawa Wal-Irshad, an Islamic fundamentalist organisation in Pakistan.

July 7 marks the first anniversary of the 2005 terrorist attacks on London. These attacks and the thwarted ones on July 21 not only claimed the lives of more than fifty people of different nationalities, but once again brought to the fore a serious threat to global security, i.e., suicide bombing. The four suicide bombers, drawn from the Muslim community in Britain with South Asian and Caribbean origins, have left a permanent scar on the collective British psyche.

The 34th anniversary of the liberation of Dhaka and the creation of Bangladesh on December 16 is an occasion for concern and deep introspection about the nature of the internal turbulence in that country and the related implications for India.

It may be recalled that prior to December 16, 1971, what is now known as Bangladesh was East Pakistan and for almost 24 years from August 1947, the military leadership of Pakistan treated the eastern part of the country as a poor relative.

A series of 434 bomb blasts that rocked as many as 60 of 64 districts in Bangladesh on August 17 may have been 'mild' by way of the number killed – just two people – but the symbolism is very significant and perhaps inversely proportional to the damage caused.

Leaflets recovered from some of the blast sites demanded that the country become more Islamic and the needle of suspicion points to the banned Islamic group, the Jamaat-ul- Mujahedin. And while investigations are continuing, the implications of this incident are of potentially grave import.