PANIC and fear of a full-scale military conflict with a raging India after the horrific killing of 26 tourists by terrorists in Pahalgam has set the cat among pigeons in Pakistan. The country’s leader are opening a can of worms, letting out its dirty but open secrets in their own admission of Pakistan being a peddler of terrorism as a State policy. Last week, Pakistan Defence Minister Mr. Khwaja Asif had stated that his country did the “dirty work” of the West for decades. Close on the heels of that admission has come the statement of former Foreign Minister Mr. Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari that Pakistan had a history with extremist groups which has come back to haunt the country. Both admissions, though well-known to the world, serveas a premise to isolate theRogueState with debilitating punishment by the international community. For, it is an open acceptance of guilt by the biggest nursery of terrorism in the world.

 

What Mr. Bhutto-Zardari has said while playing a victim of terrorism has been documented in various dossiers by India. There is clinching evidence of Pakistan’s open support to terrorgroupswhichtargetIndiainvariouscapacities.Extremists bred and brought up on Pakistani soil are regularly used by the Pakistan Army and the ISI to launch attacks on innocent civilians as well as security forces in India. The Pahalgam massacre was executed byThe Resistance Front(TRF) which is an off-shoot of Pakistan-based proscribed militant outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba. Yet, the international community still goes very soft on the perennial client State to serve its own purposes. The admission by Mr. Asif and now Mr. Zardari should be areason enough forIndia to keep aside international opinion and go for the jugular with full might.

 

The West, especially the United States, has been tactically using Pakistan for its own benefit since ages. It has a history of ignoring Pakistan’s sins and allowing the country to nurture terror groups with a myopic view of serving its limited purpose. It was the US that prodded Pakistan to raise the TalibanmilitantorganisationtofightagainsttheRussianforces that had invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Pakistan used the opportunity to develop a network of terror and with theWest’s economic and strategic backing it started building similar groupswiththesolepurposeofwagingGhazwa-e-Hind.AntiIndia activities have remained the only agenda for Pakistan since then even as its leaders systematically milked theWest to build military resources and a nuclear bomb.

 

Pakistan’shistory is replete with many such examples when the Military-Jihadi Complex (MJC) offered a safe haven to terrorists and shielded them from punitive action from international agencies. Many of the United Nations proscribed terrorists, including India’s Most Wanted Hafeez Saeed, are still living in Pakistan. That the 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden was located and killed by the US Marines in Pakistan should have been the biggest clinching proof for the world to come down hard on the terror-sponsor country. However, selfish goals of some Western nations scuttled all efforts of victims like India to draw a red line . The two statements from Pakistani leaders should make it clear for India that the neighbour enjoys tacit support from some big powers. It cannot be brought to book by a lawful process. It needs a dose of its own medicine. And India has the wherewithal and global heft to do the unthinkable.