Mood:
don't askNow Playing: When television news channels waged war with Pakistan, govt twiddles thumbs
Topic: INDO-PAK RELATIONS
After weeks of tough posturing by External Affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee the government at the Centre has come to naught over responding to last month's Pakistan-sponsored Mumbai terror attack. Pakistan seems to have as usual won the game by its multi-pronged approach. Manmohan Singh government does not even have a fig leaf to hide its ignominy. Pakistan showed defiance all through the post-Nov 26 attack, sometimes refusing to hand over to India the 20 most-wanted terrorists and at other times denying that the terrorists hailed from Pakistan. All this when there was mounting evidence of Pakistan's complicity which has been provided not just by India, the US and the UK but even by the local media in Pakistan. Any other country in India's place would have singed Pakistan over the coals but our inept government seems to have lost all the goodwill and sympathy from the world community. All that the government did tangibly for the last one month was to ask External Affairs minister to issue statements like "Pakistan should fulfill its promise".
But look at the smartness with which Pakistan came out unscathed. Every time a European, Arab or American government representative including Condeleesa Rice came calling to Delhi media speculated that it was to sympathise with India and to arm-twist Pakistan. But after a month of hectic diplomacy no one is any wiser. Pakistan even today has not budged an inch from its earlier stand, leave alone taking action against any of the terrorists involved in the Mumbai attack. No terror training camps have been closed, all the terrorists responsible for the carnage are at large even while India is quibbling over newly-coined terms like 'non-state actors'. A government which is so brazen about playing communal politics cannot be expected to do what Bush government did to Pakistan after September 11: call President of Pakistan General Pervez Musharraf and tell him, "you with us or you are against us".
A month after the Mumbai attack the government of India is twiddling its thumbs over stopping all travel and trade between the two countries and putting economic sanctions on Pakistan. These were the basic measures expected from the government immediately after the attacks. Instead, we have the unsavoury debate on prime time television on whether we should play cricket with Pakistan now or a little later.
One cannot help miss Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee's leadership at such times. Soft-spoken though he was, he could put the chill down the spine of Pakistan's establishment. One remembers how Shri Vajpayee during the Kargil war even refused to meet US President Bill Clinton till Pakistan surrendered completely. Today, even after street protests against politicians and their tomfoolery you only find ministers mumbling inanities like "Pakistan is not doing enough".
The fact of the matter is that Indian government floated the "all options are open" and "surgical strikes on terrorist camps" theories in the media even as there were troop movements in borders areas of the Indian side. If you can't take threats to logical conclusions you should make sure you don't end up with egg on your face. Today it appears as if Pakistan is ready for war but India has developed cold feet. The way Pakistan has been able to turn the tables in the last 30 days it appears as if India is the perpetrator and Pakistan is the victim. All this because Indian government never took even diplomatic or economic measures to teach Pakistan a lesson. Other than seeking the support of the West and Arab countries the government has only been making a lot of noise for media coverage. No one in the UPA government is mature enough to understand that the US or Israel is not going to pick up the cudgel for India. The worst fear is that as Jews were killed in the terror attacks in Mumbai Pakistan simply would hand over the prime suspects like Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi and Maulana Masood Azhar to the US and close the chapter. India will be left holding the baby if after all the sabre-rattling Pakistan does not stop the training camps in their soil as demanded by India. Already Pakistan president has alluded to the fact that "terrorists are forcing the agenda on the government". That is perhaps to tell the US that if Pakistan government is forced to take action against the terror groups the government might fall, in which case the US fight against the Taliban in the north-west province of Pakistan with the help of Pakistan army will come up a cropper. On the other hand, the sway of foreign delegates on our government seems to be so over-powering that the administration has been in a limbo. Travel and trade between India and Pakistan are taking place as if nothing has happened.
What has now become a tragicomedy is that our government is seen by the world community as a pushover. What Israel did to Palestine in the last few days, in retaliation for terror attacks by Hamas which were much smaller in scale than seen in Mumbai, has the approval of the G7 nations. If we didn't intend to launch a military attack against Pakistan, the government should have ruled out military options right at the beginning. The grim-faced external affairs minister repeated the same statement on keeping "all options open". These statements everyday were as similar to the ones released the previous day. Television channels could have used the minister's previous day's statement as breaking news without anyone coming to know. Even today the minister has not stopped saying it, but channels have stopped airing them out of fatigue.
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Posted by Anil Nair
at 11:33 PM
Updated: Saturday, 17 January 2009 11:54 AM
