America
Pakistan must break links with terrorists operating in India: US experts
By
By Arun KumarWashington, April 1
Citing the case of
Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) mastermind of the 2008
Mumbai terrorist attacks, two US experts want the US to push Pakistan to
end its selective fight against terrorism.
"Pakistan's selective
approach to fighting terrorism continues to undermine US national
security objectives in the region," wrote Lisa Curtis, a senior research
fellow and Huma Sattar, a visiting analyst, at the Heritage Foundation,
a conservative think tank.
"If Pakistan is indeed serious about
combating terrorism, it must come down hard on all terrorist groups and
break all links with terrorists operating in Afghanistan and India. US
policy must insist on this outcome," they wrote
Earlier this
year, US Secretary of State John Kerry declared all terrorism in
Pakistan "unacceptable" and offered $250 million to aid refugees
displaced by the Pakistani military offensive against Tehrik-e-Taliban
Pakistan (TTP) militants in North Waziristan.
The Pakistani
military has repeatedly tried to assure Washington that it is committed
to cracking down on all terrorist groups in its territory, Curtis and
Sattar noted, "but so far there are few signs that it is ready to
confront those groups that fight in Afghanistan and India."
In
March, the two experts noted, "the Islamabad High Court, in all
likelihood having been strong-armed by the military leadership, rejected
Pakistani government arguments and ordered the release of" Lakhvi.
Last
December, two days after the horrific TTP attack on a military school
in Peshawar that killed nearly 130 children, Pakistan's Anti-Terrorism
Court granted bail to Lakhvi.
"This stunning development was
likely a signal from the Pakistan military to India that it would retain
the LeT as a tool, even as it cracked down on the TTP," Curtis and
Sattar wrote.
"Ultimately, the military probably will keep Lakhvi
in jail because Pakistani officials understand that releasing him could
cost hundreds of millions in US aid to Pakistan.
"But the signal
that the bail plea sends about the military's intentions to continue
relying on the LeT is cause for deep concern," they wrote.
In a
joint letter to Secretary Kerry, House Foreign Affairs Committee's
Republican Chairman Ed Royce and top Democrat Eliot Engel voiced
concern that Pakistan has not done all it could to root out terrorist
groups such as LeT, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, and Jaish-e-Muhmmad because they
are seen as serving Pakistan's foreign policy goals in India and
Afghanistan.
"The Pakistan army's risky double game of
selectively supporting some terrorist groups threatens US national
security objectives of rooting out global terrorism from South Asia,"
Curtis and Sattar wrote.
So long as Pakistan's military allows
groups that follow an extremist Islamist ideology to operate freely,
they make their territory an environment in which global terrorism can
flourish, they wrote.
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at [email protected])