India’s decision on Wednesday to release a list of 50 terrorists — “India’s most wanted” — who are enjoying safe haven in Pakistan is a welcome move. It lends some spine to this country’s diplomatic interaction with Islamabad, although it would be unrealistic to think that the artful dodgers in Pakistan would serve up the fugitives to New Delhi any time soon.
What it would no doubt do, however, is to keep up the pressure on the Pakistan government, and keep the Indian contention in play that Islamabad has much to answer for in keeping relations strained between the two countries through the expedient of using terrorism as an instrument of policy against India persistently for over a quarter of a century.
There was a lot of commotion in the world after American special forces killed Al Qaeda’s founder-chief Osama bin Laden inside Pakistan earlier this month, but New Delhi’s official reaction had been underwhelming. There was no comment on what this historic moment meant for international terrorism, for the spread of extremism in our region, and more specifically if there was any meaning in this for terrorism directed against India from Pakistani soil. Broadly, the first Indian response amounted to an appeal to Islamabad to effectively deal with terrorists who were out to destabilise the region — a statement that could have been made by any country in the world at any time in the last 25 years. There was not the least effort on New Delhi’s part to contextualise its response. This was perhaps in deference to international political sensitivities. At a time when Pakistan was making silly noises at the official level against the Americans in the aftermath of Bin Laden’s killing amid accusations of official Pakistani complicity, New Delhi probably felt it prudent not to give cause to Islamabad to seize on even an imagined hint of bullishness on India’s part to divert significant troop strength to the Indian border. Force diversion from the Afghan border to the Indian would worry Washington too. Indeed, almost immediately after the initial Indian reaction, it was also given out that the peace process, revivified recently at the behest of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, would remain on track. Obviously this was further meant to reassure Pakistan that India had not the least belligerence on its mind. In the event Pakistan foreign secretary Salman Bashir’s rant against this country, and warning that Indian troops must not engage in any misadventure, could not have been worse timed. However, India could live with this as it was evidently meant for home consumption. What followed, however, took one’s breath away. In a display of serious diplomatic misjudgment, Mr Bashir described India’s long-standing demand of bringing the masterminds of the Mumbai attacks to book as “outdated”, and implied that the latterly revived peace process should continue as though 26/11 had not happened. Releasing the list of the 50 terrorists thus signifies the first seriously political Indian reaction to the issue of terrorism after the killing of Bin Laden. The implication is that Pakistan has been hiding these criminals exactly as it had the Al Qaeda leader. It is noteworthy that Dawood Ibrahim, who had been designated as the world’s most sought-after terrorist after Osama, no longer occupies the top slot in India’s rogues gallery. In Indian reckoning, he has ceded that dubious distinction to Hafiz Saeed, who inspires the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba which was responsible for the Mumbai attacks. In the list of 50, there are some 20 Pakistani nationals, including serving and retired military officers. India must continue to focus on this aspect. We can only hope that the publicising of the names of criminals will lead India to a strategy of mounting further international pressure on the Pakistani security establishment that shields anti-India desperadoes with a smile.