May 11,2008: Ten percent of the 22,700 terror related deaths last year occurred in the Indian controlled portion of Kashmir. Located in northwest India, the province has been a source of friction between India and Pakistan since 1947. Pakistan seized the northern third in the late 1940s, but India holds on to most of the province, and has been fighting Islamic terrorism in the area for nearly two decades. Before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Kashmir was the magnet for Islamic terrorists, who got their basic training in Pakistani camps.

It's an open secret that Pakistan instigated the terror campaign, and has supported it for years. But Pakistan will not openly admit this. However, quiet diplomacy between Indians and Pakistanis over the past three years has resulted in a reduction, but not an elimination, of Islamic terrorism in Kashmir. The Pakistanis are less blatant in their support. The Pakistani army, for example, no longer lays down mortar and machine-gun on Indian border troops, to make it easier for Islamic terrorist reinforcements, and supplies, to get across the border. But Pakistan still tolerates the Islamic terrorist camps in northern Pakistan, and does not interfere when the Islamic radicals recruit all over the country. In the past few years, the Pakistanis have arrested some of the Kashmir oriented Islamic militants, and harassed some of the militant organizations. But because the goal of making Indian Kashmir part of Pakistan is so popular, the government is unwilling to just shut down the terrorists.

Another problem is a growing Islamic militant problem in the tribal areas of the west and southwest (along the Afghan border.) The Islamic militant problem is even worse in Afghanistan, where about 8,000 people died from terrorist violence last year. There were only about a thousand deaths inside Pakistan last year, and Pakistan would prefer that the Islamic militants kept their violence next door, in India and Afghanistan.

Islamic countries in general follow this practice. Iraq, where 60 percent of terrorist caused deaths occurred last year, has been a magnet for Islamic terrorists throughout the region. Nations with lots of Islamic radicals, do not interfere when these maniacs want to travel to Iraq. The trip is usually a one-way effort. And many of those who come back, arrive with depressing news about Islamic militancy getting your killed (it doesn't work they way you were told in the Mosque), rather than renewed enthusiasm for killing their countrymen back home.