"even if its suspicions may have been based on little hard evidence."
Oh really !!
India has been suffering on it's western border since independence. The US government woke up to the bogey of terrorism only after 9/11. India has more than enough resilience to withstand Pakistan's policy of inflicting a thousand cuts.
I would really like to know from the author which part of Indian accusations does he consider untrue and mere saber-rattling, in hindsight. Also, the "schadenfreude" is more than justifiable given that India has lost more than any other country in this war again terrorism (well, maybe apart from the ones who have harboured terrorists as "strategic assets").
Although, it's heartening to know that American leaders and generals do agree with the Indian views in private even though they would loathe to admit them in public for fear of upsetting a "strategic relationship" with their perpetual ally.

Similar to the US, India should have its intelligence service operating in Pakistan and, similarily, take out the terrorists operating there.

It may be hard for the western world to believe in India's assertions in the last 2 decades . But for the people living less than 20 miles frm the Pak border in India and elsewhere , they knew how logistically possible it was for Pak to harbour and transport terrorism .
If policy administrators and the govt of the US still believe in propping up Pak with billions of dollars to buy sophisticated weapons , which is adding to its capabilities in military conflicts with nations instead of fighting organisations like TTP ,Let,Haqqani etc.,then it's the next big mistake to be made in the region's history after the mistake in the 80's by the CIA to fund and help grow the mujaheddin . The repurcussions of these will be felt in the next decade or so when rogue actors may be in a position to take hold of the nuclear and conventional weaponry in Pakistan.
How much faith can we have in Pak is also evident from a decade ago when Gen Musharraf,later it's president for close to a decade , planned the Kargil incursion while the then Pak govt was on a peace mission with India justifying by saying that it was a nibbling operation whereas it was a full scale bite of territory.

Pakistan's perspective and analysis by a Pakistani Origin analyst while India's perspective from a "Gora boy" - Henry Foy?

When will the west ever understand the way a society functions in countries like India and Pakistan? We may have crowded cities, towns, and villages but people take notice of things around them. A new building in a neighborhood means people understanding and taking note of it. The mansion for Laden can never get unnoticed by the Police in the area.

Pak Intelligence (if you want to call it that way) not only fails to root out criminals (bin Laden, Dawood Ibrahim, etc.) and terrorist organizations like alQaida and LeT but also harbor these criminals. The master minds of the attacks on the Taj Hotel, Railway station, and the Jewish house in Mumbai are all residing in Pakistan.

When will the US issue sanctions on Pakistan?

"even if its suspicions may have been based on little hard evidence."

Hi

I live in Mumbai, and I do remember November 2008. Taj, Oberoi and Cafe Leopold are real places for me. I guess the 10 ambassadors of peace who came visiting our city must have sailed from either Maldives, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh or Japan. Surely not Pakistan. You are right, little hard evidence. Even I am sometimes surprised by the sheer pettiness of us Indians.

Little hard evidence?

2 decades of bombings, tens of thousands in Indian deaths, civilians and soldiers alike, and this analyst thinks India doesnt have 'hard evidence'??

Thats like saying that US never had hard evidence of Osama's involvement in 9/11. That the FBI never officially charged him with that crime.

Oh wait.

India has lost so many of her people to Pak sponsored terrorism. And we were always told to tone down our pressure on Pak, long time U.S. ally. So what's this 'schadenfreude' talk by the author? We DID tell you so! This is a case of Washington's bad memory or outright ignorance instead of Delhi's schadenfreude!

Why not discuss how the CIA brought Bin Laden to power or how America would probably turn a blind eye to terrorism against India as long as its own interests are served? This is an extremely biased piece that mocks India's entire struggle with terrorism!

I am an Indian and have to agree that the ISI and maybe the Pak military had knowledge of the whereabouts of Osama Bin Ladin and not only did they know where he was they also supported him.

Then again i don't think the whole of the organisations knew about this but some elements did - the same elements that hate India and keep trying to find ways of attacking us by proxy because they cannot fight the might of the Indian Armed Forces.

