Opinion: Terror on the Friendship Express

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Two suitcase bombs on the Friendship Express train killed over 60 people and injured dozens late Sunday night in Dewana, India. India and Pakistan responded in typical fashion. High-level officials expressed outrage that terrorists would try to disrupt the peace process and promised to keep it on track. Lower-level officials and the usually anonymous ‘security officers’ and ‘intelligence analysts’ pointed fingers across the border and deflected blame.

Still, it’s better than canceling negotiations, cutting ties, and putting troops on the border, which were some of the old methods the countries chose to respond to terrorist attacks. A particularly alarming attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001 spurred all of these reactions, including a two-year cancellation of the decades-old Friendship Express. (It fared better than another train between the two countres, the Thar Express, which was shut down for forty years following a war.) The train service connects major Indian and Pakistani cities and is one of a few (often symbolic) confidence building measures that the countries have maintained.

The train bombing will test -- and hopefully cement -- several of the new CBMs the countries are trying to put into place, including a joint counter-terrorism task force. It’s important considering that one of the best links that the countries could create is also one of the most problematic in the eyes of the U.S: a gas pipeline going from Iran through Pakistan and into India. The pipeline has been in talks for years but the countries hope they can sign an initial agreement in June.