Author: PTI
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: June 4, 2011
URL: http://www.dailypioneer.com/343453/US-had-one-bin-Laden-in-Pak-India-has-half-a-dozenThink-tank.html
Several terrorists charged by India with mass
killings on its soil have been living in Pakistan, an eminent American think
tank has said, noting that the US has not yet made it a priority to hold Islamabad
to account for the infiltration of militants across the border.
Indians have been watching the Pakistani army
send "armed young men with groups like Lashkar(-e-Toeba) across that
border with impunity for years, and the United States has not made it a priority
of holding Pakistan to account for the rates of infiltration," Steve
Coll, President and CEO of New America Foundation, a Washington-based think
tank, said at a Congressional hearing.
"It would be unreasonable to say you
should have zero infiltrations into complex territory, big mountains, but
the rates of infiltration that Pakistan has allowed suggest state policy,"
he told lawmakers.
It is important for Americans to understand
that the ambiguity in the nature of the haven that Osama bin Laden found in
Pakistan is not, by itself, unusual in the country, Coll said.
"From India's perspective, there are
five or six listed terrorists living around the country (Pakistan) in similar
circumstances. Sometimes they're judged to be under house arrest. Sometimes
they're notional fugitives. Sometimes they really are difficult to find,"
he said yesterday.
Many of these people have either admitted
to or been credibly charged with mass killings on Indian soil, Coll said,
responding to questions of US lawmakers.
"So these patterns look outrageous to
the United States when the personality is someone like Osama bin Laden. But
in the context of the way Pakistan has evolved in the last 10 years, his (bin
Laden) circumstances were not, by themselves, unusual," he said.