The Indian economy is thriving with jobs being created in many different sectors including delivery jobs , banking jobs and IT jobs where as at the moment Pakistan is held in a big war that is very difficult for Pakistan to win.

No offence meant to anyone reading this just my thoughts.

I congratulate Mr Henry Foy for a well balanced and well researched article. Whereas, it clearly shows the intellectual prowess of the author, at the same time, schadenfreude of the Indians is also evident from their comments on this article.
At least now you should understand that you can not be-fool the world with blatant lies, like suffered thousands of casualties in war against terrorism, my foot you have suffered. Idiots, it is Pakistan who has suffered over thirty thousand deaths in this US war again terrorism, which essentially is war for survival of Pakistan as well.
Regarding Mumbai attacks, you Indians also blamed ISI in Samjotha Express train incidence, in which hundred of innocent Muslims and of course Hindus were set ablaze alive.
And now after 7-8 years, your own court has proved that a fundamental Hindu Pandit, in connivance with serving Colonel Prohit of Indian army were the main culprits.
As regards Mumbai incidence of 2008, I have my deepest sympathies with all those who suffered, but let us wait for another 10 years or so once your own courts will declare that Pakistan has no role in it and youth produced were abducted from Nepal.
At the end, I once again congratulate the author of this article for a well researched and highly balanced article for the first time on FP, at least, I have seen such a square and steady article.
And dont worry about the Indian comments and schadenfreude, keep it up.

The title of this article is dishonest and dangerous. Henry Foy seems to be condescending towards the victims of Mumbai attacks. That is unacceptable for any journalist of any repute. I will mark Foy down as a biased journalist that needs to be avoided in future.

You want hard evidence of Pakistani involvement in terror? For that you have to do some research, Mr Foy. Knowledge does not come easy, nor is journalism simply a matter of learning to write English. Read these journalists who are among the top acknowledged international experts on South Asia/terrorism- Ahmed Rashid of Pakistan, Steve Coll of USA, and Rohan Gunaratna of Sri Lanka. They have written plenty of articles for top publication like the NYRB, New Yorker etc which exposes the fundamentally criminal nature of the Pakistani Army and intelligence services and how deeply they are involved in terrorist organizations.

Schadenfreude is pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others. So, what is Pakistan's misfortune - being caught hiding Bin Laden or not knowing that Bin Laden was hiding?

India's misfortune has been having Pakistan as a neighbor - a neighbor that actively supports terror. India has lost lives and property due to these acts of terror planned in Pakistani soil and executed with the support of Pakistani establishments. And, what has USofA and rest of the west doing about it - telling India to kiss and make up.

Do you think US and the west would come to India's support if India did a similar operation to take down Dawood Ibrahim, who India believes is hiding in pakistan. BTW, Dawood is an indian citizen.

Calling it as we see it and having evidence to back it up is not making it up. It may offend the American sense of political correctness. Hell, its our lives... we care.

Well done to the CIA, the US Special Forces personnel and their allies who carried out this operation. The true story will never be revealed in full, and those involved will have their identities protected for the rest of their lives. The burial at sea was clever as it will deprive the terrorist acolytes of a shrine to flock to in the future. Justice always catches up with people. We all reap what we sow eventually.

Was it legal to kill Usama Bin Laden ?

Imagine there is a very large spreadsheet on which are listed all the merit points and demerit points of all 6 billion people alive today on Planet Earth. The real tzaddiks are at the top, i.e. Righteous people whose whole life is committed to making the world a better place. At the very bottom are those intent on killing, harming and maiming as many people as possible. The top of the ladder people have view the universe as stable, ordered, benevolent and expansive. The cellar dwellers have a contractionary, violent, myopic, chaotic frame of reference. On any scale Usama Bin Laden was way down the scale. It is never an easy decision to take a life, but as mastermind of the heinous crime of Sep. 11th, 2001 he deserved to die. It is possible to redeem some evil energies but Al Qaida still poses a threat to world peace. If Al Qaida also wants a world free of Jews they are going to lose. Someone else tried that once.

