Why India lacks faith in Pakistani admn

Slain former premier Benazir Bhutto's writer-social activist niece Fatima Bhutto has said that given the 'Pakistan government's track record', one can understand India's lack of faith in the country's justice system in the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attacks.

'Yousuf Raza Gilani, the prime minister, has insisted that Pakistan is not only working to track down those who may have had links to the attacks, but also promised that if India's allegations prove true, the perpetrators will be put on trial,' Fatima wrote in a column for Al-Jazeera.

'Given the government's track record, one can understand India's lack of faith in Pakistan's justice system,' she wrote in the piece titled, S Asian neighbours' linked destinies.

'The Mumbai attacks, gruesome in nature and planning, have already been given a 9/11 nomenclature - 11/26. That is how many in Mumbai now refer to the violent siege of their city. While the world watches and waits for answers, and for those responsible to be condemned.'

'Pakistan's government has provided little assurance that peace will prevail between the two countries in the coming year,' she wrote in the article authored along with her step-mother Ghinwa Bhutto.

Fatima, who is often compared to her aunt Benazir whose first death anniversary is being observed on Saturday, criticised the Pakistan government for letting US drones operate in the country's airspace.

'The other major achievement has been to sit by as US drones travel through its sovereign airspace and attack Pakistani targets at their own discretion,' she wrote.

According to Fatima, justice for Mumbai and for those killed by unmanned drones in Waziristan is interlinked and the link is inexorably Kashmir.

'Beefing up security apparatuses in capital cities like Delhi and Islamabad is not enough; it is in fact too little. Our governments have proven, in India and Pakistan both, that they cannot give us justice, while our intelligence agencies have shown us that they can no longer be the solution.

'Rather they are more often a large part of the problem. The solution then is an autonomous, demilitarised Kashmir,' Bhutto's niece wrote.

'The only force, and it is a force, that can push for peace between the two sibling countries, is the Indian and Pakistani people,' she added.

It is in their hands that South Asia will ultimately find its peace, but until then, the longer our governments ignore their population's calls for peace, the longer India and Pakistan will both suffer more violence,' wrote Fatima, who is the author of 8:50am, a collection of survivors' accounts from the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan.