Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh’s defence of his government’s stand on Pakistan in Parliament on Wednesday takes the country nowhere. If some in the metropolitan media are optimistic about Pakistan’s change of attitude towards India after the grand Manmohan Singh peace narrative — ‘‘dialogue and engagement is the best way forward’’ — we would tell them to revisit the post-Mumbai 26/11 Pakistani track record. Can anyone show us what has Pakistan done to preclude such terror attacks against us from its territory? Can we trust the semblance when Pakistan talks about ‘‘stateless actors’’ — the ISI’s pet monsters groomed specially for launching attacks against India? How does the UPA government react when Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rehman Malik asks India not ‘‘to do propaganda’’ on Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed who cannot be arrested for his involvement in the Mumbai attack because, to quote the minister, ‘‘just on hearsay we cannot arrest our citizen’’? Malik was speaking to Geo News channel a day before Dr Manmohan Singh clarified his government’s position on Pakistan in relation to terrorism in the aftermath of the Sharm-el-Sheikh blunder. Why then did Dr Singh not retort as to what Pakistan really meant by asserting its obligations to ‘‘citizens’’ like the very founder of Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), Hafiz Saeed? Pakistan will choose the timing of calling its ISI-tutored terrorists ‘‘stateless’’ today and ‘‘citizens’’ tomorrow while we, thanks to an effete government, should simply accept it all because we seem to have signed a contract of sorts to remain peaceniks eternally despite the ceaseless Pakistan-exported monstrosity on us!
‘‘Pakistan must defeat terror before it consumes it,’’ the Prime Minister said. How many in Pakistan, including its civilian leadership, would heed that? When we ask Pakistan to ‘‘defeat terror’’ what we ought to be very categorical about is the kind of definition of ‘‘terror’’ we have in mind and how the neighbouring terror epicentre has defined it to suit its agenda of bleeding India. Why, the likes of Hafiz Saeed are ‘‘good’’ terrorists because they do not imperil Pakistan’s interests; only the al-Qaida-Taliban combine does, and that too because Pakistan has chosen to be part of the US-led war on terror. In other words, when we ask Pakistan to ‘‘defeat terror’’ we cannot in the prevailing circumstance afford to be implicit for the sake of mere — and meaningless — courtesy. We ought now to be explicit: ‘‘The ISI, which is a state within the state of Pakistan and the quintessential component of the Pakistani military, must now demolish the very citadel of terrorism it has built over the years to wage proxy wars against India.’’ Unless the message is as clear and direct as that, Islamabad will just not care what New Delhi would say. And it is high time the Prime Minister realized that his vision of Indo-Pakistan relationship is outstandingly bad. He should rather seek advice from diplomats like Kanwal Sibal, former Foreign Secretary who very rightly says, ‘‘Our quest for peace fails because the idea of peace with India does not stir Pakistani policy-makers.’’ This is not being hawkish but being realistic. Those who call the shots in Pakistan are jittery about India’s fair prospects of being one of the most powerful nations in the world, and therefore, are committed to the agenda of destabilizing India. THE SENTINEL
‘‘Pakistan must defeat terror before it consumes it,’’ the Prime Minister said. How many in Pakistan, including its civilian leadership, would heed that? When we ask Pakistan to ‘‘defeat terror’’ what we ought to be very categorical about is the kind of definition of ‘‘terror’’ we have in mind and how the neighbouring terror epicentre has defined it to suit its agenda of bleeding India. Why, the likes of Hafiz Saeed are ‘‘good’’ terrorists because they do not imperil Pakistan’s interests; only the al-Qaida-Taliban combine does, and that too because Pakistan has chosen to be part of the US-led war on terror. In other words, when we ask Pakistan to ‘‘defeat terror’’ we cannot in the prevailing circumstance afford to be implicit for the sake of mere — and meaningless — courtesy. We ought now to be explicit: ‘‘The ISI, which is a state within the state of Pakistan and the quintessential component of the Pakistani military, must now demolish the very citadel of terrorism it has built over the years to wage proxy wars against India.’’ Unless the message is as clear and direct as that, Islamabad will just not care what New Delhi would say. And it is high time the Prime Minister realized that his vision of Indo-Pakistan relationship is outstandingly bad. He should rather seek advice from diplomats like Kanwal Sibal, former Foreign Secretary who very rightly says, ‘‘Our quest for peace fails because the idea of peace with India does not stir Pakistani policy-makers.’’ This is not being hawkish but being realistic. Those who call the shots in Pakistan are jittery about India’s fair prospects of being one of the most powerful nations in the world, and therefore, are committed to the agenda of destabilizing India. THE SENTINEL
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