Slow on Mumbai 26/11

The run-up to the Lok Sabha elections has also had an effect on the country’s response to Pakistan’s continued denial mode in relation to Mumbai 26/11. Has Pakistan cracked down on its terror factories and moved even an inch towards bringing to book the perpetrators of that carnage? Not at all. It is now busy in filtering the ‘good’ Taliban from the ‘bad’ Taliban, which also happens to be the chief focus of President Barack Obama’s Af-Pak policy, as if the ‘good’ Taliban believe in modern jurisprudence and democracy, not Sharia. The ISI continues to patronize the likes of Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), to the extent that the LeT has already floated a new wing — Tanzeem-e-Mohammedi — to destabilize India’s northeastern region. Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir (PoK) continues to be the safest haven for the LeT and other anti-India, ISI-sponsored jihadi terror groups — with the privilege, too, of camouflaging as social and charity organizations. But the Congress-led UPA government has preferred non-engagement with the issue for the time being to an active pursuit to force Pakistan to act on its terror architecture just because of the elections. It has been conveniently forgotten that government is a continuity. A sensible government would sustain the pressure regardless of elections, that too on a neighbour like Pakistan out to avenge the war of 1971. THE SENTINEL