The United States should get Islamabad to crack down on Pakistan-based groups that carry out terrorist acts in Afghanistan and India, the Heritage Foundation has said in a recent report.
The report, titled Denying Terrorists Safe Haven in Pakistan, said, 'Pakistan has traditionally relied on violent extremism to accomplish its strategic objectives in both Afghanistan and India'.
It noted that the upsurge in Taliban attacks against coalition forces in Afghanistan and continuing links of global terrorist networks to groups in Pakistan are leading many in the US to question Islamabad's commitment to the global war on terrorism.
The report also suggested that Washington should review Pakistani efforts to deny terrorists a safe haven and reassess its policy regarding Pakistan, which is at the centre of international anti-terrorism efforts.
The report was written by Lisa Curtis, who till recently was a senior staffer on the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, reporting directly to the panel's chairman, Senator Richard Lugar.
In the report, Curtis acknowledged that Pakistan had made invaluable contributions to combating al Qaeda in the past five years, capturing scores of key leaders and helping foil numerous deadly plots.
'However, Islamabad will need to adopt a more comprehensive policy against violent extremism to fully deny groups and individuals the use of Pakistani territory as a base for global jihad,' the report said.
Although President Pervez Musharraf had spoken of turning Pakistan into a moderate and modern Islamic state, his government had taken few concrete steps to make things hard those trying to destabilise Afghanistan or India, and plotting international acts of terrorism, it said.
The report noted that the links 'between those involved in the foiled London airliner bomb plot in mid-August and Pakistani terrorist groups that traditionally operate in Jammu and Kashmir demonstrate the dangers of not cracking down on violent extremism in Pakistan'.
The report noted that Musharraf had been reluctant to rein in jihadis in Kashmir mainly because his government believed militancy is the only way to force New Delhi in negotiations over the contested territory.
It acknowledged that Musharraf 'would find in politically challenging to pursue a broader crackdown on domestic terrorists that strike in India and abroad,' because the religious parties 'would label such a crackdown as a surrender to India over Kashmir'.
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