insurgents and documents proving their identity as Iranians and said that on being captured they had admitted having been provided training by Indian agents in Afghanistan.

He also alleged that Karzai government in Afghanistan had, in collusion with India, allowed Brahmdagh Bugti, grandson of late Nawab Akbar Bugti, to take shelter in and operate out of Afghanistan.
By exaggerating the importance of Baloch insurgency and India's role in it, Malik was merely seeking to divert the attention of senators as well as the people of Pakistan from the real issues. Also, in arguing that Baloch insurgency had spilled over into FATA and strengthened the Pakistani Taliban, he was pointing to his own shortcomings as the security adviser to the president of Pakistan.

If the senators of Pakistan believed in this version, then either they did not know how to distinguish truth from falsehood or they allowed themselves to be swayed by the age-old state-run propaganda that India continued to remain at the heart of all problems Pakistan is confronted with. From the Indian side of the fence, the obsession with Pakistan's notorious Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is also part of the recurring verbal duel between officials of the two countries.

For the patient onlooker, Malik made some critical observations in a passing manner. He made a remark once in his marathon seven-hour briefing: '…we are, if there is Pakistan. We should not make any compromise on national security.' This indicated that he was aware of the magnitude of threat posed by Islamist insurgents in Pakistan's troubled tribal frontiers. However, the temptation to look away and dump everything on an external source was very much there in the entire presentation he made. Such a conventional diversion is either an apology for inaction or an attempt at self-delusion.

Either way, Pakistan is in a terrible mess. Average Pakistani is willing to believe in the official propaganda that India is fanning the Baloch problem and even has a hand in the tribal menace, but she/he has enough intelligence to know that Sharia-mongers do pose a grave threat to the Pakistani state. The government can fool them all for some time but not for all time.

Many Pakistanis have told this writer in private that their country could not have expected India to take its bitter Kashmir pill lying down. Pakistan had to sooner or later taste its own medicine. Thus, while Pakistani officials are livid about Indian involvement, they realise deep within that it is their own mess they have to clear up as much as it was India's own mess in Kashmir, once upon a time. While India has managed to offer Kashmiris a working democracy, the managers of Pakistani statecraft are still obsessed with a centralised administrative system that favours only the creamy feudal elite, overwhelmingly Punjabi by ethnicity, and virulently opposed to any meaningful socio-economic transformation. The officials quietly admit that if the state did not transform itself, it would soon face threats from other quarters: the autonomists in Azad Kashmir and the Northern Areas. 'Who knows if Pashtuns would not rise again under the garb of Islamist militancy,' one of them asserts.

Most of these interlocutors would like to remain anonymous as they would not like to be branded unpatriotic for speaking the truth. They insist they are deeply patriotic at heart and would like Pakistan to come up as a moderate, if Islamic, state. They urge their Indian friends to go soft on Pakistan if they want to see democracy succeed in Pakistan.

It is true that the Pakistani military feeds on anti-India sentiments. But so does the democratic establishment.  Even if they were to push for Indo-Pak dialogue for peace, they would parrot  the same official refrain that India was very much there in the Pakistani  muddle. India-bashing has become the favourite pastime of the Pakistani elite whenever it is faced with a crisis of legitimacy. In reality the roots of the malaise lie deep within.

The roots lie in the half-hearted democratisation and liberalisation of Pakistani society. All moderate leaders, past and present, including Ayub, the Bhuttos and Musharraf (forgive me if I have missed out on anybody) have been great liberals when out of office and great Islamic-enthusiasts while in office. The baby steps each one of them has taken to relax the hold of religion on society have not lasted beyond their tenures. Each one of them has stooped to the wishes of the clergy in some form or other. The Islamist impulse haunting Pakistani statecraft has compelled them to strike deals with the mullahs and legitimise their antediluvian interpretation of Islam.

The minority elite of Pakistan are religious, but abhor the clergy. The majority is wallowing in poverty, illiteracy and disease in the rural hinterland and respects the clergy and regards them as alternatives to the self-seeking feudal upper-crust of the society who rule over them in the name of democracy. Both these groups fear the clergy. That keeps the religious mullah alive as a socio-political force to reckon with. The elite are reluctant to shed power. The masses, especially in the tribal hinterland, are apathetic towards democracy. The utopia offered to them by the mullahs is more attractive than the spectre of a non-functioning democratic state, which is represented by either the avaricious tribal malik or the tribal paramilitary khasadar, who do not exercise any control over them. 'The situation is so dismal, nothing short of a wholesale socio-political transformation will cure Pakistan of the ills it is suffering from today. But is Pakistan ready for that,' one of them quips with a heavy sigh.

Interestingly, deep underneath there is a constructive jealousy that has started operating within this urban youth in Pakistan. They are ready to shy away from the official dictum that Pakistan is every-inch different from India; it is what India is not. The global recognition of India as a democracy and a liberal society, in spite of all its failings, has drawn their attention. They are the torch-bearers of tomorrow in Pakistan. There is also a critical mass emerging within Pakistan, which is willing to get engaged with the liberal and democratic India. New Delhi needs to engage this constituency to challenge the anti-Indian sentiments propagated through official media and literature. It would cost India nothing to perpetuate the unofficial lines of contact that have proliferated during the last five years since January 2004.

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