Richard Boucher speak has come as something of a shock to every thinking Indian. That the US State Department spokesman should tell India not to make allegations against Pakistan without proof just a few days after his own country had clandestinely launched an air attack on an Al Qaeda hideout in Waziristan shows sophistry of a very high order. It is just such attitude that has encouraged Pakistan in its intransigence and wily duplicity.

America’s own duplicity is mind-boggling. It has designated as terrorist at least one of the 20 on India’s wanted list (Dawood Ibrahim) handed over to Pakistan at the very beginning of the resumption of dialogue. It gave such a designation to another person on that list, Jaish-e-Mohammad’s Masood Azhar, whose activities are ‘officially’ banned by Pakistan under pressure from the US- led “Coalition Against Terror”.

Both the CIA and the State Department ( of the US) cannot but be aware that Masood Azhar is the honoured guest of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and that he is quartered in the Rawalpindi cantonment with freedom to journey around Pakistan to address jehadi terrorist training camps.

Does Washington need proof that the Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan because its logistics have been improved by the ISI to a level where it has once again become a viable fighting force? If proof is indeed what it wants it will do well to read the study published by the Council on Foreign Relations. This think tank has been insisting for a while that Pakistan must close ISI run camps for training Kashmiri and Taliban guerrillas.

Colonel Chris Vernon, Chief of Staff for US-led coalition in Southern Afghanistan, has said bluntly that Pakistan was allowing the Taliban to use its territory as “headquarters” for attacks on Western forces in Afghanistan. He identified Quetta in Balochistan as a launch pad for operations against the Hamid Karzai government.

In fact, Washington’s search for proof of Pakistan’s involvement in terrorist acts should have ended when Daniel Pearl’s throat was slit by a terrorist organization handled by the ISI. More recently, a Taliban fighter has confirmed that a similar act of extermination against the Indian engineer K Suryanarayana was carried out on the orders from the ISI and that the orders were issued to a Taliban senior of the Zabul province.

General Pervez Musharraf, the self-confessed architect of Kargil exploit, and a commando to boot, is in the habit of promising to cooperate fully with investigations if proof is provided. Afghan President Hamid Karzai took him at his word and provided him a dossier containing names of Taliban terrorists and their location by district, town and village, and house number wise inside Waziristan province. Musharraf gave the information short shrift saying “the data was outdated”.

It was just this kind of duplicity that forced the US itself to resort to a clandestine operation in Damadola where it had independently developed intelligence about the presence of Al Zawahiri. Its Predator drone missed the prey and ended up killing several villagers.

There was a time when the US practiced a policy of “public support and private pressure” to make Pakistan act against the terrorists. Hence the bans were imposed on the many constituents of the International Jehad Council operating out of Pakistan; these bans proved in effective though. Many of the banned outfits like JeM and LeT simply changed their names and continued to operate with impunity. US was and is aware of the ground reality but it has some blind confidence that it alone can arm twist Pakistan when the need arises. Under Secretary Richard Armitage comment - if there are terrorist training camps in Pakistan they “would be gone tomorrow”- is a pointer to the American mindset.

Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State’s recent Islamabad visit shows there is a shift in the US policy towards Pakistan. She practically thanked God for creating Musharraf. Spokesman Boucher’s arrogant demand – show proof of Pakistan’s complicity in the Mumbai blasts- confirms the shift. So does the insipid statement from G-8 which while condemning the Mumbai blasts was unwilling to name Pakistan.

Given the US-Pak attitude towards the tragedy in Mumbai, the Government needs to be more careful in its dealings with Washington. The unacceptable clauses that have crept into the draft treaty on civil nuclear energy cannot be viewed with equanimity. The Boucher pronouncement indicates that there is to be the same kind of “even-handedness” between victim and perpetrator of terrorism as prevailed before 9/11. The US has not learned anything from that event.

India must ensure that it is not put into a trap by signing anything with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) concerning the application of full scope safeguards to nuclear facilities till the US endorses the enabling Act bereft of the offending clauses that have crept in during its passage through both houses of American Congress.

The US attitude towards India need not be judged by the rose-tinted glasses of some of our top rated analysts who like to see and believe that there is a paradigm shift in the American policy. Let them think so and let them declare from their ivory towers that India would miss the bus to regional greatness if it does not suck up to Washington in all circumstances. Reality will not change. A country becomes great not from the benevolence shown by some one but from its innate ability to stand up to any challenge and from its sweat and toil to climb the heights

Take the recent ‘spying’ a US woman diplomat in Delhi. It cannot be a “friendly act” no matter how beautifully the pro-US stance is packaged. Also certainly it could not be a coincidence that during Condoleezza Rice’s visit to Pakistan, Musharraf stressed that the two countries should share intelligence. They have a long history to doing just that; it would be disastrous if Washington hands over to Islamabad what it ‘stole’ in New Delhi.


Courtesy : Syndicate Features

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