A suicide bomber blew up the Indian Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, killing 40 and wounding over a hundred innocent civilians. The Taliban is denying responsibility. Speculation is rife that Pakistan’s intelligence services may have been behind it. And much further to the south, a group of explosions went off in the port-city of Karachi, Pakistan, killing at least 25 innocent civilians. This comes a day after an explosion in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, took the lives of over a dozen police officers.

Meanwhile, violence continues throughout Afghanistan.

In two separate bombings Monday against police convoys in the country’s south, seven officers were killed and 10 others were wounded, officials said.

In Uruzgan province, a roadside bomb killed four police on patrol and wounded seven others, said provincial police chief Juma Gul Himat.

In the Zhari district of Kandahar, another roadside blast killed three officers and wounded three others, said district chief Niyaz Mohammad Sarhadi.

NATO’s International Security Assistance Force, meanwhile, said one of its soldiers died in an attack in the south on Sunday.

And religious tensions in Kashmir are at a high boil, with “the largest protests against Indian rule in nearly two decades.”

There are a lot of people that are up to no good in the region, and figuring out who is behind these attacks and what is retaliation for what is impossible. If Iraq is important because of its oil reserves, the subcontinent is important because of the nuclear weapons and high tensions there. And American policy is confused, discredited, and being set by ideologues rather than clear, sober thinkers. January cannot come soon enough.