True to itself

 

PAKISTAN is acting true to its own nature. When the Indian Armed Forces conducted precision-strikes on specific terror targets at nine locations, they took care that their action was non-escalatory and spared civilians from any negative impact. They also refrained to hit any military targets in Pakistan. The idea was simple: India did not want to give Pakistan any reason to complain or to accuse India of having taken wrong steps. That good gesture, however, made no difference to Pakistan. For, when it retaliated, Pakistan started targeting civilian population in India and did not spare the military installations in India.

 

This conduct is true to the original nature of Pakistan. Another true colour of Pakistan that the world got to know in the past couple of days was in the form of the manner in which Pakistani military reacted to the killing of terrorists and their kin in the precision-strikes the Indian Forces carried out. The bodies of the terrorists killed in the Indian missile attacks were officially wrapped in Pakistani flag and were given a funeral of the military kind -- with soldiers and officers in attendance. They offered salutes to the persons killed in Indian action, and laid the bodies to eternal rest. Those funerals wore an official aura -- thus making it clear that the Pakistani Armed Forces treated the terrorists, too, as part of their outfit. This conduct, too, is true to Pakistan’s nature and persona that it has cherished over the past seven-plus decades. Yet another twist true to its personality, Pakistan denied that it ever fired the drone that Indian claimed to have downed before those devices hit the Indian targets.

 

‘We never fired any of those drones’, Pakistan is reported to have insisted. This is a limit of lie-telling. All the downed drones and missiles wear marks showing Pakistani ownership. Yet the denial by Pakistan -- which is actually a non-denial (in a sense). Even as tensions mounted, Pakistan continued threatening India with dire consequences. Of course, India was least bothered, and continued its well-planned actions. As the pressure from India mounted, Pakistan Prime Minister Mr. Shehbaz Sharif did two things: one, he stood in Pakistan’s Parliament and threatened to take the fight into India’s court. And thereafter, Mr. Sharif made an appeal to the world to intervene and stop India’s aggression. Obviously, the Pakistani Prime Minister appeared frightened. This taking fright is also an old Pakistani character, so to say ! It is not without reason that many Pakistan watchers often describe the country as a massive paradox. On one hand, for example, Pakistan never admitted that it was the mastermind behind the attack of free-lancers on Kashmir soon after Partition. It kept telling the world that the attackers were mercenaries.

 

Then it changed the version and called them ‘freedom fighters’. The same stance it took during the Kargil conflict as well, and said that the armed men who occupied the Kargil heights on the sly were not Pakistani Army regulars. Habitually, thus, Pakistan indulges in many wrong-doings but never admits to its involvement. Though it has accepted this time that the Indian missile attack destroyed certain installations in its territory, it later returned to its own ways and denied that the drones and missiles were ever fired by its own Forces as a retaliation of the Indian attacks on terror pads a day earlier. All these actions and statements by Pakistan are true to its own nature and personality -- full of deceit tinged by a criminal mentality. Even if has lost every military confrontation with India in the past seven-plus decades, Pakistan has refused to learn right lessons from those drubbings, this time being no exception. It is obvious, thus, that Pakistan is never to learn to mend its ways and become a truly good member of the regional neighbourhood.