I have been scanning TV channels, newspapers and blogs closely over the last week specifically to assess how our neighbours have been reacting to the terror attacks in Mumbai. If only some corporates can learn the knack of consistency in messaging it will do them a lot of good. You have to hand it to Pakistan that across the populace, irrespective of party, class or ideology they talk in one unified voice - give us the evidence.
This time I am not going to add my two bit but I am going to let the international voices give the evidence
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
Made it clear that Pakistan must “act with urgency and transparency” on the leads in connection with the Mumbai incidents and implement its commitments to “cooperate fully” with India in the probe. Rice, said Pakistan must cooperate in the investigations and rejected the contention of President Asif Ali Zardari that “non-state actors” could be behind the terror strikes.
US National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell
“The same group that we believe is responsible for Mumbai had a similar attack in 2006 on a train and killed a similar number of people,” McConnell said. “Go back to 2001
and it was an attack on the (Indian) Parliament.” US National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell’s remarks, in an address to the Harvard University on Tuesday night,
Commission mandated by the United States Congress
Were one to map terrorism and weapons of mass destruction today, all roads would intersect in Pakistan,’ a report by a high-powered bipartisan commission that was mandated by the United States Congress.
The report titled, World at Risk, The Report of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism , said Pakistan ‘has nuclear weapons and a history of unstable governments, and parts of its territory are currently a safe haven for Al Qaeda and other terrorists.’
‘Moreover, given Pakistan’s tense relationship with India, its buildup of nuclear weapons is exacerbating the prospect of a dangerous nuclear arms race in South Asia that could lead to a nuclear conflict,’ the report warned.
The Commission was chaired by former US Senator Bob Graham with another erstwhile US Senator Jim Talent, serving as vice-chairman, and included Wendy Sherman, a former senior Clinton administration official who is now the chair of the foreign policy transition team of the incoming Obama administration.
The report, which had one whole chapter on Pakistan, titled, Pakistan: The Intersection of Nuclear Weapons and Terrorism, acknowledged that ‘Pakistan is an ally, but there is a grave danger, it could also be an unwitting source of a terrorist attack on the United States, possibly with weapons of mass destruction
Madeline Albright, Former Secretary of State of the United States
Counting many elements, including terrorism and nuclear weapons, in Pakistan as causes of international worries, a former top United States official has described the South Asian country as an ‘international migraine’.
“My own sense is Pakistan has everything that gives you an international migraine. It has nuclear weapons, it has terrorism, extremists, corruption, very poor and it’s in a location that’s really, really important to us. And now this issue with India.
Thomas Friedman, Journalist and Author
But while the Pakistani government’s sober response is important, and the sincere expressions of outrage by individual Pakistanis are critical, I am still hoping for more. I am still hoping — just once — for that mass demonstration of “ordinary people” against the Mumbai bombers, not for my sake, not for India’s sake, but for Pakistan’s sake.
……… The best defense against this kind of murderous violence is to limit the pool of recruits, and the only way to do that is for the home society to isolate, condemn and denounce publicly and repeatedly the murderers — and not amplify, ignore, glorify, justify or “explain” their activities.
But at the end of the day, terrorists often are just acting on what they sense the majority really wants but doesn’t dare do or say. That is why the most powerful deterrent to their behavior is when the community as a whole says: “No more. What you have done in murdering defenseless men, women and children has brought shame on us and on you.”
Why should Pakistanis do that? Because you can’t have a healthy society that tolerates in any way its own sons going into a modern city, anywhere, and just murdering everyone in sight — including some 40 other Muslims — in a suicide-murder operation, without even bothering to leave a note. Because the act was their note and destroying just to destroy was their goal. If you do that with enemies abroad, you will do that with enemies at home and destroy your own society in the process.
I rest my case.
