Pakistan’s shadow over China’s ties with India

New Delhi has to battle terrorism on its own. Adversaries will be hostile, and it is clear that friends won’t help

The Mamallapuram summit cannot obscure the fact that the power behind Pakistan is China. Nor can the summit hype cloak the strengthening axis between a muscular communist power and a terrorism-exporting Islamist neighbour, with both the revanchist partners staking claims to different Indian territories.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said “the time has come to fight a decisive battle against terrorism and against all those who promote terrorism”. However, there appears little prospect of such a concerted and decisive international fight. States bankrolling or rearing terrorists continue to go scot-free.

Nothing illustrates this reality better than Pakistan, which has systematically weaponised terrorism without incurring tangible international costs. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is unlikely to move Pakistan from its “grey” to “black” list, even though Islamabad has failed to meet most parameters against terrorist financing.

Action is unlikely for several reasons. A Chinese national is the FATF president. Decisions are based on consensus. Pakistan’s principal doctor who brought me into the world, my parents who nurtured me, my teachers who inculcated the knowledge and values in me, my wife who supported me, and friends who stood by me.

I have my commitments and responsibilities as a husband and a father of three children, aged 23, 18 and 13. Beyond them, my responsibility is to the larger community. While my children are still young, the thought did occur to me that it was perhaps too early to execute my promise to society. However, instead of holding me back, the thought of trying to create a better world for my children encouraged me, for they are the inheritors of the future. patron, China, will seek — along with Turkey, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia — to block any move to blacklist Pakistan. At the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), China, Malaysia, Pakistan and Turkey emerged as an anti-india quad.

The key impediment to Pakistan’s blacklisting, however, is India’s own strategic partner, the United States. The battle against international terrorism cannot be won unless the nexus between terrorist groups and Pakistan’s military is severed. A good place to start would have been to make the International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout for Pakistan contingent on concrete counter-terrorism action. However, US President Donald Trump’s attempt to finalise a Pakistan-backed Faustian bargain with the Afghan Taliban allowed that leverage to slip away. Pakistan secured the bailout without any action.

The US is against FATF blacklisting because such action would upend the Imfsupported programme. Pakistani terrorism impinges directly on Indian security, but not on US homeland security. US willingness to put up with Pakistan’s sub-regionally confined use of terrorism as an instrument of Everyone who is blessed with more than they need should consider making a promise to give back. We should all strive to make the world a better place for future generations.

It is important for each one of us to realise that we can make a difference in our own way. Each person’s contribution is not only important but also essential; it does not matter how big or small that contribution is. Everyone in the world has something to contribute — whether it’s their time, wisdom, access to networks, or their resources. It’s not always the financial contribution that matters. Participation matters equally. Giving ourselves and our experiences to those who need will make all the difference. State policy parallels Washington’s acceptance of Pakistan’s sub-regionally confined nuclear arsenal, including ignoring covert Chinese nuclear and missile transfers, and tolerating Pakistan’s nuclear warmongering.

Trump himself has underscored the limits of Indo-us counter-terrorism cooperation. On two consecutive days at the UNGA, Trump referred to Iranian terrorism when asked about Pakistan’s emergence as the global hub of terrorism. Instead, Trump equated terrorism-transmitting Pakistan and its victim India. According to the White House, Trump privately “encouraged Prime Minister Modi to improve relations with Pakistan”.

Modi rightly warned against the politicisation of international counter-terrorism mechanisms. The Us-led war on terror has failed largely because it has become a tool of geopolitics. The US, for example, recently imposed terrorism-related sanctions on Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and allied individuals. But it has never slapped such sanctions on the leading terrorism-exporting force — Pakistan’s military — or on To make our life a meaningful one, it is important for us to mind our thoughts. Our thoughts are the foundation, the inspiration and the motivation behind our deeds. We create our world by the way we think. Our circumstances and conditions are often not dictated by the outside world, but the world inside us, but we do not realise this.

Our thoughts are ever dynamic. Even when we are physically inactive, our thoughts continue to be active all the any of its generals or intelligence officers.

The bottom line for India is that no friend, including the US, will assist it to end Pakistan’s terrorism. This is India’s battle to fight and win. Seeking US assistance only reinforces Washington’s claim to be a stakeholder in the India-pakistan relationship.

Imran Khan’s public declaration of a jihad against India and his threat of nuclear Armageddon only highlights India’s challenge in countering a militant neighbour that not only employs nuclear terror to shield its export of terrorism but also misuses a religion to lend sanctity to its actions. Debt-ridden and dysfunctional Pakistan cannot afford an overt war with India that it cannot win. Yet, without India imposing sufficient costs on it, Pakistan will not stop nurturing terrorists as a force multiplier in its low-intensity asymmetric war, whose ultimate goal supposedly is Ghazwa-e-hind, or the holy conquest of India.

The Indian Air Force chief, Rakesh Bhadauria, has said that Balakot exemplified a new political resolve to “punish perpetrators of terrorism”, underscoring “a major shift in the government’s way of handling terrorist attacks”. However, Balakot, like the earlier surgical strike, has done little to change Pakistan’s behaviour. The reason is that these strikes targeted only the enemy’s non-uniformed soldiers — the easily-sacrificed terrorist proxies. Deterrence will work if India implements a multipronged strategy to impose calibrated but gradually escalating costs on Pakistan’s military masters.

The Wuhan summit was followed by a stepped-up Chinese military build-up along the Himalayas, including live-fire combat drills, and an enlargement of China’s strategic footprint in Pakistan. As its colonial outpost, Pakistan has become the springboard for China’s regional ambitions. Mamallapuram cannot change this reality.

MY CHILDREN ARE YOUNG. I THOUGHT IT WAS PERHAPS

TOO EARLY TO GIVE TO SOCIETY. BUT THEN THE THOUGHT OF CREATING A BETTER WORLD FOR MY CHILDREN MOTIVATED ME

time. If our thoughts are pure, these will automatically lead to noble actions. However, if our thoughts are filled with feelings of jealousy, hatred and greed, so will be our actions, leaving us in an agitated state of mind.

Karmically, our thoughts have far reaching consequences than the actual deeds. One may perform a charitable act, but if it is done with some motive rather than selflessly, then the thoughts would ultimately determine the result, which can never be fruitful for the giver. Always remember, we alone have the choice to instil ourselves with loving and positive thoughts, so that the same get reflected in our actions.