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What the Prime Minister misjudged was the time and place. He was unwise to bring up the subject during a trade mission to India; it is a subject which deserved a statesmanlike speech on another occasion. It is too big and important an issue to slip into conversation, to try to help British businessmen flog ball-bearings in Mumbai. He could not have predicted the air crash and disastrous floods in Pakistan, but he should know that diplomacy always pays off.
But David Cameron now has an opportunity to put things right, and he should not miss it. Pakistan is far from a model of Western democracy and its president is not the greatest statesman, but it is an ally in a part of the world that is not thick with them. The Prime Minister must begin by acknowledging that Pakistan is itself a victim of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. Indeed, they have killed 3,500 Pakistani citizens during the past three years: more than died on 9/11.
Islamic terrorist groups were allowed to grow before 9/11 partly because the West failed to take enough notice of the warnings that came from Islamic countries themselves. Rather than co-operate in the battle against al-Qa’eda, we invited terrorists to claim asylum in London and carry on their operations here. Take Abu Qatada, wanted by Jordan in connection with bomb attacks in Amman in 1998 and since named by the UN Security Council as an al-Qa’eda operative. Under the Human Rights Act, he cannot be deported on the grounds that Jordan can’t be trusted not to torture him, and so he has instead been allowed to set up in a council house in west London. Or take Abid Naseer, accepted by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission to have been behind a planned al-Qa’eda attack, but nevertheless rejected for deportation to the US.
Zadari could, if he chose, accuse Britain, too, of looking both ways on terrorism: barking at foreign countries for doing too little to combat Islamists, yet at the same time allowing terrorists to operate beneath our noses. Pakistan is a poorly functioning state, but we must do business with it if we want to defeat al-Qa’eda. David Cameron must take some time out from wooing India to extend the hand of friendship to its enemy.
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