First, the world watched in horror as the terrorist attacks on Mumbai unfolded last week. Once the last terrorists were killed, and the three sites where the terrorists held captives were cleared, attention turned to the war of words between India and Pakistan.

Every time there is a terrorist attack in India, it is perfectly predictable there will be a war of words between the two countries. However, just as in past incidents — most notably when India’s Parliament was attacked in December 2001 by what India described as “Pak-based and supported terrorist outfits, namely, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad” — as the war of words unfolds, no one is entirely sure just how much of the angry back-and-forth is shadowboxing, or how close things are to lurching dangerously out of control. With the past history of wars and mutual suspicion between the two nuclear-armed countries, the world continues to watch the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks with almost as much anxiety as we watched the attacks themselves.

India, of course, has much to be upset about. It is undeniable — and American intelligence officials routinely confirm these facts, as routinely as Pakistan continues to deny them with a straight face — that terrorist groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, that were midwifed and supported by the Pakistan government (through the infamous ISI intelligence agency), were allowed to openly operate from Pakistani territory for years, and to foster repeated terrorist attacks against India. After the 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament, U.S. pressure forced Pakistan to ban Lashkar-e-Taiba. But terrorism experts seem to agree that the ban exists only on paper. Lashkar-e-Taiba is “widely believed to have morphed into Jamaat-ud-Dawa”, an Islamic group that is legal in Pakistan although it has been declared a terrorist organization by the U.S. Lashkar-e-Taiba’s leaders live openly in Pakistan, without even bothering to go underground, a fact implicitly confirmed last night on PBS by Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S., Husain Haqqani.

This is the context for Condi Rice‘s visit to India and Pakistan, during which she ostensibly hopes to defuse the tension between the two countries. Condi, as is her wont, has declared her discussions with Pakistan to be a resounding success:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday she is satisfied with Pakistan’s commitment with its readiness to pursue any lead in the attacks in India that have sharply raised tensions between the two nuclear powers.

Pakistan’s young civilian government, she said after talks with Pakistani leaders, is very committed to the war on terror and does not want to be associated with terrorist elements.
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She said that in her meetings “I have found a Pakistani government that is focused on the threat and understands its responsibilities to respond to terrorism and extremism” wherever it is found.
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Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari told Rice he will take “strong action” against elements in his country that were involved in the terrorist attacks in Mumbai. A presidential statement said Zardari also repeated a promise to help investigate the attacks and said Pakistan was determined to ensure its territory is not used for any act of terrorism.

Zardari’s office said in a statement that he “reiterated that the government will not only assist in (the) investigation but also take strong action against any Pakistani elements found involved in the attack.” He said Pakistan was “determined to ensure that its territory is not used for any act of terrorism,” the statement said.

Rice talked about the importance of Pakistan dealing with those “who may use Pakistani territory even if they are not state actors. And I found a Pakistani leadership that is very focused and I think very committed for its own reasons.”

She said Pakistan would investigate the situation with Mumbai “because the Pakistani government, I was told and I fully believe, is very committed to this war on terror, does not in any way want to be associated with terrorist elements and is indeed fighting to root them out wherever they find them.” She said her talks in Pakistan have been “quite satisfactory.”

Pakistan, of course, has always excelled in its anti-terrorist rhetoric. It knows exactly what Washington wants to hear, and sees no reason not to oblige, especially since Washington has never been particularly troubled by the fact that Pakistan’s actions never fit its words.

In fact, Pakistan hardly even bothers to hide the fact that its fine words are just words. For example, India has claimed that the terrorist who was captured in the Mumbai attacks has identified two of Lashkar-e-Taiba’s senior leaders as the masterminds of the Mumbai plot:

The surviving gunman, Ajmal Amir Kasab, 21, told interrogators he had been sent by the banned Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba and identified two of the plot’s masterminds, according to two Indian government officials familiar with the inquiry.

Kasab told police that one of them, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, Lashkar’s operations chief, recruited him for the attack, and the assailants called another senior leader, Yusuf Muzammil, on a satellite phone after hijacking an Indian vessel en route to Mumbai.

The information sent investigators back to another reputed Lashkar operative, Faheem Ansari, who they hope could be key in pulling together different strands of the investigation.

Ansari, an Indian national, was arrested in February in north India carrying hand-drawn sketches of hotels, the train terminal and other sites that were later attacked in Mumbai, said Amitabh Yash, director of the Special Task Force of the Uttar Pradesh police.

During his interrogation, Ansari also named Muzammil as his handler in Pakistan, adding that he trained in a Lashkar camp in Muzaffarabad — the same area where Kasab said he was trained, a senior police officer involved in the investigation said.

Here’s the Pakistani response, which belies Zardari’s glib words to Condi, and underlines Condi’s credulity on the subject:

In Pakistan, Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik told reporters he had no information on Lakhvi or Muzammil but that authorities would check.

With a straight face, the Pakistani government is pretending not to have even heard of Lakhvi or Muzammil? That’s really funny, given that the U.S. seems to have more than enough information about Lakhvi:

On Thursday, the U.S. Treasury Department designated as terrorists four individuals who hold leadership positions in Lashkar, including Lakhvi, and ordered any of their U.S. assets to be frozen. Also named were Muhammad Saeed, the group’s leader; Haji Muhammad Ashraf, its chief of finance; and Mahmoud Mohammad Ahmed Bahaziq, a financier with the group.

Playing “Lakhvi who?” games even before Condi has left the country hardly bodes well for Pakistan’s alleged commitment to pursue any lead in the attacks.