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Denial or worse?

The unprecedented terror strikes in Mumbai have done more than create a crisis in Pakistan-India relations. They have put enormous pressure on what a Pakistani commentator, writing in this newspaper, characterises as his country’s “tentative transition to democracy” — a vulnerable state in which the tensions between the military and the elected civilian government have not been resolved and the latter “enjoys de jure power b ut is cautious about testing its actual authority over the military.” Once it became clear that the terrorist group came from Pakistan and the captured terrorist, Mohammad Ajmal Amir Iman, began to sing to the Mumbai police about his being on a Lashkhar-e-Taiba mission, it was natural for the Indian government at the highest level to take this up directly with Pakistan’s political leaders and ask for the controllers, including the organisation’s supremo, to be handed over to India and for strong action to be taken against the ‘banned’ organisation working behind a charitable front.

The initial responses were positive but after that it was backsliding all the way. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani first acceded to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s request to send the chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency to India — presumably to be shown at least some of the evidence — but hours after that, President Asif Ali Zardari lamely explained to an Indian interviewer that there had been a “miscommunication” and that an ISI official of the rank of Director, instead of the Director-General, would be sent to India for consultations. Even that offer, which came with expressions of solidarity with the people of Mumbai and assurances of the highest degree of cooperation, was cancelled after the All Parties Conference shifted the focus from what to do about Mumbai to rubbishing Indian accusations and expressing “support [to] the government and the armed forces in defending Pakistan’s security interests.” Everything suggests that a convergence of the interests of the military, the jihadists, and the right-wing political parties has overwhelmed the democratic element in the initial response and forced the Pakistan People’s Party regime to take a do-little, if not do-nothing, stance. Political and social Pakistan is in costly denial, with national chauvinism and conspiracy theories shaping public opinion on who authored the Mumbai terror strikes, Mr. Zardari speaking vaguely about “non-state actors” and even “stateless actors” working to instigate conflict between the two countries, and the Army setting the terms of the practical response. Pakistan seems to be responding as though it was the aggrieved party in the aftermath of the terror in Mumbai. The complexity of this situation, its seeming intransigence, will challenge India’s political and diplomatic capabilities in the coming weeks — and the sane answer is certainly not jingoism and military threats.

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