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If New York was Ground Zero for the terrorist attack that began the war on terrorism, South Asia has become Ground Zero for the war itself. Facing a nuclear North Korea and an aggressive Russia, in debt to China, reviled in much of the world, America remains mired in two wars half a world away from home, and the end eludes even eight year after 9/11 trauma.
Al Qaida and its allies, held responsible of attack on Twin Towers in New York, elude US military hunt. Rather the former are reported to be gaining ground across the region and posing a growing threat to the US-backed governments in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
While there have been no new strikes on the US homeland, the Al-Qaeda and its allied militants have claimed thousands of casualties and displaced tens of thousands of people and shows no sign of slackening in the face of history's most powerful military alliance.
According to US media the Taliban have secured its position “to interdict three of the four major highways” that connect Kabul, the capital, to the rest of the country. Even Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has conceded before a congressional committee, “I am not convinced we are winning it (war} in Afghanistan. We cannot kill our way to victory," said Mullen, who warned that the US and its allies "are running out of time."
Experts inside and outside US administration agreed that a key reason for the resurgence is a growing popular sympathy for the militants because of an over-reliance on the use of force, especially airpower that killed hundreds of civilians.
There are now some 62,000 foreign soldiers in Afghanistan, including 34,000 US troops, and some 150,000 Afghan security forces. They are pitted against an estimated 7,000 to 11,000 hardy insurgents in difficult mountainous terrains with no result in sight.
Western media also quoted US military officials conceding that the insurgents are winning the all important "information war" for the hearts and minds of the region's Muslims who consider US is waging a war against Islam. The insurgents' sophisticated propaganda machinery has successfully reinforced these anti-US perceptions far and wide over the years.
Pakistan underwent a traumatic time in the recent past as extremists launched coordinated explosions and widespread violence following a succession of US-funded offensives against them in tribal region otherwise peaceful. Their wild actions cost numerous security forces lives and inflicted an economic loss of $ 35 billion as against US peanuts!
Pakistan military operations fueled the emergence of native militant groups that banded together into the Taliban Movement of Pakistan, or TTP, which Interior Ministry chief, Rehman Malik, conceded is under Al-Qaeda's control.
Enraged by Pakistani security forces operations in north western region, TTP extended its reach deep into the country through a campaign of intimidation and violence that has claimed thousands of lives, including that of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in December 2008.
Christine Fair, an analyst at RAND Corp., a US research organisation has said "Pakistan is far less secure than before the launch of the global war on terrorism. It is unquestionable that we are failing in Afghanistan. The Taliban are expanding with alarming success."
The goodwill and the opportunity the 9/11 presented to US to guide the world has by now been seriously eroded, and world opinion is becoming more critical of the United States itself and its 'war on terror'. People and governments throughout the world are openly questioning where the United States is leading them.
Recent polls in Britain, Fance, Holland and Canada show majorities favour troop withdrawals. Canada announced it would pull its troops out of Afghanistan in 2011.
The world community openly questions US myopic military action and feels it must act together to enhance global human security and strengthen the multilateral system of governance or the era of globalisation will be missed.
South Asia has borne the most momentous brunt than anywhere else in the Asia Pacific with potentially disastrous consequences. For much of the decades preceding 9/11 and follow of US military actions across the region, South Asian economies were enjoying high economic growth because of their success in exporting to Japan, the US, and Europe.
But many Western and Japanese companies have been reluctant to make new investments in the region for fear of instability following the US decision to stretch and prolong the war against terrorism in South Asia and the Southeast Asia.
The slow-down of the world economy was further exacerbated by US military adventures first in Afghanistan and later in Iraq to knock out what US described as “smoking gun” ( Nuclear arsenal}.
US had been nervous that the so-called gun might fall in the hands of Al-Qaeda which proved nothing but only a figment of imagination. Iraq invasion rather helped Al-Qaeda to recruit more human bombers to fight against US hegemony with considerable success.
Thanks to China that has come forward to invest in the region to beef up the economy in recent years. Indonesia, overriding a history of tense relations with China, has begun to court the Chinese to help replace the capital which fled the country after 9/11.
Indeed the economies are slowly regaining growth, but they are still awaiting a world economic recovery because of their export-driven industries. And that is possible only when the ongoing war against terror concludes and US policy towards the region attains clarity, a study reveals.
Speaking about the affects on the Muslim world, America's war has been manipulated by certain leaders in order to suppress genuine grievances among those who have long sought greater autonomy in their countries. By claiming that these groups are Muslim terrorists, governments in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia for example, have been able to move more aggressively against them, often with US blessings and financial and military assistance.
In Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country in the world, the military has begun once again to reassert itself in the political arena because of the perceived need for stability in order to deal with Muslim extremists in the country.
Muslim minorities in Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines continue to suffer greater suspicion and surveillance; whereas, in Indonesia and Malaysia with Muslim majorities, there has been a pitting of "militant" against "moderate" Islamic groups, sharpening the schism.
Therefore, the US, which once championed the human rights, has acquiesced if not encouraged this development because of its belief that Al-Qaeda elements are hiding in these countries despite the lack of evidence.
The single-mindedness with which the Americans have pursued the war against terrorism, they have run rough-shod over national sensibilities. Hence many politicians round the world are now trying to distance themselves from the US in order to gain legitimacy from their constituents.
Besides, the Middle East continues to bleed in the absence of substantive negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis. On the face US supports almost every Israeli action in the occupied territories and isolates the Palestinians as blanket targets of US war on terrorism. Israeli settlements expand and Palestinian enclaves shrink.
This perhaps explains why despite the early sympathies generated by 9/11, the current American standing in South Asia and the Middle East has reached its lowest ebb in terms of public opinion.
Given right direction the US can still salvage the considerable good-will that still exist among the vast numbers of Muslims in South Asia and Middle East. Hence US must become sensitive to the domestic situation in these regions.
There is always a danger the war against terrorism will be manipulated by the authoritarian rulers to consolidate their regimes at the cost of peace in the regions. Perhaps sensing the imminent danger, an area expert cynically has said: "If New York was Ground Zero for the terrorist attack that began the war on terrorism, South Asia has become Ground Zero for the war itself." 
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