May 28,2008: India continues to win its war with Islamic terrorism in Kashmir. In northeastern India, the state of Kashmir has been the focus of constant violence between India and Pakistan, over the last sixty years. In the late 1980s, Pakistan began supporting Islamic terrorists, believing that a terrorism campaign in Kashmir would drive the Indians, and non-Moslems out. It didn't.

But year by year, the violence got worse, peaking in 2001, turning Kashmir (an area with about 7 million population) into a hellhole (and destroying the lucrative tourist based economy).This turned around after September 11, 2001, when the U.S. declared war on Islamic terrorism, and enlisted Pakistan as an ally. This hurt the terrorists in Kashmir, by reducing the support from the Pakistani government. At the same time, the Indian counter-terrorism effort was getting larger, smarter, better equipped and more vigorous. Thus for the last seven years, terrorist activity, and terrorism related deaths, have plummeted in Kashmir. Last year, total deaths were 777. Most of them were terrorists.So far this year, terrorism related deaths are running at the rate of less than ten a week, meaning the annual total will probably be less than 500. That's a big drop from 2001, when there were nearly 5,000 dead.Currently, about two thirds of the dead are terrorists, the rest are security forces and civilians caught in the cross fire.

In the last year, the Pakistani government has restored some of the support, for Kashmiri terrorists, that it had previously withdrawn. This was done to prevent the Kashmiri terrorists from being completely wiped out, and to placate nationalists and religious conservatives. The restored support includes salaries for terrorist recruits, and their older instructors and staff specialists (who receive enough to support their families). The Kashmir terrorism effort has a lot of popular support in Pakistan, because many Pakistanis believe Kashmir should be a Moslem state under Islamic rule. It may be too late, as fewer than a thousand terrorists are believed activein Kashmir, and the 150,000 Indian police and troops are hunting for them. But as long as Pakistan allows the terrorist camps to exist on their side of the border, and does nothing to halt terrorist recruiting, some new terrorists will keep getting across the border, and continuing the carnage.