Attack in Mumbai -2

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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Invitation to fiasco</b>
pioneer.com
India should tell the ISI to get lost

It speaks volumes for the crisis-management capabilities of the UPA Government that it so quickly has converted a poignant moment into a fiasco. The tragedy and outrage of the Mumbai terror attacks, the gathering of evidence against Pakistan-based Islamist groups — with, almost certainly, some degree of support within Islamabad’s establishment and governing structure — the pause while the world and the nation waited for the Prime Minister to act: It was a moment that tested leadership and political acumen. Instead, the UPA Government went and invited the Inter-Services Intelligence Director-General to India. It would show him evidence of Pakistani complicity, of actions in which sections of his own agency may well be involved, and then trust him to take remedial measures. He would probably have nodded his head in approval, gone home and cleaned up the trail. The President and Prime Minister of Pakistan are as amateurish in their approach and as much in control of their country as Mr Manmohan Singh is of his; or they are plain deceitful. They first agreed to the ISI chief’s visit, then realised there was domestic hostility to it and that it sounded, to Pakistani hardliners, like a response to a ‘summons’ from New Delhi, probably urged by Western Governments. So Islamabad has now backtracked. It has refused to send the ISI Director-General but will in fact despatch a junior-level official, a person with zero decision-making authority. Mr Singh and his rag-tag collection of advisers and Ministers have been roundly insulted by Pakistan’s establishment — as opposed to the dilettante who is nominally that country’s President — and will now go back to doing what they should have done in the first place: Collect evidence and place it before the people of India and the Governments of the world.

<b>Mr Singh’s life and career bear testimony to the fact that he places value in perseverance and believes that repetition leads to perfection. That is why, perhaps, he travelled to Britain for a second BA despite already having got a graduate’s degree in India. As a teacher, his experience with supervising compartmental examinations may also have influenced his faith in the efficacy of repeated efforts. </b>  <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->  <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo--> While this may be an admirable personal philosophy, in foreign policy and management of national security, however, it is a non-starter. For two years now, following a September 2006 meeting with Gen Pervez Musharraf, Mr Singh has insisted that Pakistan and India are equal victims of terrorism and has pushed ahead with a bilateral Joint Anti-Terror Mechanism. This has become the cornerstone of his Pakistan policy and intelligence-sharing — a largely one-way process, because Islamabad reveals nothing — an article of faith.

If the JATM were a genuine forum and if India were dealing with a normal country, the invitation to the partner Government’s top intelligence officer would have been perfectly in order. As it happens, India is trying to make sense of Pakistan — where a toxic state, an anarchic society and a rogue military have combined to create the most lethal territorial threat to humankind since Nazi Germany. To invite the ISI chief to help solve an Islamist terror crime is the equivalent of asking Joseph Goebbels to draft a free Constitution. Everybody knows what the ISI is institutionally hardwired to do. Has nobody told the Prime Minister of India?
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