Yet again, the Islamic State of Pakistan has done what it has done so many times in the past. Terrorist chieftain Hafiz Saeed, along with four of his despicable lieutenants, have been placed under ‘house arrest’. His outfit Jamaat-ud-Dawa (itself a rebranded version of the terrorist organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba and a sort of a holding company of the LeT) and its ‘charity wing’, Falah-i-Insaniyat (FiF), have been placed on a terror watch list. Saeed has also been put on the Exit Control list, which imposes a travel ban on him (something the Pakistanis had to do ever since Saeed was designated by the United Nations as an international terrorist). According to the Pakistan military’s spokesman, this is a “policy decision taken by state institutions keeping in view the national interest”! But scepticism abounds because this is a tired old script that has played out half a dozen times before.

The way this script unfolds is that a big show is made of arresting a notorious terrorist; he and some of his associates are placed under ‘protective custody’; their offices are sealed and accounts (which have already been cleaned out) frozen. Then the organisation is made defunct and resurrected under a new brand name – there is already talk that the bulk of JuD assets will now be operated by a new organisation, Tehreek-e-Azaadi Kashmir TeAK – the arrested men appeal their detention, the state files a very weak chargesheet, which is thrown out by the courts (again, after going through all the motions of due process), and while all this is happening the pressure eases, allowing everyone to going back to business as usual. To give the devil its due, Pakistanis have honed this standard operating procedure of ‘deny, delay, deflect and deceive’ into a fine art form, to get away with murder. Worse, they are allowed to get away with murder not so much because they are smart, but more because of the naivety, stupidity, cupidity, complicity of their interlocutors, and/or often enough, because countries and leaders dealing with Pakistan allow expedience to overrule experience.

Until this arrest virtually every Pakistani would go blue in the face explaining that Pakistan’s national interest militated against action against people like Saeed. This was partly because of the fear of a blowback (precisely the sort of nonsense the world was fed to justify the absence of a military operation in North Waziristan for more than a decade). Partly it was because Pakistan did not have any evidence to book Saeed and his associates (once again, the sort of dissemble that is used when the Pakistani state doesn’t want to do anything. Of course, when it decides to act, then the niceties of law and justice don’t prevent it from even killing one score alleged terrorists in a cold-blooded encounter – Malik Ishaq of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is a case in point). And partly because taking action against ‘good’ terrorists like Saeed did not make sense because of their utility against India and also their utility in making better Muslims of the Baloch, converting the left-over Hindus in Sindh, and having an armed militia that could serve as deniable instruments in the dirty wars that Pakistan was fighting not just in Afghanistan but also in other parts of the region (Bangladesh is an example).

So how is it that out of the blue, ‘state institutions’ (presumably the military and its intelligence agency along with other lesser mortals like the civilian government) took a ‘policy decision’ to put up an elaborate charade of cracking down on Saeed and company for reasons of ‘national interest’? What made Pakistani authorities suddenly decide that their ‘national interest’ is not served by letting their favourite son fulminate, incite and organise terrorist attacks against India, but are better served by detaining and forcing him to remain silent for some time? Even more interesting is the fact that he is such an obedient servant of Pakistani that he appears to have readily acquiesced in this entire move, something that should inform everyone of not just the inextricably organic links between the state and so-called ‘non-state actors’, but also that this entire exercise is nothing but an act of deception by the Pakistani state.

The question is why? What changed to force the Pakistanis to resort to this subterfuge? There are three or four possibilities:

The first is that Pakistan anticipated imminent and unbearable pressure from the new Trump administration in the United States of America. The so-called ‘Muslim ban’ and statements from top administration officials – that people from countries like Pakistan will be subjected to ‘extreme vetting’ before being allowed into the US – are being seen as an intimation of the storm that could hit Pakistan soon. Although Pakistan has managed to dupe preceding US administrations, things could be different this time around with Trump and the old game of deception may not work well anymore. It is therefore possible that by pretending to act against JuD, the Pakistanis are sending a signal that they are ready to clean up their act, of course without doing anything at all to actually put the jihad factory in Pakistan out of business. If indeed, the Trump factor has been weighing on Pakistan, then chances are that it is at best a contributing factor, and not the critical factor behind the eyewash of an action. The reason for this is that US pressure hasn’t really made much difference even when Pakistan depended on US aid, and is unlikely to work now when Pakistan sees China replacing the US as its patron.

