India is justified in seeing the US move to go ahead with the sale of the F-16s as an attempt to balance America’s strategic partnership with India by once again propping up Pakistan as a regional challenger.

That the ISI patron is now becoming the victim of jehadi terrorism does not bode well for Pakistan, which now has to recast the agency’s role and organizational ethos to contain the Taliban.

The most dangerous aspect of the war on terror from India’s security point of view has been the CIA’s monetary assistance to the ISI.

Ideally, ISAF and NATO should concentrate on urban population centres along with the ANA, and the ANA should also deploy outside the towns and cities to dominate the hinterland and crack down on Taliban controlled areas.

The United States is facing serious economic problems, and Obama seems to have drawn the lesson that national security is not just about military strength but that it is equally about the economy, partnerships and diplomacy.

Not only will Pakistan have to take on all sorts of Pakistani Taliban, it will also have to end the network of jihadists in provinces like Punjab and Sindh if it really wants to get rid of the Islamist menace.

A disturbing aspect of the current phase of Islamist militancy in Pakistan is that the terrorist acts outside FATA and NWFP are not being staged by ethnic Pashtun elements but by local Punjabi cohorts.

From its base in Pakistan’s Baluchistan, Jundallah has had opportunities to forge cooperative ties not only with the ISI but also with the Taliban as well as with the intelligence services of countries interested in stoking anti-Iranian activism.