Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, soon after taking oath as Foreign Minister in Prime Minister Imran Khan’s cabinet on Monday extended the olive branch of talks to India and Afghanistan. But the moot question is whether Qureshi can be trusted. In 2008, he was the Foreign Minister and visiting New Delhi when 10 Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militants massacred innocent people on the streets of India’s commercial capital Mumbai. Today, he is in Imran Khan’s camp and the former cricketer ever since he formed the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) party has been spewing venom against India. Moreover, taken into account the fact that the Pakistan military establishment has solidly backed Khan to win the Pakistan elections, so as to keep a hold on the elected dispensation, any talk from the civilian establishment on peace talks with India is meaningless. Almost every civilian government had tried but without any results. And every time there were talks of peace there were more terrorist activities.

After signing of the Simla Pact between the then prime ministers of India and Pakistan, Indira Gandhi and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, in 1972 peace prevailed for more than a decade. The 1977 coup by Pakistan Army chief Zia Ul Haq and subsequent hanging of Bhutto brought the situation back to square one in Pakistan. In 1990 the attacks on Kashmiri pundits by the jihadi elements aggravated the situation in Kashmir. Things took a turn for the worse after Pervez Musharraf seized power in 1999 overthrowing the elected government of Nawaz Sharif. Since then India has been at the receiving end from Pakistan based terrorists and ISI covert activities.

On the other hand, Prime Minister Narendra Modi after coming to power walked the extra mile to have peace with Pakistan. However, the more friendship India showed, Pakistan replied with more aggression by sending trained terrorists to Kashmir. India was even forced to conduct surgical strikes on Pakistan soil to destroy terror modules entrenched across the Kashmir borders. Pakistan has a larger anti-India agenda and India has to be more cautious in dealing with Pakistan. That country is a crouching tiger with a hidden dragon behind it.