Pakistan is a victim of terrorism as well; what good would attacking Pakistan's newly elected democratic government do to halt terrorist attacks against both Pakistan and India, and what do people in India think?"
Well, to answer the second question first, everywhere that we have been this week, we have heard two things - criticism of the Indian government for failing to protect people adequately and for ignoring some of the signs that led up to these attacks, but also growing animus and anger towards Pakistan, which, as you know, is being blamed by the Indian government for these attacks. Now, the blame that India attaches to Pakistan has been expressed in a fairly blunt fashion.
The Pakistani government, as you note, is indeed a relatively young government, and now, as the week closes, the Indian authorities appear to be beginning to distinguish the Pakistani government and its president and prime minister from the Pakistani intelligence services.
So at the close of the week here, we're hearing more suggestions that perhaps the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, was actively involved in helping the fighters with Lashkar-e-Taiba, the "army of the pure," a Kashmiri, militant separatist group that launched this attack.
And perhaps Pakistan's democratically elected politicians were unaware of the attack; that's the latest claim that the Indian government is making. That is a much more subtle and nuanced version of events than was being presented earlier in the week by the Indian authorities, and many observers hope that perhaps that suggests that some of the tension in the relationship between Delhi and Islamabad may be about to subside.
Forum Introduction
