The blunt truth is that even as Washington admits that Islamabad has misused its past aid, Obama is reluctant to exercise leverage and continues to heap rewards on Pakistan.  Notwithstanding the fact that President Obama had promised during his election campaign to review military and civilian aid to Pakistan, it seems he has no intention of honouring his pledge. On the contrary, he has demanded that the US assistance to Islamabad should be delinked from its commitment to fighting Jihad. What Mr Obama fails to appreciate is  that such benign indulgence speaks of a blinkered approach that is likely to bring Indian security under more pressure.

Though Pakistan is known for acquiring weapons surreptitiously rather than producing them indigenously, the US must take the rouge country’s efforts to modify US supplied equipment seriously. Surprisingly, the US administration which is quite cognisant of Pakistan’s involvement in the 26/11 fidayeen attack continues its patronage of the country without so much as helping to bring the Mumbai attack planners to justice. But not surprisingly it continues to brazenly promote Pakistani interests in the vane hope that the Islamabad establishment will facilitate the conduct of America’s war on terror. It is a given that nobody is surprised at Pakistani perfidy nor is it the first instance of the US being duped by Pakistan, it is nonetheless incumbent upon Mr. Obama to strictly reconsider additional aid packages to Pakistan. It is also the duty of the Obama administration to ensure that the aid, both monetary and in the form of weapons is not utilised against India. It needs to understand that such alarming developments will not be in the interest of peace in South Asia. The same has been reiterated by the naval chief Admiral Suresh Mehta who expressed concern over reports of Pakistan’s illegal modification of the US supplied anti-ship Harpoon missiles to strike land targets saying that it was against India’s interests. But strangely, the Obama administration has chosen not to vehemently protest Islamabad’s gross violation despite the revelation by the New York Times of the breach of understanding by Islamabad. This is apparent from the ‘unpublicised diplomatic protest’ lodged with Pakistani PM Yousuf Raza Gilani and other officials. This timid non-response indicates that Washington’s dependence on Pakistani cooperation in Afghanistan is too great. “This is the danger of proliferation that we have been mentioning to America that whatever you have given to Pakistan will not be used in self defence. “This (modification of the Harpoon missile) has nothing to do with self defence and is against India’s national interest,” said Mehta recently.

Furthermore, Pakistan’s stockpiling of atomic weapons beyond the required deterrence also seems to be quite baffling and raises several questions. One naturally wonders whether the focus of such mindless additons of these deadly weapons is solely on India? Apprehensions of a similar nature were voiced by the Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor recently saying that if such reports were true, it was a cause of grave concern for India. ‘’There is a difference between having a degree of deterrence which is required for one’s own protection and going beyond that. If news reports of them having 70-90 atomic bombs are correct then I think they are going well beyond the so called requirement of deterrence and that is something which is of concern to all of us”, he is reported to have said. Incidently, this statement came on the heels of an article published in the “bulletin of the atomic scientist” about Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. In the article, the US experts Robert Norris and Hans Kristensen estimate that Pakistan’s nuclear stockpile has jumped to an estimated 70-90 warheads from a previous figure of 60. While Islamabad has not refuted  the charges of expanding its atomic weapons stockpile, it has categorically rejected the accusation that it has reconfigured anti-ship missile bought from the US saying that the missiles were indigenously developed. It needs no reiteration that Pakistan, a major recipient of the US largesse has violated US arms export laws. Now that the matter is in the open, the US Government must not ignore such development and take firn action.

Indeed, Pakistan protests that the missiles were produced locally, do not sound anything but hollow. The truth is that Pakistan is not fully committed to meeting US goals of parting ways with Taliban, while continuing to wage a proxy war against India. Infact, they believe that they need to keep extremists under their wings so that India does not gain influence once US leaves Afghanistan.

India has time and again brought the danger of unrestricted military supply to Pakistan to the notice of Washington. But it did not have any reaction from the other side. Now that the US Government has itself complained about Pakistan’s deception, we may hope against hope that something positive comes out of it. Though it’s more than likely that Washington will only put up a show of protesting and will not act decisively against Islamabad. At the same time, there is an urgent need for the Obama administration to reconsider whether Pak should be a recipient of US aid at all.

As for India, we have so far refused to take decisive action. However, the need of the hour is to shed our beseeching attitude towards the US and put pressure on the Obama administration to stop all aid to Pakistan. The recent development shows that both New Delhi as well as the International Community will have to ensure that Pakistan’s sinister design is defeated at any cost.