In the five years I lived in Pakistan, a constant feature was the ever-present ISI minders who followed me wherever I went. Their surveillance was crude. On one occasion they seated themselves next to a table at which I was hosting Maleeha Lodhi, (later Pakistans Envoy in Washington) at the height of the Kargil conflict.Nervous and rattled by the proximity of the ISI goons, Ms Lodhi even declined to accept from me a copy of the infamous Musharraf-Aziz conversation that had been taped by the R&AW during the Kargil conflict. It was, therefore, not difficult to spot the ISI goons swarming over the village of Faridkot to intimidate ordinary citizens and erase all evidence that the captured terrorist Mohammed Ajmal Imran 'Kasab and his parents had lived there.
In urban centres ranging from Sialkot and Multan to Dera Ismail Khan, the ISI has spread out to erase evidence of the other terrorists being Pakistani nationals. Thus, despite professions of readiness to co-operate, Pakistan is erasing all evidence of its involvement in the carnage.
Sadly, the Manmohan Singh Government has bungled badly by stating there was no evidence of ISI involvement in the Mumbai carnage. At a recent public meeting in Washington, the former Commander-in-Chief of Indias Eastern Fleet, Vice-Admiral Premvir Das, explained the immense complexity of the operations undertaken by the hijackers who boarded a Pakistani ship in Karachi, hijacked an Indian fishing trawler, navigated using global positioning systems and transferred weapons, ammunition, explosives and an outboard motor in turbulent waters, into a small boat.
Admiral Das averred: "It is just not possible for ordinary jihadis, trained in camps in Muridhke, to do this. Only people with rigorous military training could have done what these people did". In short, the entire commando style operation had the backing of elements from the Pakistan army and navy.
Despite this, it is inexplicable why the Manmohan Singh Government does not publicly speak of circumstantial evidence of ISI/Pak military involvement.
New Delhis pusillanimity on this score has inevitably led to foreign leaders like Senator John Kerry giving the Pakistan military establishment a clean chit on the Mumbai carnage. While there is sympathy in western capitals for India after the Mumbai attack, western chanceries now appear to believe that India is acting like a supplicant in pleading for them to act against Pakistan.
Given the Western and particularly American reliance on Pakistan for logistical support in the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the Americans now believe that expressions of sympathy and understanding alone will deter New Delhi from taking any action that adversely affects their operations in Afghanistan.
Sensing this, Pakistan regularly threatens them that it will move its troops to the Indian border unless they "restrain" India. Is it not, therefore, time for India to tell its friends that they should reduce their dependence on Pakistan and that they should hold out the threat of economic and military sanctions against Pakistan, if the latter continues to stonewall on dismantling the infrastructure of ISI sponsored terrorism?
Ever since the NATO Summit in Bucharest in April 2008, NATO officials have been seeking alternative routes bypassing Pakistan for supplying their forces in Afghanistan. During the NATO Summit, Russia agreed to facilitate a land transport corridor to Afghanistan. Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan have been approached for the same purpose and Azerbaijan and Georgia have been sounded out for a Caucasian corridor to Afghanistan through Turkmenistan, via the Caspian Sea.
Such moves will reduce Western dependence on Pakistan and effectively undermine Pakistans ability to blackmail its American allies. Recent attacks on NATO supply convoys near Peshawar appear to be part of a calculated Pakistani effort to force the US to plead for more Pakistani military support.
India should now let it be known that it feels the US should not be deterred from imposing sanctions on Pakistan if it persists in its refusal to act against terrorism emanating from its soil and that the US should actively reduce its dependence on Pakistan for its operations in Afghanistan. Indian security will after all not be as seriously affected as American security interests if Pakistan chooses to move elements of its four divisions, now on its western borders, to its borders with India.
If Pakistan continues to blackmail the US with threats of pulling out troops from its western borders to its eastern borders, India can justifiably say that Pakistans threats will not deter it from to acting to protect its interests, if the US and others do not go beyond paying mere lip service to Indian forbearance.
There may be fears that this will lead to growing Talibanisation of Pakistan. But would a spread of Taliban control towards the capital Islamabad also not lead to the weakening of the Pakistan army, which is, after all, the lead player in sponsoring terrorism against both Afghanistan and India?
Further, can the Pakistan army afford to create a situation that would lead to NATO air-strikes deeper into Pakistani territory? In the present power structure of Pakistan, President Zardari and his Government play second fiddle to the army establishment. This will not change unless the army is isolated and forced to give up its favourite pastime of "bleeding" India.
These are policy options that New Delhi must adopt and articulate before the Obama Administration assumes office. President-elect Barack Obama has, on more than one occasion, endorsed Indias right to "self-defence" The incoming Administration is also more open to ideas, like widening the dialogue on Afghanistan by bringing in not only the countrys Central Asian neighbours but also Russia, Iran and India.
It is true that China which, in a way, was responsible for the Mumbai carnage by blocking moves in the UN Security Council to get the Jamat-ud-Dawa declared a terrorist organisation will continue to stand by its "all-weather friend" Pakistan. But once the US and its NATO allies decide to call Pakistans bluff, work on alternative supply routes to Afghanistan and threaten Pakistan with sanctions if it does not dismantle the infrastructure of ISI-sponsored terrorism, Pakistan and China will be compelled to comply with the demands of the international community.
The leverage that India has to make the US and its NATO allies act on these lines lies is its ability to compel the Pakistan army to move from its western to its eastern borders, should it chose to do so.
In dealing with Pakistan, we would be well-advised to take note of the analysis by Canadian academic Salim Mansur, whose family was almost wiped out by Pakistani soldiers in Bangladesh in 1971.
Mansur notes that the army-dominated establishment in Pakistan is "ideologically anti-Hindu and anti-Semitic" He adds: "The attack on Mumbai could not have been launched without large-scale planning and logistics support, and these could not have been provided without a secure base of operations in the knowledge of the Pakistani authorities".
One hopes that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who has shed many a tear over Pakistan being a "victim of terrorism" and still fights shy of speaking of ISI involvement in the Mumbai carnage, will take note of Mansurs words.
The author is a former Ambassador to Pakistan