Pakistan: unending betrayal

Why India must humiliate Pakistan!

Pakistan openly continues sponsoring terrorist activities against India. Why should India even talk with Pakistan then?

“The P word!” TIME magazine’s Bobby Ghosh quotes a top counterterrorism official, “When I hear of a terrorist plot, I can count back from 10, and before I get to zero, someone will bring up the P word.” P stands for Pakistan, a country, as Fareed Zakaria confirms, is “terrorism’s supermarket” –  70% of terror plots identified by the UK government have been “traced back” to Pakistan. Yet, US advises India to resume its diplomatic talks with Pakistan. How more churlish could that be?

The acrimony between India and Pakistan is decades old, and it doesn’t require a rote numbskull Jane’s defence analyst (or the sophomore upstart Ms. Clinton, if you please) to understand that Pakistan is no Castro loving Trotskyite bent on ensuring India’s social betterment. Pakistan is what Pakistan has been for the past many years – an incendiary anarchist nation, which unfortunately has a like-minded arsonist government establishment that promotes, funds and implements well-planned terrorist and extremist activities against India, and of late, the West too. While India for ages had pleaded with the international community to recognise Pakistan as a terrorist state, the West had daftly rejected the proposition time and again – and more because they were not the addressed recipients of Pakistan’s loving infatuation communiqués. They are now.

Given that, it is extremely wrong that India can be forced by the US to resume talks with Pakistan. In fact, this should have been the moment when India – and the international community – should have openly humiliated the Pakistani establishment, bringing them to task in the same manner as has been done in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan.

India has received a spate of betrayals and hollow promises from Pakistan. After nearly every other attack within India by Pakistan-backed terror groups, the Pakistani government has come up with highly promising compendiums of support, with a specific objective of buying time for the next attack. Some nuggets:

February 1999: Pakistan signs the ‘historic’ Lahore Declaration, promising to work towards a peaceful and bilateral solution to the Kashmir issue.

May 1999: Pakistan army clandestinely attacks and takes over Kargil. India retaliates and takes back lost territory.

July 2001: Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf (considered the Kargil mastermind) comes to India for the Agra Summit, peddled by Pakistan as peace talks.

December 2001: The Indian Parliament is attacked by a well trained set of terrorists, funded by agencies within Pakistan. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf promises to crack down on terrorist groups. It is found  that Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI) was the one funding the attack.

January 2002: Musharraf promises again that “no organisation will be allowed to indulge in terrorism in the name of Kashmir.” This is immediately followed by several terror attacks, topped in May 2002 by a terrorist attack on an army camp in Kashmir, which kills at least 30 people.

July 2006: Terror strikes in Mumbai local trains in July 2006. Prime suspects – SIMI, Lashkar-e-Toiba and ISI.

July 2008: Indian embassy destroyed in Kabul by terrorist attack, killing 58. New York Times confirms ISI involvement. Pakistan denies all accusations.

November 2008: Terrorists land on Mumbai shores from Pakistan and randomly fire at and bomb various targets, killing 173. One terrorist captured alive confirms Pakistan establishment’s complete involvement. Pakistan denies everything, and promises (again) to handover gangster Dawood Ibrahim and terrorist leader Masood Azhar if India provides “evidence.” India does, Pakistan doesn’t!

The list of Pakistan’s hellhound extremist orientation is clearly unending, yet what remains unbelievable is America’s continued financial support to this failed state – on December 2009, in the latest tranche,  Pakistan received a $7.5 billion US aid package to ostensibly strengthen counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations. Much of this will be used against India; some against US too.

If US representatives, on May 3, 2010, can humiliate Iran (a country that has no intentions of becoming a nuclear armed state; and one that openly denounces terrorist activities) by walking out of the UN assembly when Iranian President Ahmedinejad starts speaking, then why shouldn’t India too openly humiliate Pakistan (a certified nuclear armed state, openly supporting terrorism) by walking out of nonsensical peace talks? On May 7, 2010, Hillary Clinton commented, “Somewhere in the Pakistan government are people who know where Osama bin Laden is.” Good morning Ms.Clinton, the Ambien seems to be wearing off finally.