Word: islamabad
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...Zardari, for example, stated on Nov. 28 that Pakistan "will cooperate with India in exposing and apprehending the culprits and masterminds" behind the attacks. But this is not an objective unanimously shared in Islamabad. The terrorists and their patrons clearly wish to derail any moves in the direction of harmony between the two countries, which would thwart their destructive Islamist agenda. They enjoy the sympathy of elements in the military, whose disproportionate share of the country's national budget would be threatened by peace with India. And the country's civilian government dares not cross the red lines drawn...
...with India, he was cooperating tacitly with Predator strikes against the Islamic extremists in the Afghan borderlands, much to the resentment of pro-Islamist elements in his military. This cooperation has now been jeopardized by the assault on Mumbai. As tensions with India ratchet up, the hard-liners in Islamabad's army headquarters will have the justification they need to jettison a policy they dislike and move their forces away from the border with Afghanistan, where the U.S. wants them, so as to reinforce the border with India instead...
...Washington's frustration is understandable. But with Pakistan denying all responsibility for the Mumbai attacks, India has no good options. All New Delhi can do is demand that the well-intentioned but ineffective government in Islamabad crack down on terrorist groups, dismantle their camps, freeze their bank accounts and arrest and prosecute their leaders. There is little appetite in Pakistan for such action. And the fear remains that expecting Zardari to fulfill even India's minimal demands might be asking him to sign his own death warrant...
...newly elected civilian government in Islamabad, led by President Asif Ali Zardari, had shown every sign of wanting to move away from this narrative of hatred and hostility. But Pakistan is a deeply divided nation. As the Kabul bombing showed, the disconnect between the statements of the government and the actions of the ISI suggested that the government was too weak to control its own security apparatus. In India, the state has an army; in Pakistan, the army has a state. An attempt this summer to place the ISI under the Interior Ministry had to be rescinded when the army...
Zardari, Benazir Bhutto's widower, realizes that India's enemies in Pakistan are also his own: the very forces of Islamist extremism responsible for his wife's assassination were behind the September bombing of Islamabad's Marriott Hotel. The militancy once sponsored by the Pakistani military as a foreign policy tool now threatens to abort Pakistan's sputtering democracy. There has never been a stronger case for firm and united action by the governments of both India and Pakistan to cauterize the cancer in their midst...