The second possibility, and one about which there is some speculation inside and outside Pakistan is that the Chinese could have been asking Pakistan to at least take some cosmetic action against the jihadists. This could partly be to ward off possible US sanctions, which would jeopardise Chinese investments in Pakistan. It may also have something to do with purported Chinese advice to their Pakistani underlings to cool things with India so that the CPEC projects aren’t disturbed. But the Chinese angle seems a little farfetched especially in light of China vetoing the UN sanctions on Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar and taking other less-than-friendly steps against India. Moreover, given Pakistan’s utility to China is that of a proverbial dog that keeps snapping at India’s heel (and the jihadis are an integral part of the snapping routine), China wouldn’t want Pakistan to give up its USP which is its nuisance value. At best, China could counsel Pakistan to not let things spiral out of control, but otherwise China wouldn’t be averse to seeing Pakistan continuing with its inimical policies towards India. The chatter about possible Chinese intervention in the JuD case could even have been peddled deliberately to make even this eyewash of an action palatable to the Pakistani public. After all, it is one thing to be seen to be succumbing to US pressure, and quite another to be doing something because China wants it.

The third possibility is that this could be a gesture by the Nawaz Sharif government to India to restart an engagement process. While Nawaz Sharif’s opponents are trying to peddle this narrative, the fact of the matter is that there is no way Sharif would do anything against someone with a celebrity status like Hafiz Saeed, and that too for opening a line with India. Doing so would open Sharif to accusations of bending before India, something he can ill-afford even if the military gives him a long rope (which it can pull anytime to hang him). What is more, Sharif has ratcheted up rhetoric on Kashmir to a point from which he will find it difficult to climb down.

Finally, the fake action against JuD and Hafiz Saeed could have been the outcome of what a Pakistani newspaper has reported is a warning issued by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) that it could impose crippling financial sanctions unless action was taken against the UN-sanctioned JuD. The FATF threat appears to be the most plausible explanation why Pakistan, which has not moved a small finger to place curbs on the activities of a UN-designated terrorist organisation like JuD in all these years, has suddenly decided in ‘national interest’ to take, or at least be seen to be taking, action against Saeed and his organisation. Of course, given the fact that it is pretty much business as usual – the offices that had been shut down have opened, no accounts were frozen since all that Pakistanis have done is put JuD and FiF on the terror watch-list, the cadres and rest of the infrastructure remained undisturbed and were free to continue with their hate-mongering and terror activities (albeit under the brand name of TeAK) is unlikely to impress the FATF, or for that matter the Americans.

But even if for reasons of expediency the FATF and the Americans get taken in by Pakistan’s flimflam, there is absolutely no reason why India should allow itself to get tricked once again by this patent deception by the Pakistanis. If the statement issued by the Ministry of External Affairs is anything to go by – “only a credible crackdown on the mastermind of the Mumbai terrorist attack and terrorist organisations involved in cross-border terrorism would be proof of Pakistan’s sincerity” – the Indian government isn’t buying into Pakistan’s dissimulation.

However, things could change. The Pakistani lobby in India has come out of the woodwork to suggest that India must encourage Pakistan to continue with this action by re-engaging Pakistan in a dialogue. There are also straws in the wind that suggest that the government could once again take a gamble by opening up to Pakistan. Needless to say, this would be a blunder of Himalayan proportions because if India refuses to learn the lesson of history, then it has no one to blame but itself and deserves all the terrorism that Pakistan inflicts on it.