If there is someone you can trust these days, those are the terrorists. That seems to be the message in the world of Foreign Affairs these days. If you don’t believe me, our Prime Minister, the dictator next door and the State Department can vouch for this.
Once you grab that hand it is so difficult to let it go. No, we are not talking about Meera Jasmine ‘s or Kavya Madhavan‘s hands, but Musharraf’s. That seems to be the predicament of all Indian Prime Ministers starting with Vajpayee. Vajpayee went all way to Pakistan and kissed those hands which masterminded Kargil. Then came Manmohan Singh and he too did the same thing in the conclave of tyrants in Havana. Maybe it was the Cuban air, maybe Manmohan Singh is plain crazy, but India and Pakistan have agreed to put in place a anti-terrorism institutional mechanism, which is like Veeru and Gabbar Singh signing an agreement to hunt down Sambha.
If India had no reason to distrust Musharraf, Musharraf had no reason to distrust the 2500 foreign fighters linked to Taliban and al-Qaeda fighting in Waziristan. It did not matter that some of these gentlemen belonged to Islamic welfare organizations, such “the al-Khidmat Foundation run by the hard-line Islamist party Jamaat-i-Islami and some of them had tried to assassinate Musharraf. The Govt. reached an agreement with the terrorists. They (terrorists) would not involve in cross-border terrorism and stop attacks on government installations and security forces. In turn Pakistani Army would not undertake any ground or air operation against the militants. If Musharraf wanted a template for such agreements we could have faxed him a copy from the many India has signed with various Pakistani Prime Minister and dictators.
While we are waiting for the next bomb to explode in a crowded train or temple as a result of all that forbidden love in Pakistan, the State Department is smiling like Hugo Chavez after seeing Fidel Castro. This is the perfect world according to Richard Boucher, the Washington Bob. He thinks that the agreement between Musharraf and the terrorists has the potential to work which only shows how clueless the State Department folks are. But then the State Department has put all its eggs in Musharraf’s basket and they cannot do anything else, but trust him.
