The Pakistani sleuths have found ‘evidence’ of an ‘Afghan’ hand behind the ‘terrorist attacks’ on their soil, including the one on Sri Lanka cricketers in Lahore in the month of March. There is also a hint that many, if not most, of the attacks in the country’s Bad Lands near the Afghan borders, generally attributed to ‘Pakistani Taliban’, also have an ‘Afghan’ hand.

So, how does it help Pakistan’s game plan? It will be simple to understand if it is realised that the ‘Afghan’ hand in question is supposed to a reference to Afghans who are dubbed ‘Indian agents’. They are not seen as true, blue-blooded Afghans who, in accordance with the popular myth spread in the land of the pure, will not kill a fellow believer.

In their anxiety to snipe at India, the Pakistanis always speak of an ‘Indian hand’ behind terrorist attacks in their country. They often produce a ‘name’, though not always a ‘face’ to support their absurd claim. Since it is a piece of fiction, the Indian ‘name’ disappears after it has fulfilled the initial purpose of fuelling anti-India sentiments among the India-obsessed countrymen.

If it were not so, Pakistan would have vigorously pursued the leads against Indians allegedly involved in terrorist attacks, providing more ‘evidence’ and ‘documents’ than India ever did, say, in the case of the lone survivor of the Mumbai attacks, whom, Pakistan grudgingly accepted as its national.

The intention behind the theory of ‘Afghan hand’ should be more clear in the context of mounting Pakistani pressure on its patron, the United States of America, to have India ‘back off’ from Afghanistan—closing the consulates outside Kabul and restricting aid for the reconstruction of the Taliban-ravaged country.

The ploy seems to be working in the Barack Obama’s Washington, which seems to be intent on taking its relations with New Delhi back to the frost of the Cold War days. Almost everyone in the US, from high-ranking officials and diplomats, including the special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, to strategic thinkers and columnists have been speaking of Pakistan being uneasy about its eastern border. The ‘hyphenated’ policy of the US—seeing India through the Pakistani prism—is returning.

There have been direct or indirect suggestions to New Delhi that it must address the Pakistani concerns so that Islamabad can ‘concentrate’ on the fight against terror. Close the consulates in Afghanistan and withdraw troops from the border with Pakistan. Will any Indian government, that retains claims to sanity, ‘obey’ such orders, no matter where they come from?

The gratuitous advice from the Americans, given at the behest of their devious ‘frontline’ ally, deserves to be rejected with all the contempt that it deserves. The Americans need to be asked that if they are really interested in rebuilding Afghanistan how can they oppose help from India which comes without any strings attached, unlike most of the help that the Americans usually render?

The Pakistani paranoia about ‘tensions’ on its eastern border is related to its designs over Kashmir. The presence of Indian troops on or near the Pakistani border makes the task of running over Kashmir that much difficult for Pakistan. It is said that the Pakistanis are fuming because the task of pushing over terrorists they have trained into India under cover from their army has become a bit difficult lately.

The arguments against Indian consulates in Afghanistan towns close to the border with Pakistan are specious. The small size of the Indian consulates in Afghan towns cannot allow them to do what the Pak missions in neighbouring countries like Nepal and Bangladesh do: plan and execute terrorist plots.

A more daunting and difficult task for India would be to look for ground and logistic support in Afghanistan for carrying out offensive missions against Pakistan. Despite an impression that the Afghans in general are favourably disposed towards India, let it not be forgotten that the country has considerable support for the Taliban and similar ideologies. Such elements are concentrated in most of the Afghan towns close to Pakistan—the towns where the Indian consulates are located. Indian efforts to look for potential spies or mercenaries for venture into Pakistan cannot be very successful in a territory which is teeming with the Taliban.

During the rule of Begum Khaleda Zia in Bangladesh, that country had allowed free access to ISI operatives to run their anti-India operations with impunity. Like Bangladesh, Nepal has also emerged as the easiest point for entry of Pakistani or Pakistani-trained terrorists into India.

The deliberate indifference shown by the governments of these two countries towards the growth of anti-Indian network on their soil helped Pakistan raise cells locally for use against India. The task was much easier in Bangladesh where, there is a strong anti-Indian feeling among the communal-minded sections. In Nepal, instead of religion, it is the traditional ‘Big Brother’ complex that Pakistan—with help from China-- has exploited to increase its anti-India activities.

In the final analysis, it was—and is--possible to carry out anti-Indian activities in these two countries because the administration decided to look the other way since it did not anticipate any harm coming to the host country, or maybe, because of antipathy towards India. Hopefully, as the dangers of flirting with terrorism become evident to them, the Pakistani plan to further expand the anti-India network in the two countries would suffer.

The danger that comes from nurturing terrorists should have been evident to Pakistanis too, now that the Taliban is inching towards the heartland of Punjab from the rugged areas near the Afghan border. India will have to be blind to this danger if it is propping up a terrorist network in Afghanistan, as alleged by Pakistan.

India must tell the international community to call the Pakistani bluff about the ‘foreign’ hand—Indian or Afghan—being supposedly behind terror attacks on its territory as well the nonsense about danger to Pakistan coming from Indian consulates in Afghanistan.

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