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Cross-Border Co-Operation: Editorial

The Pakistani prime minister agreed to send an ISI official to help India investigate the Mumbai terrorist attacks. This was controversial and the ISI chief was replaced with a lower level official. There is potential for cooperation between the countries against terrorism. Pakistan can help India understand radicalization of its Muslim population and issues it has been reluctant to face. Pakistan is familiar with extremism and can offer guidance to India while also learning from India's experiences. The priority now is for Pakistan to address India's accusations of involvement through cooperative investigation.

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42 views

Cross-Border Co-Operation: Editorial

The Pakistani prime minister agreed to send an ISI official to help India investigate the Mumbai terrorist attacks. This was controversial and the ISI chief was replaced with a lower level official. There is potential for cooperation between the countries against terrorism. Pakistan can help India understand radicalization of its Muslim population and issues it has been reluctant to face. Pakistan is familiar with extremism and can offer guidance to India while also learning from India's experiences. The priority now is for Pakistan to address India's accusations of involvement through cooperative investigation.

Uploaded by

Fil Das
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Cross-border co-operation

Home / Today's Paper / Editorial / Cross-border co-operation


November 30, 2008
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The prime minister's move to send an ISI official to India to help with inquiries into the terrorist attack on
Mumbai has instantly given rise to controversy. In response to a request from his Indian counterpart, Mr
Manmohan Singh, who during his talk with Mr Gilani spoke of evidence of possible Pakistani involvement
in the daring assault on India's main commercial centre, the Pakistani prime minister agreed the ISI chief
would visit India. A short while afterwards, possibly in response to fierce criticism of the decision from
former ISI chiefs and other retired generals, the PM's secretariat announced that rather than the DG ISI
himself, an official of the agency would represent it in New Delhi.

There can be no doubt that cooperation between the two countries in battling terrorism has much potential.
Rather then 'bowing under India', the move to extend help is a sign of a genuine desire to tackle the
menace that faces us. Both countries have been victims of militancy. Pakistan is in a position to help India
better understand the problems posed by the radicalization of its young Muslim population. This is an issue
that country has been reluctant to face up to. The new extremism among the Muslims of India, who have
grown up watching the violence directed against Kashmiris by Indian state forces or the killings of
Muslims in places such as Gujrat, is linked to the wider developments in the Islamic world. Pakistan is
familiar with these and has fought its own armies of extremists. It can as such offer India much guidance.
In turn, it can also learn from the experiences of India, and, as the prime minister has said, forge a joint
front to battle terror.

But its first priority at this moment must be to stem the increasingly hysterical accusations of Pakistani
involvement emanating from India. The latest of these hone in on what is described as the 'Punjabi' accent
of the terrorists a pointer, Indian officials allege, to their Pakistani identity. This is obviously absurd.
Indeed, Pakistan has done well to call India's bluff and send across an ISI representative, apparently taking
Mr Manmohan Singh by surprise. The gesture, an unprecedented one in the history of Indo-Pak relations,
goes to show Islamabad has nothing to hide. The notion that a group of young men could simply set of
from Karachi aboard a rubber dinghy, land at Bombay, walk through the India Gate that stands just beyond
it shore and then embark on a shooting spree is nonsensical. The men who laid siege to eight separate sites
in Mumbai and killed 145 innocent people obviously knew the city inside out. They realized the trendy,
but little known Caf Leopold, which was among their first targets, would be one place to gun down
westerners visiting the city. They were aware of the existence of a Jewish centre where the Rabbi and his
family died and they seemed familiar with each corridor, each lobby of the three massive hotels they
entered. All these factors point to locals who had repeatedly visited these places. The ISI, now joining in
the investigation of a terrible crime, must also make sure these leads too are taken on board and that
Pakistan is cleared of the charges levelled against it in the aftermath of the tragedy at Mumbai.

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