Our post-Mumbai strategy of exercising restraint at the bilateral level so that 26/11 is treated not as an India-Pakistan affair but one of international terrorism, and our reliance on the United States of America to force Pakistan to punish those behind the Mumbai attack and to suppress jihadi activities on its soil, have not produced the required results. If repeated provocations by an irresponsible State provoke little reaction beyond words, then restraint can be interpreted as incapacity to respond, as weakness and indecisiveness. Pakistan has used terrorism as an instrument of State policy towards us for years, through jihadi set-ups it has nurtured. But on the plea that it is itself a victim of terrorism by non-State actors, it rejects our accusations and gets understanding from its traditional friends. This duality, coupled with our self-restraint, allows Pakistan to continue to bleed us without condign punishment.

Our exceptional moderation, despite evidence in our hands to nail Pakistan of involvement in Mumbai, provided enough political space to Pakistan, especially the civilian leadership, to react constructively, use the opportunity to begin the process of rolling back the activities of extremist organizations that menace Pakistan’s own stability and reverse self-destructive policies towards India. Instead, the Pakistani establishment, after some initial placatory noises, rapidly reverted to its stock posturing of non-culpability and prevarication and tactical demands for evidence, taking recourse to ploys such as a joint investigation to put India on the defensive and the creation of war hysteria to divert attention.

These well-honed Pakistani tactics have proved fairly successful. Instead of victim India imposing a redressal-action script on guilty Pakistan, the reverse has happened. India has been compelled to bow to Pakistan’s procedural demand for presentation of evidence as a prerequisite for action. This charade over evidence carried the implications that Pakistani involvement was disputable, that the government was unaware of the complicity of elements based in the country in the attack and that Pakistan was willing to take credible legal action as a normal law-abiding State if laws were proved to have been violated. Pakistan set itself up as an honest magistrate awaiting evidence by complainant India. That we allowed ourselves to be trifled with showed in the sense of achievement projected in the media in the step we took to communicate our evidence to Pakistan, evidence already appearing in our newspaper columns for weeks and which presumably was already in Pakistani hands through the Federal Bureau of Investigation. These theatrics reached a low level when the Pakistani side dismissed our evidence as “information”.

The issue at hand is terrorism, and not merely punishing a criminal act. It is not enough to bring the perpetrators of the Mumbai attack and their accomplices in Pakistan to book — this would be expected in any crime. Action to begin the process of rooting out terrorist organizations from Pakistan has to begin; otherwise another Mumbai will occur. Pakistan has to abandon its attitude of hostility towards India, cease using jihadi organizations to pursue ambitious dreams of breaking India up, adopt realistic policies on Kashmir, accept the imperatives of good neighbourliness and recognize the manifold advantages of a normalized relationship with India. While this change will not come about easily or soon, Pakistan, at the very least, must visibly and durably put curbs on jihadi groups targeting India, accept the reality of their existence publicly, accept too its international responsibility for the actions of non-State actors, share intelligence and extradite absconding Indian nationals.

The insincere and defiant conduct of the Pakistan government post-Mumbai casts serious doubt on the reality of its claims about arrests, sealing offices and banning the activities of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa. This is short-term window dressing, a flip-flop in tactics to ward off mounting international pressure for some minimum gesture towards the Indian government so that external powers can continue to counsel it to show restraint despite domestic pressure to act.

Our calculation that eschewing bilateral action against Pakistan post-Mumbai will delink this terrorist attack from the India-Pakistan context has also proved wrong. This context is deeply entrenched in US thinking about the region, and our bid to finesse it post-Mumbai was wishful thinking. Barack Obama, in his end-December interview to Newsweek, has reiterated his position that to settle Afghanistan, the India-Pakistan-Kashmir triptych needs enhanced US attention as part of an integrated regional approach. This interview appeared well after the Mumbai attack in which some US nationals perished. The British foreign secretary, David Miliband, prefaced his recent visit to India with an article in The Guardian linking the unresolved issue of Kashmir to terrorism in India, and reportedly conveyed this unpleasant view to our top leaders in his official conversations.

Our exaggerated expectations of the US post-Mumbai are being belied. To the US, Pakistan is indispensable for conducting the war in Afghanistan. Obama needs success in Afghanistan to protect his presidency in the first term and guard his chances for the second one. Pakistan has learnt the art over the years to strategically cooperate with the US and get rewarded — and blackmail it to extract further advantage. American military aid to Pakistan, especially in areas where Pakistan has vulnerabilities vis-à-vis India, manifests this.

Encouraging India to keep its demands to the minimum and exhorting Pakistan to meet them suit US policy. The US as well as the United Kingdom are unwilling to use the most effective instrument at their disposal — economic pressure — to force Pakistan to clean up its terrorist act on the plea that they do not want to hurt the ordinary Pakistani. The US has already delivered $10 billion of military aid to Pakistan and is processing another $15 billion in aid with a military component. To moderate pressure on Pakistan, India’s accusation that Pakistan’s official agencies are involved in Mumbai is being officially countered by the US and the UK, with culpability restricted to non-State actors. Both Miliband and Condoleezza Rice have promoted the bona fides of the Pakistan government. An effort could be made to persuade India to accept the Pakistani proposal for joint investigation as that would endorse the Pakistan government’s anti-terrorist credentials, remove the threat of escalation and lock India and Pakistan into another sterile process like the joint anti-terror mechanism. Our reluctance to even halt the composite dialogue reflects the unseen pressures at work.

By choosing not to take bilateral steps after Mumbai and relying on the US for redress, we restricted our own ability to act. We handed over the initiative to the Americans, having therefore to adjust our diplomacy to US priorities rather than the reverse. Selective political bilateral steps against Pakistan after Mumbai were necessary, especially after its government had, ex post facto, become complicit in terrorism by its attempts to shield the non-State jihadi actors. Such steps should have been taken before Obama took over, both to gain room for manoeuvre vis-à-vis the new US administration as well as to force a change in the assumptions behind its thinking regarding the securing of concessions from India on Kashmir in order to obtain more robust Pakistani cooperation on Afghanistan. We have let that opportunity go.