The government of India has unveiled a definitive change in tactic over the last few weeks in its Pakistan policy.
It was revealed first in Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar's letter to his Pakistani counterpart in the last week of August where India said it was willing to discuss all terror that emanates from Pakistan - not just the terror that targets India but also the terror that targets other countries in South Asia, most notably, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.
It was better articulated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the course of the last week, first at the G20 and later at the East Asia summit.
The Prime Minister said, "Only one nation in South Asia is responsible for the export of terror. This use of terror as an instrument of policy has reduced the space for peace and dialogue."
Then he followed that up with a position India hasn’t taken in many years unless we were at war or in situations of extreme diplomatic strife. The PM said, "the time has come for the international community to isolate such exporters and sanction such instigators of terror."
Make no mistake, the international community is in no mood to sanction Pakistan just yet. US State Department spokesperson Mark Toner said twice in two days that America "wasn’t even contemplating" such a move.
The attempt is to create a narrative that India is not the sole victim of Pakistan-sponsored terror. The Afghans have repeatedly pointed to the safe havens given to the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network inside Pakistan.
Most recently, after the American University attack in late August, the very next day Afghan President Ashraf Ghani spoke to the Pakistan Army Chief General Raheel Sharif saying very clearly that Pakistan needs to stop providing support to the Haqqanis.
All of this is only helping bolster India’s case that the source of all terror in South Asia is one, the deep state of Pakistan.
And now here's the latest story that will help India build its case in mission ‘Isolate Pakistan’. The Washington Post on Thursday published a letter which was given to it by the scholar Simon Henderson who says it was given to him by the Father of Pakistan’s nuclear programme Abdul Qadeer Khan back in 2007.
The letter is purported to have been written by Jeon Byung Ho, just a month after Pakistan’s first nuclear test in May 1998. In the letter Jeon, who at that time was the head of North Korea’s nuclear programme, claims his country had paid upto 3 million dollars to the then Pakistan Army Chief Jehangir Karamat to put "agreed documents and nuclear components" on a plane that was returning to Pyongyang after delivering missile parts to Pakistan.
This letter shows how no less than the army chief at that time knew about this nuclear black market trade that was going on in his country. The letter was reportedly provided to Simon Henderson in 2007 by AQ Khan. Henderson feels Khan kept these letters as "some kind of insurance policy" if he were hung out to dry by the Pakistani military establishment.
The release of the letter couldn’t have come at a worse time for Pakistan. Already feeling the heat from Modi’s strategy to highlight human rights violations in Balochistan and POK, now the world’s gaze will be on Islamabad and its dark record in nuclear proliferation.
When the world is increasingly concerned about North Korea’s nuclear capabilities, to know that some part of its programme was actively sourced from Pakistan only deepens mistrust and suspicion towards Islamabad.
Nawaz Sharif's 22 envoys will have some tough questions to answer as they criss-cross global capitals hoping to rally support for the Kashmir cause. As Hillary Clinton famously said, "when you breed snakes in your backyard, someday they will come back to bite you." From the example of Pyongyang it is clear that Pakistan bred snakes well beyond its backyard.
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