When terrorists killed Indian citizens in the cowardly attack in Pahalgam, the fingers were immediately and justifiably pointed across the Line-of-Control (LoC). The perfunctory official message of Pakistani authorities in condemning the attack and condoling the deaths was insincere, insufficient, and incorrigible, given that this has been the tactic for decades following every such terror attack. The nefarious hand of Pakistan in creating, nurturing, and supporting, the terror ecosystem needs no reiteration or reconfirmation.

Harking back to the first tweet of 2018 by the then President of the USA, Donald Trump (in his first term) ~ the clearly frustrated POTUS had called out Pakistan’s ‘deceit’ and ‘duplicity’ on terrorism, and for offering a “safe haven” to terrorists. Even Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, who disagreed with Trump on most things, was completely aligned on Pakistan as he had earlier said, “We need to make clear to people that the cancer is in Pakistan”.

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That Pakistan itself is mired in a self-acknowledged and deadly mutation of religious extremism, intolerance and terrorism, is clearly its own doing. Political scientist and global terror expert Daniel Byman had famously stated, “Pakistan may now be the single biggest state sponsor of terrorism, beyond even Iran, yet it has never been listed by the US State Department as a state sponsor of terrorism”.

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The fact that Pakistan was always key to American interest often allowed it get away without adequate censure or sanctions ~ the Americans would conveniently look the other way when it wasn’t their own interest or personnel that were targeted or pat Pakistan on its back, whenever it helped get an occasional ‘hit’ on someone from America’s ‘wanted list’ (like Trump recently praised Pakistan for aiding the arrest of a key........

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