Regarding the public displays in America…

Maybe it is not revenge that you saw in Times Square and outside The White House but relief. President Obama has been very measured and non-triumphalist in regards to the death of UBL. He does not want to inflame the Muslim world. Most fair minded Muslims realise that UBL killed many of their brethren and had gone off the deep end. Why even the PA leaders stated that his death was a positive for world peace. The USA is a free country. President Obama cannot control how people react. Such national displays are not without precedence. Did you know that not long after the devastating Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, on VJ Day August 15th, 1945 to be exact many Australians celebrated wildly in the street, at home and in pubs all around the country ? We are more understated in our national pride than Americans for sure, but the point stands.

Regarding the possibility that Zawahiri will be the new leader of Al Qaida…

This scenario brings up memories of that whack-a-mole game. I think anyone thinking about taking over the reins of Al Qaida should consider another career. It is not a good game to be involved in.

Regarding the release of photos…

President Obama is holding the photos back to make people trust him. Truth can be extremely powerful when revealed at the right time. It’s all in the timing.

The biggest canard that Pakistan has spread with U. S. connivance is that ’nuclear weapons are in danger of falling in the hands of Islamic fundamentalists if Pakistani government collapses’ when ‘Pakistan's Army and ISI are covertly SPONSORING four militant groups - Haqqani‘s HQN, Mullah Omar‘s QST, Al Qaeda and LeT - and will not abandon them for any amount of US money‘, as previous US ambassador Anne Patterson to Pakistan clearly pointed finger at Pakistani Army and ISI for supporting Osama bin Laden‘s Al Qaeda when she wrote in a secret review in 2009 according to diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks show.

Ambassador Patterson had NO reason to mislead her own State Department and U. S. government.

How can Pakistan be in danger of falling to the Islamic fundamentalists if Pakistani Army and ISI are SPONSORING those very Islamic fundamentalists led by Osama bin Laden, Haqqani, Mullah Omar and Hafiz Saeed as reported by ambassador Patterson?

Evidence kept popping up again and again that Afghanistan’s Taliban insurgency is fueled from across the border in Pakistan but U. S. administrations, congress and military kept accepting Pakistan’s alibis that it did not do no such thing.

Afghan officials from Karzai to Spanta kept asking that ‘the war against terrorism is not in Afghanistan’s homes and villages. But rather this war is in the sanctuaries, funding centers and training places of terrorism which are in Pakistan. Our international allies have the ability to destroy these Pakistani sanctuaries, but the question is why they are not doing it?“ But nobody listened the cries of poor Afghans.
US just kept deliberately ignoring Taliban’s Pakistani connections in fueling and sustaining Afghan insurgency as reported by Matt Waldman in ‘The sun in the sky‘ on 6/13/2010, corroborated by WikiLeaks leaks on 7/25/2010 and then further corroborated by Chris Alexander, Canadian ambassador to Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005 and Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Afghanistan from 2005 until 2009 in his article on 7/30/2010 titled ‘The huge scale of Pakistan‘s complicity‘.

Let us see if U. S. once again allows Pakistan to get away with a whitewash and a wink and a nod.

Mr Foy is the Reuters correpondent in India and for him to make a statement that there is hardly any hard intelligence, merely exposes a bias or just that he is totally out of the loop in India so lets make a little list for him.

1. Ajmal Kasab confesses and names names in his official confession.

2. His parents are located and interviewed by a British journalist in their local village. They disappear the next day and never seen again.

3. Phone taps and messages given to the world. Vopice recordings asked for but never sent by pakistan.

4. Pakistan itself has arrested a few people and even located where the outboard motor for the launch was purchased and imprisoned the culprits. That their trial progresses only on adjournments is another matter.

5. The confessions of David Headley and the US letting India interrogate him in the USA.

6. What crimes has he been arrested for and put on trial in the USA? Why is the ISI chief also named in that trial and his prenese required in the USA?

