India has suffered its first strategic setback in the fight against terrorism by certifying that Pakistan is not an aggressor but a state aggressed upon. On the terrorism front it brings both countries at par. For a quarter of a century, we felt Pakistan was the aggressor — first in Punjab, then in Kashmir and now in rest of the country — leaving more than 60,000 dead. Perhaps India was right in the past to blame Pakistan but no longer, apparently. Pakistan might have done so much in the recent past that there is justification not to carry the baggage of history and grapple with the new positive realities.

Let’s examine the contemporary realities which overnight transformed our perception of Pakistan from a terrorist-sponsoring state into that of a counter-terrorist partnership state. In the past 12 months, Pakistan-sponsored terrorists struck across the country, killing nearly 400 persons (the heaviest casualties suffered in a year by independent India outside the terrorist-hit states).

In Kashmir, it has increased infiltration and upped the ante of violence. In fact, Kashmir chief minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said as much on NDTV 24x7’s Walk The Talk programme (published in The Indian Express on September 18). ISI-sponsored militants, he said, “have been let loose”, adding, “I don’t think this could be possible without the knowledge of Musharraf Sahab”.

Under the pretext of helping earthquake victims it handed over relief work and the funds that poured in to Lashkar-e-Toiba to enable it to entrench itself there. It still harbours Salahuddins and Dawoods, provides them Pakistani passports and identity cards and facilitates their anti-India activities. A decade and a half since the demise of Punjab militancy, the ISI still harbours more than a dozen top commanders of various Sikh outfits.

... contd.