Now that Osama bin Laden has been killed, Pakistani leaders are struggling with whether they should take cash or credit for his killing.
As the documents seized from OBL's hideout are examined, more information may become available about Pakistan's duplicity or complicity. The years of denial by their leaders that he was nowhere in Pakistan has proven to be a lie.
Pakistan is a terrorist state. Our leaders in Washington are beating around the bush by not declaring it as such. Every terrorist of importance in the world today has either come from there or trained there. It is a Mecca to them.
Pakistan has tormented India with their terrorists since 1947 and only now are we beginning to realize that they are impacting the whole world.
The U.S. has long adopted a double standard by separating al-Qaida from the other groups created and trained in Pakistan who are just as deadly to humanity. Only after six Americans were killed in the Mumbai bombings on Nov. 26, 2008 has the U.S. started to get serious about other networks, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, which might one day wreck havoc on us.
India has lost over half a million people to these miscreants whom Pakistan likes to call "freedom fighters." The Mumbai bombing locations were scouted by an American, David Coleman Headley who had strong support from the Pakistan Intelligence group, ISI, and officers in their army.
Four Pakistani army majors who were close to Headley are now on the top 10 wanted terrorists list in India. Headley has admitted his guilt in order to avoid the death penalty. Another close confidant of Headley was an ISI officer by the name of Major Iqbal. India's stand on the accused of the Mumbai attacks was corroborated by the April 25 indictment of Iqbal and three other Pakistanis in Chicago. It remains to be seen if Pakistan will agree to extradite them to stand trial here.
A lawsuit was also filed in U.S. federal court last year by American family members of U.S. victims in the Mumbai blast, charging that the ISI provided "critical planning, material support, control and coordination" under the leadership of its director general, Ahmad Pasha and his predecessor, Nadeem Taj.
Tom Hanks' movie, "Charlie Wilson's War," is a true story about how the U.S. helped corrupt Pakistani dictators create the Taliban.
Let us take a look at how Pakistani leaders have been involved in the spread of terrorism.
In the 1990s, Benazir Bhutto was the prime minister of Pakistan. Her army chief of staff was Musharraf, who later became the dictator and president. It was under Bhutto's watch that Pakistan's nuclear scientist and father of their nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, built an international network that led to dangerous transfer on nuclear technology to Libya, North Korea and Iran.
After Musharraf became president, this mischief continued. In fact, a plane load of partially enriched uranium and centrifuges were shipped to Libya in 2001. When this was exposed and Khan was made the fall guy and had to resign, Musharraf promptly pardoned him in 2004, afraid that Khan might reveal Musharraf's complicity. Khan continues to enjoy a free and luxurious life in Karachi. Pakistan has refused to allow Washington to talk to him.
Musharraf made General Kayani, the current commander in chief who is so upset at us for violating Pakistan's sovereignty during the bin Laden raid, the ISI chief from 2004-2007. Remember that both were micro-managers and nothing was done without their knowledge. Osama's mansion in Abbottabad was built when both were in power. The design of the mansion was such that neighbors could not see inside the living quarters.
Intelligence analysts say that the ISI was close to al-Qaida before and after 9/11. Indeed, General Mahmoud Ahmed, the then ISI chief, was accused of sanctioning a $100,000 wire payment to Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers, immediately before the attack.
The nuclear scientist Khan was close to Ahmed. Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group responsible for the Mumbai attacks as well as the Haqqani network, responsible for killing our soldiers in Afghanistan, are also tied closely to the ISI and al-Qaida.
Pakistan leaders continue to deny that other wanted terrorists live there. The second most wanted terrorist in the world, Dawood Ibrahim, the mastermind of the Mumbai serial blasts in 1993, lives in Karachi. His daughter is married to Pakistan's well-known former cricket captain and Ibrahim is known to have attended his granddaughter's wedding.
Other terrorists of repute living in Pakistan are Mohd. Omar, the chief of the Afghan/Pakistan Taliban, and al-Zawahiri, deputy to Osama.
What is the chance that Pakistan's leaders will come clean and rid their country of these degenerate specimens of human society? Zero.
Every Indian, since 1947, has been asking "What did we do wrong to deserve a neighbor like Pakistan?" The world in the future will be asking a similar question. Considering that Washington has never learned from its past failed policies of supporting dictators and egomaniacs, I see little hope for a peaceful world.
Kulkarni lives in Perry.
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