Mr Foy please define what is hard intelligence. Is it the ISI coming to India and giving a confession in triplicate personally to you the only evidence that will convince you? Or is that you are beyond convincing on this come what may?

I am an indian and under no circumstances want anything to do with any country that has repeatedly been proven to be anti-india. full stop. the best india can do is protect itself better. improve security get tough and tell the americans to go away too, like they did with aircraft deal. Obama has ridiculed india far too often and without consequences, he needs to earn our contracts before getting them. till such time lets just concentrate on improving india and saving it from the likes of scam minister Singh, scam leader sonia et al

This article is a gift to people of India for having attitude of being too soft to its enemy. Our politicians believe in writing letters to the Enemy even after having deadly Mmumbai attacks rather than taking hard and irreversible steps. We still believe in running the old dialouge nonsense yielding no result from last 60 years. Some of our people like Arundhati Roy and others come between rigmarole of long hauled Law process finally giving Death sentence to terrorists like Afzal & Kasab in the name of human rights. These all things are enough to prove how Incompetent and soft states India is. Our President dont want to take a sin on her part by cancelling unfruitful clemency appeal by Afzal nor our PM want to accelerate process of law for Kasab to justify his deeds. All our politician want to just wait and watch policy. When will they learn that Pakistan was neither and will never be our friend no matter what help and friendship we afford them ?
As far as Pakistan is concerned this is not a time to live the Gandhian thaughts but its a high time to apply strong practices of Subhash Chandra Bose & Vir Bhagat Singh. We dont want any permanent seat on UNSC by negotiating our domestic security.
Pakistan is our enemy and a battle is bound to happen.
And at last due to this "always on a crossroad" attitude followed by our politicians, some authors like Foy will write articles like this. Its Indian attitude which has given fodder and motivation to write it. I still remeber the article by and Barbara Crossette "the_elephant_in_the_room" published in FP where she considered India as a potential threat to the whole world. Really... FP is this a forum of chit chatters or a serious magazine business ? Do USA and Europe only make this world ? Atleast think twice before you publish such stupid articles.

Mr. Foy’s articles are very provocative and incorrect.
Point #1: The author makes reference to the US urging India to tone down its rhetoric.
Yet he does not point out that many other countries (US) do the same thing. It is not rhetoric rather frustration.
Point #2: The author talks about Indian leaders’ knowledge of Islamabad’s key role with dealing with Taliban, LeT, alQ. The author goes on to say that the death of OBL points how much the two countries need each other.
The author here is assuming that the same courtesy extended to the US will be extended to the Indians. This is a bad assumption. While some of the anti-US elements are under the hammer, all of the anti-Indian elements are being encouraged. Furthermore, the death of OBL only shows us more proof of the double nature of Pak’s policy.
Point #3: The author talks about making historic news as ammunition.
Well, the author would also have to charge the Afghans with the same bill. The Afghan officials were sending texts to CNN after the death of OBL with “I told you so”.
Maybe the author needs to think that both India, and Afghanistan are on to something. They’ve seen the whole Pak show that is being played for America right now. This is why both countries “cackle”. They’ve seen this movie a million times. They both know how the story goes.
Point #4: The author says “New Delhi has missed no opportunity..”
Why should a nation miss any opportunity? Did the Obama admin miss this particular one? This just shows that the author just doesn’t comprehend the scale of the Mumbai attack. The author also fails to point out India’s inaction afterwards, and provides no comments on its restraint.
I’ve had the misfortune of reading Mr. Foy’s work on Reuters. I don’t mind that he is critical because only through critical journalism we can move forward and improve. However, Mr. Foy’s work doesn’t fall into this category. The author just paints a certain picture without providing any real material to back it up. The author never asks why, what, how. If one takes away all the quotes, and looks at the author's points - all you get is opinion. There is no analysis, or any explanations. Just biased opinions.

I can only agree with you on the biased reporting of the Indian 24/7 news channels that are of the highly sensational variety, whose equivalent can be found in America's FOX news channel. But even in the media, you have not noted the print media, wherein there are prominent newspapers, like the Hindu (which is noted for its balanced reporting ) that have not been so jingoistic as you believe.

