We must thank Saudi Arabia for having helped India with a major breakthrough in the probe into the 26/11 Mumbai attacks by facilitating the arrest of Syed Zabiuddin Ansari alias Abu Jundal, one of the key plotters of the dastardly attack on Mumbai. Jundal, who had directed Ajmal Kasab and other 26/11 attackers from the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) control room, was picked up by the Saudi police, who put him on a Delhi-bound aircraft after alerting the authorities concerned here. Jundal has made the confession that LeT founder Hafiz Saeed was present in the control room when the masterminds of the 26/11 attacks choreographed the terror. He has also said that the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) of the Pakistan Army was involved in the 26/11 attacks.

Pakistan cannot now pretend, as it has been doing. The facts of the matter are: (1) it is still the Pakistan Army that calls the shots in that country, despite there being a democracy — of sorts; (2) the ISI still remains a state within the state of Pakistan; (3) the Pakistan Army-ISI will not crack down on outfits like the LeT because terrorism, as an instrument of state policy for Pakistan, cannot be compromised; and (4) the US cannot do anything about it because it is the US’ CIA that had conspired with the ISI to groom jihadi terror to oust the erstwhile Soviet Union from Afghanistan and it is the remnants of that terror that are now haunting the Af-Pak region with terrible ramifications for a so-called Hindu India too. These are the facts of life that must be explicitly stated, both by the government and the media in this country.

Pakistan, it seems, will not learn any lessons. Its economy is shambolic. Its democracy has been nascent since its Independence in 1947. Its civilian institutions remain crippled. People there are still fed with jihadi ideologies which a huge majority of them accept merrily. The Army there is mostly into the business of manufacturing high-quality terror so that it can be exported to India. And the Prime Minister of that country has just been dismissed for contempt of court.

Where is the point in even trying to talk to Islamabad? When that country remains intransigent as far as the role of its terrorists in the Mumbai attacks is concerned, and when it has rather embarked on a pitiably defensive course just to impress the international community that it is trying its best to weed out terror as an ally of the US in the so-called war on terror, New Delhi ought to rise to the occasion and tell Pakistan very bluntly that no nonsense will be tolerated. Will the Prime Minister wake up?