After Dick Cheney triggered Musharraf’s Dopamine system, there has been lot of activity on the ground in Pakistan. CIA Special Operations units are inside Pakistan to hunt down the Senior Video Making Cave Dweller. The two terrorists holed up in Pakistan are supposed to be on the move in March when the snow melts and the CIA operatives and paramilitary officers want to capture them during that time.
The deal signed between Musharraf and the tribal leaders in Waziristan has been a failure and al-Qaeda has been gaining strength and re-establishing significant control over their franchises. It is this deal with the tribal leaders that changed everything and it was conveyed to Musharraf that US has no interest in preventing his destablization. Till now Musharraf scared Washington with the thesis that if he vanishes along with a mango crate aboard a C-130 Hercules aircraft, then Islamic extremists would take over the country. Now the CIA is not that worried.
It is not just the Americans who are disappointed with Musharraf. President Karzai has been shouting from the roof of the Minaret of Jam that religious schools in Pakistan are the source of terrorism and NATO commanders in Afghanistan have agreed with him. Even Iran, a terrorist sponsor is upset by the terrorists from Pakistan. The growing violence in Pakistan has also raised concerns that Musharraf is losing grip.
When Pakistan is getting squeezed from all directions to end its support for terrorism, guess who is their biggest buddy now? India.
Yet, even by that standard, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s surprise embrace of military-ruled Pakistan as a fellow victim of and joint partner against terror puts India out of sync with the growing international focus on that country’s descent as the fount of transnational terrorism.
As in May 2001 when the sphinx-like Vajpayee blithely helped lift Musharraf’s international-pariah status by inviting him all of a sudden to Agra, India is out of step again. It has eased the pressure on Pakistan just when the rest of the world is beginning to exert pressure over its metastasizing terrorism. Since Singh made Pakistan a joint partner against terror, Western officials increasingly are speaking up about the Pakistani terrorist threat.
One expected New Delhi to insist that the US, in response to Musharraf’s dubious anti-terror record, suspend the sale of lethal, India-directed weapons to Pakistan. But mum is the word. Indeed such is the salient incongruity that a US protégé, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, speaks plainly about Pakistan’s cross-border terrorism while India toasts the terror sponsor as a partner. Is it thus any surprise that India is not even among the 12 nations identified as victims of terror in the White House’s national-security strategy report? [Out of sync, out of mind ]
Manmohan Singh is committing the same mistakes which is predecessors did, hoping that if you feed Musharraf enough Biriyani in Delhi, he might turn a new leaf. All that joint terror commission and demilitarizing Kashmir does not remove the fear of India from the Pakistani mind. The biggest fear, yes fear, that Pakistanis have is being encircled by India. With India actively participating in rebuilding Afghanistan, and with the Indian air base in Tajikistan, the Pakistanis have found that they have no where to run.
“I have the impression, when I’m travelling through Pakistan particularly that they have a very real fear of being encircled by the Indians, which, to most observers, seems to be ridiculous. “However, it’s very real out there. And many of their policies might have little to do with Taliban, al Qaeda or anything else, Karzai, et cetera. It’s the old great game between the Indians and the Pakistanis,” Senator Reed maintained.[ Pak feels India`s Afghan role inimical to its interest: US ]
Once the Americans get their men from Pakistan, they will walk off and the pressure on Musharraf will be off. He will then turn to the Eastern border and we will have to sacrifice many more Indian lives. Instead of exerting pressure on Musharraf to turn off the terrorism tap, we are giving him a rope, which he will use to hang us later. Why are we so adamant that we will not learn anything from history ?
