Pakistan may have challenged the court order against Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi’s bail in the Supreme Court, but the intensification of ceasefire violations to enable terrorists to infiltrate into India shows that it has no intention of prosecuting the perpetrators of the 26/11 carnage and other terrorists in Pakistan or dismantling their apparatus. Under the circumstances, the government has done well to ask its troops to retaliate against Pakistan as defence minister Manohar Parrikar has indicated.
There is little doubt that for all of Nawaz Sharif’s claims about battling terrorists, Islamabad continues to make the familiar distinction between “good” terrorists who target India and the “bad” terrorists who want to turn Pakistan into an Islamic state by demolishing its fragile democratic structure and making the country return to the medieval ages by establishing the Shariah as the law of the land. The harmful consequences of the Pakistan prime minister’s double-talk will have to be borne by India, as the so-called “good” terrorists armed and trained by the ISI will be unleashed on India.
Arguably, Nawaz Sharif has no option because he cannot go against the diktats of the Pakistan army, which continues to regard India, and not the home-grown “bad” terrorists, as its main enemy and is apparently determined to persist with its “proxy war” since it has learnt from its defeats in 1965 and 1971 that it cannot win a war against India. There is little chance of the Pakistan army realising it cannot even win a “proxy war” simply because India is far too strong and stable compared to a country that cannot even protect its own children from psychopathic murderers. So, India has no option but to brace for continuing pinpricks and retaliating in a manner that will tell Pakistan that the cost of needling India will be heavy in terms of men and material. America should also learn that funnelling dollars into Pakistan ostensibly to fight terror is pointless because of Islamabad’s habitual duplicity.