New York: In its quest to maintain an "asymmetric" influence in its neighbourhood, Pakistan cooperates with the US to attack terror groups it considers hostile to it while simultaneously supporting outfits like the LeT, which it perceives as "beneficial" to its objectives, a report by a US think-tank has said.
The report states that Pakistan's intelligence agencies support terrorist groups that target India, Afghanistan and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) coalition forces, killing and injuring not merely foreign civilians and soldiers, but also causing considerable damage to Pakistani society.
In particular, terrorism has been used by Islamabad since the early 1990s as an instrument of "low-intensity conflict" to press New Delhi into "concessions on Kashmir."
"There are no signs that the Pakistan military realises the harm the obsession with India is doing to their country.
The Pakistan military will not abandon its fixation on India as the enemy, not least because most of the Pakistan army's dominance over domestic politics is tied to the maintenance of hostilities with India," the joint report by Council on Foreign Relations and Aspen Institute India said.
"Pakistan has retained ties with terrorist and militant groups in order to maintain asymmetric forms of influence in its neighborhood. Pakistan cooperates with the United States in attacking those terrorist groups it perceives as hostile to Pakistan, most notably the Tehriki-Taliban Pakistan, but maintains ties with and support of other groups it values as beneficial to its objectives, such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba," the report said.
It goes on to say that Pakistan's unwillingness to act against Afghan Taliban sanctuaries on its soil makes it almost impossible for the US to deal a decisive blow to the Afghan Pashtun insurgency.
Despite a miserable economic situation, Pakistan allocates a large percentage of its national budget to military spending, given the Pakistani military's argument that its conventional forces are inadequate to deter India, the 64-page report noted.
Further, Islamic extremism is on the rise in Pakistan itself, which faces endemic violence and has suffered more terrorist attacks in the past decade than any other country apart from Afghanistan and Iraq.
The country is showing alarming signs of systemic decline, the report titled 'The United States and India: A Shared Strategic Future' added.
Pakistan comes across "as deliberately intractable" to India, which is frustrated and bitter that its repeated efforts to normalize relations with its next-door neighbour have yielded no results.
"Despite domestic skepticism, the Manmohan Singh government has persisted in discussions with Pakistan on resolving bilateral disputes but in such a problematic bilateral climate, breakthroughs on India-Pakistan issues look infinitely remote. India-Pakistan relations are stuck and likely to remain so," the report said.
Likewise, US-Pakistan ties too are moving in a "sharply downward direction," which is bad news for both New Delhi and Washington since their respective vital national interests are entwined with the future of Pakistan, it said.
Further, the report added that Pakistan's nuclearization has made an Indian conventional attack in response to terrorist acts from across the border acutely dangerous.
Even the 26/11 attack by Pakistani terrorists on Mumbai could not produce an Indian military response. However, it remains to be seen whether this nearly twenty years of restraint on New Delhi's part in the face of persistent cross-border terrorist attacks from Pakistan will continue in the future too.
"In any case, the conventional wisdom in India is that in the event of another major terrorist attack staged from Pakistan, it will be very difficult for the Indian government to avoid a military reaction in the face of enormous public pressure," the report noted.
The report suggests that India continue its efforts to "convince" Pakistan that it need not fear destabilization by it in any way, including via Afghanistan.
New Delhi should also continue its bilateral negotiations with Islamabad on all outstanding issues, including the question of Kashmir.
Military aid to Pakistan by the US should be conditional on concrete anti-terrorist measures the Pakistan military must take against groups targeting India and the United States, including in Afghanistan.
"The United States and India should begin classified exchanges on multiple Pakistan contingencies, including the collapse of the Pakistan state and the specter of the Pakistan military losing control of its nuclear arsenal."
The United States should also hold the Pakistan military to a much more exacting code of conduct, while doing all it can to avoid a sustained rupture of its relations with Pakistan, the report added.
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