The West Doesn't Really Understand Pak's Terror Policy

The American response to the Pahalgam terror attack shows the West has a poor comprehension of Pakistan's weaponisation of terrorism as State policy

- Barkha Dutt

I was in the US on the day the Pahalgam terror attack took place. I don't usually watch television news, but frustrated at being thousands of miles away when this carnage was unfolding back home, in a region that has also been my reporting beat for three decades, I scoured the hotel TV channels and newspapers for some attention given to the cold-blooded execution of 26 tourists who had been targeted for their faith.

If nothing else, the fact that US Vice President JD Vance was in India on the day the barbaric strike took place should have compelled the American media to show interest. After all, the terrorists had most likely timed their plan to Vance's arrival, borrowing from a 25-year-old playbook. In 2000, 36 Sikhs in the Kashmir valley were massacred in the village of Chittisinghpora as then US president Bill Clinton touched down in Delhi. The intent, then as now, was to draw more international attention to the Kashmir issue, especially as interest in it as any sort of cause célèbre has all but disappeared.

Shockingly, all that was available on US networks were endless hours of programming on Pope Francis. Inner-page reportage in some newspapers was cursory and treated the incident almost as if it were a routine security conflagration.