The three-day visit of the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to the northeast, described as significant for the peace and development of the region, failed to rise above the morbidity of a political visit and in the end, left many discontented. Visit to Manipur and Assam, especially when both States stand at crossroads, was expected to galvanise a host of positive forces leading to a discontinuation in the phase of violence and agitation.

The growing influence of the newly formed Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-M), the Naxal outfit, along the Uttar Pradesh's (UP) eastern borders and the rapidity with which they are expanding their organisation in the State is undoubtedly alarming. Naxals are looking to the State for fresh bases where they can build a formidable organization. The inaccessible hilly terrain and dense forests of the state provide perfect cover for the Naxalites, who use their own maps to move around.

Terrorism and nuclear weapons proliferation have by and large dominated the security debate in South Asia. However, the overarching influence of these two issues has led to the neglect of other issues that are equally if not more important for security in the region. One of such issue is of refugees and migration. The presence of more than 110,000 Bhutanese refugees in Nepal and the condition in which they live in different refugee camps is threatening to develop into a major humanitarian crisis in the absence of concrete effort by the parties involved.

Even as the nine-day long ceasefire called by Maoist extremists during the ‘Dashain’ festival has ended on October 28, civil society groups urged the Maoists to continue the truce till December this year when an international Buddhist convention to be held in Lumbini in southern Nepal. Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba has refused to extend the ceasefire unilaterally. The government started the offensive immediately where it has stopped just before the truce. At least ten extremists were gunned down in separate encounters in Taplejung and Siraha districts within 48 hours of truce elapsed.

The Ministry of Home Affairs in India is in a Catch-22 situation. In the last six months, at least seven Naxalite-affected states have written to it making an unusual demand: amend the Forest Conservation Act (FCA), 1980 to curb the spread of Naxalites. But the union home ministry mandarins are helpless: the Ministry of Environment and Forests, the nodal authority for the FCA, has refused to entertain any such demands.

“We have gone 75 per cent of the way... the Tigers are not willing to come the other 25 per cent and We are still hoping to persuade them to come … All I can say is that there is movement forward.” In an exclusive interview with this author, Sri Lanka’s President Chandrika Kumartunga has showed optimism for a lasting peace in dotted lines when her party came to power in April this year. Almost five months have passed since, but the proverbial ‘lasting peace’ remains elusive.

The statement released by a group called Iraq Body Count (IBC) on September 8, 2004, has claimed that the number of Iraqi civilians killed since the US attack on Iraq in March 2003 has crossed 11,000 and majority of the deaths came after the major combat operations ended on May 1, 2003. This clearly indicates the failure of the US led coalition to provide security to the Iraqi people.