As for the rest of the article, its highly misinterpreted. Yes, we appear to say "We told you so!" but it is a demand for a recognition of our knowledge of the fact that Pakistan is not an effective partner in the struggle against Salafi and Wahabbi influenced terrorism, especially when it is a fact that the Pakistani state uses this ideology for its own interests in checking India by making Indians feel insecure or getting provoked into entering into a confrontation that would either lead to a devastating conflict (which Indian policy makers know is undesirable and have prudently avoided it) or channel the anger of the Pakistanis against their state towards India (which has been throughout the history of Pakistan been portrayed as an existential threat to the existence of Pakistan). However, the use of Islamic fundamentalism always backfires. America realised it when Al-Qaeda emerged, but the Pakistani state has not, in practice, realized it. (By the way, your esteemed magazine [no sarcasm intended] has recognized Pakistani state's practice of using fundamentalist Islam as a policy of maintaining power and countering India).

Yes, we need each other, but it is Pakistan, not India, that needs to be convinced about dealing with the threat of Islamic terrorists. Pakistan should give up the idea of India ever willing to destroy in its entirety. True, there are right wing elements who always preach the extreme, but many of those who bother about foreign affairs in India understand that in the long run being antagonistic towards Pakistan can only worsen relations between the two, and would not help in the development of the region. However, that is not the case where Pakistan is concerned, where the right is allowed to dominate thinking with impunity (Salman Taseer's death is an example of the nature of public opinion over there) and therefore, there is blindness and confusion over how to deal with fundamentalism, which has to be resolved, not by us Indians through force, but by the important elements in the Pakistani state, who must not fear us or the fundamentalists, if they sincerely want peace and proper coexistence, which many Indians are always willing to offer.

As far as the Indian leadership's response is concerned, you, as a foreign correspondent stationed here, have done an incomplete job in getting your information straight. Yes, the response so far that is being broadcasted, is that of P. Chidambaram, the Home Minister and S.M. Krishna, the Foreign Minister, who have only been demanding the dismantling of Pak's terror infrastructure, this being the only reply to the death of Osama. You say that it shows that the Indian government is not thanking the US for a job well done.
Well you are looking at the wrong people (Krishna included). Chidambaram is firstly the Home Minister, who is responsible for internal security, which definitely would have to deal with the terrorists who infiltrate India from Pakistan and who receive support from the Pakistani state and therefore he has used this event as an opportunity of demanding the end of the major source of a security problem in India (such a claim receiving even more support in light of Osama's lair being in the Pakistani heartland, which raises [repeating it again] the effectiveness and sincerity of Pakistan's anti-terror activities and systems). Secondly, you should have also noted the fact that Chidambaram can sometimes be an opportunist, who would love to prove himself as an effective leader, especially when questions are being raised like whether the present PM Manmohan Singh can remain in office and if not, who would be the ideal replacement for him.
As far as Krishna is concerned, he has to demand Pakistan's commitment against Islamic terrorism, as that has been the main practice of the Foreign Ministry with regard to Indo-Pak relations, which as mentioned earlier, is a valid claim. Secondly, he is sometimes careless enough to forget important details, like congratulating the job well done by the US. An earlier example of his fiasco when he gave a speech in the UN would show his personal competence in such matters and therefore the culpability is on him and not the government of India.
So the bad response is not the responsibility of the government but of two ministers. I certainly would not think the PM ( who has a significant hold over foreign affairs) would forget to congratulate Obama while criticizing Pakistan.

So do not think that just because a few sensationalist channels and ministers are eager to bash or bait Pakistan, it means that many Indians are eager to do it. They have other pressing concerns too and they want peace, they pity the plight of Pakistanis but they understand that interference in their affairs will only worsen, especially when they view us as an existential foe. All that we want is that the Pakistani state (both its government and military) understand this and stop baiting us and being half hearted on Wahabi terrorism.