It will, however, provide little comfort to most Indians that the monster is now more likely to gobble the master than the ‘enemy’ for which it was raised and nurtured. Living next door to a country under the grip of the dark-age fanatics can be frightening, especially when those religious zealots will also have the nuclear trigger in their hand.

Interestingly, the Americans living thousands of miles away from the sub-continent appear to be as much, if not more, worried as the Indians about the impending march of the Taliban into Islamabad and the ‘heart’ of Pakistan. They are said to be devising ways to avert that catastrophe. But are they serious?

Some of them are of the view that Pakistan can still be saved from falling inexorably into the hands of fanatics if a massive dose of aid, cash ass well as military hardware, is injected into it. The Americans are fervent advocates of this theory because they believe ‘money can buy everything’—including the ‘good’ Taliban! They are about to triple the financial aid to Pakistan, which will bring the overall cash assistance to Pakistan to well over $2 billion a year.

The Americans’ naiveté takes one’s breath away. Pakistan has been one of the biggest recipients of American assistance, both in cash and kind (mostly arms and sophisticated military equipment) for over half a century. In per capita terms it amounts to much more than the US assistance to India or any other country in Asia.

But what has all that American money done to Pakistan? It is poorer than ‘socialist’ India. Literacy rate remains low because the state has always been more keen to spend money on its military rather than on educational infrastructure—or, for that matter on meeting some other needs of the people like providing drinking water, improving sanitation and opening hospitals.

Just in case it has escaped some Americans, they also need to be reminded that their generous aid to Pakistan has only spread virulent type of anti-Americanism among the overwhelming number of Pakistanis. Anti-Americanism is very visible in India too, especially in a tribe that still swears by Marx and Lenin, but it is not on par with the hatred that exists in Pakistan where killing Americans—and, of course, Indians—is not considered a sin.

It is only in recent years that the Americans have started some sort of audit of the money they pump into their ‘frontline’ ally in the so-called ‘war on terror’. The results have expectedly shown that most of the money meant for opening schools and hospitals or creating job opportunities was diverted to the military, more specifically to strengthen the war machine against India.

There can be absolutely no doubt that this trend will not change as the US thrusts more dollars into the Pakistani coffers. It will certainly not drive away pupils from schools run by the fanatics to ‘secular’ schools because ‘jihad’ may not be part of its curriculum. The American ‘audit’ exercises should have led it to press Pakistan for some kind of transparency and accountability, but nothing of the sort appears likely to happen.

South Block must be evaluating the danger that a Talibanised Pakistan poses to India and started taking steps to ward off the danger that it will pose to the country’s security and sovereignty. But it is quite likely that the government will also be pressurised by some sections not to do anything ‘extreme’ that will alienate the Pakistani civil society from its Indian counterpart.

Nobody can discount the advantage of dialogue, whether with friend or foe, but the premise and the purpose of this dialogue must be clear. How large is the peace (with India) constituency in Pakistan? Frankly, it appears to be very small if one goes by all that this section of the Pakistanis has been saying about India after the Mumbai terror attacks and now the Lahore attack of March 3.

Any Pakistani who says that India and Pakistan are victims of the same form of terror must be suspect in India. Indians are attacked by Pakistan-based or sponsored elements. More important, these elements thrive in that country because Pakistan has not renounced—nor will it—its policy of inflicting ‘thousand wounds’ on India to dismember it. The feeling may be reciprocated in many Indian minds but no government in India has adopted the same ‘bleeding’ policy towards Pakistan.

If India were in a position to do so, Pakistan would have reached its extinction by now. Besides, the Pakistani ‘peaceniks’ do no exert enough pressure on their government to forget about this policy of bleeding India because they assume it is practised by Islamabad.

Pakistan’s troubles are the results of its ‘adventurism’ that has never been challenged—creating trouble in the neighbourhood. The Americans who ply Pakistan with tons of carrots while being extremely parsimonious with the stick and those who say that India as the ‘big brother’ should be large-hearted towards its smaller neighbour are only encouraging Pakistan not to give up its adventurous ways, no matter where it takes the country.

Washington shoots down any suggestion for becoming strict with Pakistan with the argument that it will push the country further into the fold of extremists. But this argument no longer looks valid because half a century of pampering of Pakistan has only brought it closer into the fold of Taliban. The ease with which the state surrendered its responsibilities in tribal areas of Pakistan does not suggest that there is even a will in Pakistan to ward off the ‘evil’.

To think of the dreaded day when the Taliban flag flutters over the presidential palace in Pakistan and the all-important military HQ in nearby Rawalpindi can bring cold sweat. But giving cash alms and generous handouts to Pakistanis cannot avert that day, as many Americans and the Pakistani officials seem to think.

If the Taliban has to be stopped on its tracks in Pakistan the effort will have to come from within. That will be difficult task for the majority of Pakistanis as long as they continue to believe that their biggest bugbear is India—not Taliban.

Printer-Friendly Version