THE QUESTIONS
1. The United States had agreed
to extend for one year the aid to Pakistan to fight terrorism on the condition
that it would stop differentiating between good and bad terror. And the country’s
most powerful person, the Army chief of Pakistan Raheel Sharif had extended
this promise during his US visit. Yet, many big terrorists like Hafiz Saeed and
Masood Azhar, directly implicated in heinous terror acts in India, are roaming free
and are even ‘respectable’ citizens there. We saw the Pakistani government’s attitude that allowed bail to Zaki-ur Rahman Lakhvi, main handler of the Mumbai 26/11 attacks, on technical grounds. This is when the US has put a bounty
of US$ 10 million on Hafiz Saeed. This is when Masood Azhar, lodged in an
Indian jail, was ‘exchanged’ in a hijacking incident. Isn’t Pakistan taking
Uncle Sam for a ride?
2. There is no reason for the
world community, for us, to think that the US is not aware of it. But apart
from putting a reward and occasional back channel assurances, we don’t see any aggressive
posturing by the US. Should we go by the explanation that when the US lawmakers
demanded Pakistan to stop differentiating between ‘good and bad terror’, it was
meant only in the context of Taliban and the AfPak theatre?
3. But can this narrow view of
policymaking on terrorism serve the purpose of the US as well as of the
Pakistan?
4. Also, can Pakistan ever be
trusted to take on the terrorist networks operating to further its agenda in Afghanistan,
especially the Haqqani network and the resurgent Taliban factions of Afghanistan
that are eyeing greener pastures after the complete withdrawal of the internal
coalition forces?
5. Pakistan has been vocally
active on India’s role in Afghanistan and its perennial anti-India instance has
been one of the major reasons for actively supporting the Afghanistan Taliban. Is
this not a naïve thinking of the US policymakers that Pakistan will be able to
overcome this anti-India psychosis to help the international forces wipe out
the factors that it feels will help in bolstering its position in the internal
matters of Afghanistan in the near future?
6. Is the terror discourse in the
context of Pakistan is going to be ‘all Taliban and all terrorists active in
Afghanistan are bad’ but ‘good terror Vs bad terror’ is also valid, to sustain
and maintain the proxy war against India?
7. Hillary Clinton, the then US
Secretary of State, had warned Pakistan sternly on its doublespeak on
terrorism. Hillary’s blunt message delivered in Islamabad in October 2011 was: "It's like that old story. You can't
keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbours.
Eventually those snakes are going to turn on whoever has them in the backyard."
That was three years ago yet
Pakistan kept a blind eye and is still doing the same, harbouring many snakes
while trying to crush only a few. Pakistan just had one of its worst human tragedies
with TTP attack on the Army school in Peshawar killing over 130 children. What
else will it take for Pakistan to realize what Hillary so clearly warned then,
the reality that Pakistan deliberately ignores to realize?
8. Can India expect a positive change
in the US attitude on this ‘good terror Vs bad terror discourse in the Indian context’
after the recent improvements in India-US ties with Narendra Modi as the Indian
Prime Minister? India and the US have warmed up to each other in real terms
with Modi’s successful US visit in September and Barack Obama’s upcoming India
visit in January next. What is remarkably positive change for the India-US ties
this time is, that the US President is not extending his visit to Pakistan,
something that has been a routine in the past.