Even as speculation is rife all over the world that a key figure responsible for Afghanistan’s destruction during its Taliban rule, Mullah Omar, is safely ensconced in Pakistan along with the one and only Osama bin Laden, Karzai handed over to Pakistan a list of 150 Taliban terrorists, many with Pakistani addresses. He told the squirming Pakistanis not to fake denials but to trace the Taliban taking shelter in their country and detain them because they had carried out attacks inside Afghanistan with full knowledge and blessings of certain Pakistanis.

In his talks with President Gen Pervez Musharraf, who like him is a Washington pet, Karzai was reported to have said that the Afghan people want ‘more intensive pursuit of terrorists wherever they may be, in Afghanistan or Pakistan.’ According to Karzai, the two neighbours can fight terrorism more effectively by ‘going to the roots ….where they get trained, find their camps, remove them and stop the equipment that reach them.’ Karzai could not have been more explicit on Pakistani soil while talking about Pakistan’s dubious role in fighting terrorists.

Before he arrived in Islamabad, Karzai’s spokesman had said in Kabul that the Afghan president would urge Musharraf that Pakistan should show ‘the same commitment’ (a reference perhaps to nabbing of some ‘high valued’ Al Qaeda operatives) to defeating Taliban rebels based on the Pakistani side of the rugged frontier between the two countries. At every possible opportunity, Musharraf is prone to boast about ‘liquidating’ the Al Qaeda network in his country. He, of course, does not accept that terrorists in Afghanistan get shelter in Pakistan, though curiously he does acknowledge the presence of ‘undesirable elements’ on the border.

It is very clear from the statements attributed to Karzai that Afghanistan has not bought the Pakistani propaganda that Islamabad has nothing to do with the increasingly frequent terrorist attacks by ‘foreign’ terrorists who sneak into Afghanistan. Karzai even rebuffed the Pakistanis who tried to seek his endorsement for their ridiculous, shameless but oft-repeated allegation of an Indian hand in all the trouble inside Afghanistan as well as the Pakistani province of Balochistan, just east of Afghanistan.

Karzai told his hosts that it was not the policy of his country to allow its soil or its friendship with a third country to harm bilateral ties between Afghanistan and Pakistan. He even agreed to raise bilateral relations with Pakistan to ‘strategic’ level through increased security, diplomatic and economic cooperation and seek each other’s ‘consent’ on major issues.

Musharraf and his minions, who were looking for some India-bashing in the company of Karzai, must have been bitterly disappointed because nobody has bought the Pakistani lie about India’s involvement in Balochistan and the renewed terrorist activities in Afghanistan. One consolation perhaps for them was that Karzai did not press Islamabad to allow Indian imports to reach Afghanistan via Pakistan. Any how, on its part, India is resigned to the fact that a petulant Pakistan, upset over the deep distrust and even dislike that most Afghans have for Pakistan, will continue to raise all manners of irritants in the growth of bilateral relations between India and Afghanistan.

But Pakistani officials with their India obsession who are constantly burning midnight oil to devise devious ways of harming India may need to look around more worryingly. Uncle Sam, their long-time benefactor was telling them once again even as Karzai was returning home that Islamabad has to do more to end cross border terrorism and respect the international borders and the line of control. Pakistan’s wailing against US military action inside Pakistani territory while in pursuit of terrorists has largely been ignored by the US. What is more President George Bush told leading Pakistan dailies that air operation was conducted with the full knowledge and concurrence of Islamabad.

China, Pakistan’s most durable friend and provider of much of its nuclear know-how, too has turned a deaf ear to the Pakistani howls of an Indian hand in the escalating violence and unrest in Balochistan. No less a person than president Hu Jintao asked Pakistan to track down the gunmen who had killed three Chinese engineers working on the crucial Chinese-aided and financed Gwadar port project in troubled Balochistan. The Chinese leader call came just as Musharraf was packing his bags to pay homage to the Chinese leaders, something that the Pakistani leaders do very frequently.

While Musharraf may succeed in contriving a good conduct certificate from the Chinese about his half-hearted anti-terrorist efforts, the Americans appear to be shedding their earlier reticence to be more candid about Pakistan’s dubious role in capturing and eliminating the entire terror network inside the territories under Islamabad’s control. Musharraf is fond of flaunting statistics—over 600 ‘Al Qaeda’ terrorists allegedly killed or captured in Pakistan—which will impress only the gullible. That figure in no way suggests that the Al Qaeda, Taliban and Kashmiri jehadis that abound in Musharraf’s land of the pure have been finished. Also, 600 does not look like an impressive number considering that there are belts in Pakistan’s western border, parts of the interior of the country as well as Pakistan occupied Kashmir where terrorists continue to be recruited and trained; sometimes on farms owned by ministers.

At this stage when the countdown for the visit of President Bush to the sub-continent has begun anything less than a hearty pat on the back from the US will only raise the discomfort levels in Pakistan. The US reminder to Pakistan that it has to be serious in winding up its ISI-sponsored terror network is obviously the result of its own monitoring and intelligence inputs. The US used to take only a token notice of complaints about Pakistan’s duplicity in fighting terrorists when it came from India. But now that similar complaint has started to come—and quite frequently—from Afghanistan, the US has to shed its reservation of pulling up Pakistan. The US has too much at stake in stabilising Afghanistan to leave it at the mercy of Pakistani dictators and ISI schemers.


Courtesy : Syndicate Features

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