It sounds cruel and, indeed, callous. Yet, the 24 Kashmiri Hindus who were massacred last week in Nadimarg seem destined to end up as a cold statistic in the never-ending saga of terrorism. If the Chithisingh Pora massacre in 2000 evoked shrill global indignation and last summer's Kaluchak killings triggered a near war, the corpses in Nadimarg have merited even less than a footnote. With the only superpower fighting a spectacular war to make its streets safe from "weapons of mass destruction", who cares for an irritating variant of a global problem? For the moment, Kashmir has descended into global irrelevance, despite the gratuitous tut-tutting of the West.

At one level this should be heartening news. Wedded to the doctrine of bilateralism, India should have no reason to cavil at global unconcern. The US State Department's advice to both India and Pakistan to resume dialogue may be an instance of unabashed hypocrisy-and, therefore, rightly spurned by Delhi-but it indicates the utter futility of the belief that some benign third party can resolve the problem by distinguishing right from wrong. The noble assumption that sustained pressure from Washington can force President Pervez Musharraf to keep Pakistan-sponsored mujahideen on a tight leash seems no longer tenable. Faced with a rising tide of anti-Americanism, it suits the Pakistani military establishment to keep the Kashmir issue simmering, not least as an expedient diversion. Ironically, it doesn't leave the US unhappy. In just two days of focused action-the killing of "renegade" militant Abdul Majid Dar and the Nadimarg massacre-Pakistan has deflated India's claim that Kashmir is on the road to normalcy.

The past week has exposed India's helplessness and lack of a strategy. The military mobilisation option was exhausted last year and now the banking-on-America approach has developed a puncture. To compound the mess, a blame game between the BJP and the Congress has made the road to a domestic consensus treacherous. India has realised how little it takes to derail a Kashmir policy built on fragile foundations. Which is why the distraction of the Iraq war must be utilised in formulating a fresh approach that combines domestic resolve with military and diplomatic deftness. The process, however, cannot begin unless the Government realises it is confronted with a dangerous Kashmir policy vacuum.