***A friend who through a brilliant career in government has seen his share of war, peace and that huge space in between sent me a card on the net wishing me all the joy that he felt I badly needed. He ended with a wish: may there be more peace in the new year than in the present one.This friend of mine smiles all the time, and breaks into a laugh very often. Does this make him an optimist?***

IT is entirely appropriate that the last column of 2001 should be about war. A world war.

How does the media cover a world war? It is a fallacy that things go boom every night. Headlines do not scream every day because there is nothing to scream about. The six years of the second world war did not add up to two thousand headlines. Long periods were fallow, for every battle needs preparation; the larger the battle the longer and more intense the organisation. What happened after Pearl Harbor? If you want the embarrassing truth, nothing. In terms of drama that is. An elephant always takes time to find its feet once it falls. But once the United States picked itself up, mobilised, made up its mind and finalised its strategy, the counteroffensive carried power and a menace that shaped the future of both Europe and Asia, and eventually Africa as well since the European powers could not hold on to their colonies after the bloodletting. There are few knockouts. Someone always manages to keep standing. Dunkirk and the battle of Britain could not put Britain down; and the Soviet Union would not leave the battlefield after paying a much heavier price in Hitler's Operation Barbarossa. There is also intense confusion as national interest gets tangled with the interest of friends, and someone had to prevail in the

definition of the larger interest.

Paradoxically, the clearest way to define the war against terrorism is to accept that the way forward will inevitably be through large patches of confusion.

Looking at events from our perspective, there were two high points. 9/11, or the 11th of September, is too obvious a point of reference. For Indians it was not merely a matter of awe at the television of twin towers crashing down. It also brought Ground Zero to our door-

step. America entered the hunt for Osama bin Laden and Osama was within two hundred and fifty miles of our borders. For most Indians the return of America to South Asia was good news. The last time America fought a proxy war in Afghanistan, there were celebrations in Pakistan and apprehension in India, for the Soviet Union was our strongest ally in a jelly-world. But just as the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan did not solve Pakistan's problems, the defeat of the Taliban will not solve India's problems. In the short run they might even intensify them, rather than reduce them. The oldest rule in the book is that every action has a reaction. To this add the second oldest rule. To every reaction there is a further reaction.

With either the direct, or the inspirational support of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, a certain number of young men ready to die destroyed the twin towers, damaged the Pentagon, damaged American pride, wounded its sense

of security, woke up a superpower and changed history. America, which was gradually edging towards some form of distant reconciliation with the same Taliban that had ravaged Afghanistan, moved and the Taliban shuffled out of Kabul and Kandahar with the speed of a pack of cards. Which brings us to the next question. Where is the Taliban?

It is not dead. No casualty figures are available to us about the war that has at least paused if it has not

concluded. But no one has claimed that all the Taliban fighters are dead. The figures are not exact, because no one knows; maybe even Mullah Omar and his cliques in Kabul and Kandahar did not know since they had taken over power but had not bothered to form a government as anyone else in the world understands it. They exercised power in the pursuit of a limited number of objectives and then left the people to find their own way through life, whether it was their destiny to starve at home or beg in the refugee camps of Pakistan or Iran. For sheer callousness, whether towards men or women, it would be hard to find a parallel to the Taliban. However, a good guess would place the number of Taliban fighters at a minimum of sixty thousand. I am excluding their sympathisers, for there are many reasons why any power finds various levels of sympathy. The biggest reason for sympathy is actually apathy. Most ordinary people do not have the

will to resist whoever has taken over. Others are ready to give the newcomer a chance, until it becomes too late to punish the new regime for its crimes and misdemeanours.

A small proportion of the Taliban armies died in the war. You could possibly change that to very small. Most disappeared. Where? The Pakistan government apparently sent aircraft to try and pick up as many Pakistanis in the Taliban forces as it could, but that does not

serve as any serious answer, for the Pakistanis could not have formed more than another thin percentage.

We have to keep narrowing down the options. Have most of the Afghan-Taliban simply gone home to their families? This is possible. The Afghan tradition does not end a war with slaughter, otherwise over the last thousand years there would be no Afghans left. Once a side accepts defeat, and a victor takes charge, the human tendency is to let bygones be bygones. Doubtless there were many among the present victors, in the provinces, who received quiet protection in the name of family associations when the Taliban were in power and could be now repaying that favour. But that would still leave a very substantial number unaccounted for.

There is, in addition, a non-negotiable list. At the head of that American list are Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar. Is the topography of Afghanistan so intricate that

American technology, with American soldiers, helped by a friendly, even obedient administration, and backed (unlike in the case of the Soviet Union) by a largely friendly population cannot find two men in a cave? Are these caves so impregnable that even a whisper never leaves them? Can you ever hide a whisper in an Asian bazaar? Something implausible is going on in Afghanistan and perhaps Pakistan. One assumes that this peculiarity cannot continue for ever. Neither

Mullah Omar nor Osama were alone. They had families. They had followers; according to mid-war claims, thousands of them ready to die before surrender. If Osama is dead, as President Pervez Musharraf speculated, surely his family is alive, as it should be: no human being is going to punish small sons for whatever the father may have done. Where are they?

Second, and equally important question: is Taliban dead in the mind? Have all those who have been defeated by America also surrendered their convictions? The Taliban did not exist then, but those of similar ideological persuasion did among them Osama. The Soviet troops also thought they had won when they took Kabul and Kandahar and Herat; but those with convictions left to fight another day. They found shelter in Pakistan and sustenance from the CIA. There is no sustenance visible now, but shelter?

A large network of terrorist organi-

sations, and a loose coalition of thousands of young men ready to wait for the next call to arms, exists. If it has left Afghanistan then it is searching for shelter in Pakistan and in Kashmir.

India's 9/11 came on 13/12. We have no evidence that those who came to India's Parliament to terrorise and destroy on 13 December had anything to do with those who were defeated in Afghanistan. But two possibilities invite attention. There is regrouping going on, and a rearrangement of strategy. With Afghanistan out of bounds for now, their war will concentrate on India as the primary target and perhaps "apostate" elements in Pakistan as a secondary target. This brings us back to a chiaroscuro. The war against India has no room for shadows. But the war against "apostates" can become a grey area since at least some of the "apostates" may be as keen to hurt India as the terrorists are.

To search for objectives in blood-splattered confusion can be slippery business. What is certain is that a responsible government of a responsible nation cannot begin armed action without a clear understanding of objectives, and an even clearer definition of the meaning of victory. What is victory and when has it arrived? A government owes it to every jawan in the armed forces to make that much clear before ordering a jawan forward. If there is no visibility during a fog, then stay alert, and wait.

A friend who through a brilliant career in government has seen his share of war, peace and that huge space in between sent me a card on the net wishing me all the joy that he felt I badly needed. He ended with a wish: may there be more peace in the new year than in the present one.

This friend of mine smiles all the time, and breaks into a laugh very often. Does this make him an optimist?

M J Akbar is chief Editor the Asian Age