1. The core issue of instability and violence in South Asia is the character, activities and persistence of the militarized Islamist-fundamentalist state in Pakistan, and no cure for this canker can be arrived at through any strategy of negotiations, support and financial aid to the military regime, or by a ‘calibrated’ transition to ‘democracy’.
2. Footprints of Terror: The ‘footprint’ of every major act of international Islamist terrorism invariably passes through Pakistan, right from 9/11 – where virtually all the participants had trained, resided or met in, coordinated with, or received funding from or through Pakistan – to major acts of terrorism across South Asia and South East Asia, as well as major networks of terror that have been discovered in Europe.
3. The State as Suicide Bomber: Pakistan has harvested an enormous price for its supposed ‘cooperation’ with the US, and in this it has combined deception and blackmail – including nuclear blackmail – to secure a continuous stream of concessions. Its conduct is little different from that of North Korea, which has in the past chosen the pathway of nuclear escalation to secure incremental aid from Western donors. A pattern of sustained nuclear blackmail has consistently been at the heart of Pakistan’s case for concessions, aid and a heightened threshold of international tolerance for its sponsorship and support to Islamist terrorism. To understand how this works, it is useful to conce
