US general praises Pakistan, motherlode of terrorism, as a 'phenomenal partner'

TOI correspondent from Washington: Despite acknowledging that a Pakistani national plotted terrorist attacks in America as recently as 2024, a top US general has described Pakistan as a "phenomenal partner" in counter-terrorism, ostensibly because the country's military rulers hand over such terrorists to Washington on demand.

In testimony before a Congressional panel on Tuesday, General Michael Kurilla, who heads the US Central Command (Centcom) -- which has operational oversight over Pakistan -- lauded Pakistan's army chief Asim Munir for handing over terrorists who attacked the US and its assets, despite Islamabad's refusal to do the same with the terrorists who have attacked India.

“The first person...the [Pakistani] chief of army staff Munir called was me and said, ‘I’ve caught him, I’m willing to extradite him back to the US, please tell the secretary of defense and the president,’” Kurilla told lawmakers while revealing Pakistan's selective response in handing over to US Mohammad Sharifullah, the mastermind behind the August 2021 suicide attack at Abbey Gate in Kabul that killed 13 US service members.

Kurilla praise for Pakistan's military came hours after another terrorist identified by the Justice Department as a "Pakistani citizen" was extradited to the US on Monday for a terror plot against a Jewish center in New York.

"The foiled 2024 terror plot against a Jewish center in Brooklyn was planned by a Pakistani national to coincide with the one-year anniversary of Hamas' 7 October attack. New York was chosen because of its large Jewish population with the would-be gunman himself stating, 'even if we don’t attack an event, we could rack up easily a lot of Jews',” Kurilla told the panel.

Despite the dissonance in Pakistan's approach to terrorists it spawns, which involves cooperating with US while rejecting India's complaints, Kurilla chose to highlight Pakistan's "value as a partner" in countering terror threats as it pertained to Centcom ops. Operationally, India falls under the US Pacific Command.

Still, the testimony revealed a selective US approach towards terrorism that affects India, a dissonance that an Indian parliamentary committee that recently visited Washington underscored in engagements in the US capital.

Panel members repeatedly underlined to the US interlocutors that almost every major terrorist who masterminded and pulled off attacks on the US -- from the first attack on World Trade Center in 1993 to 9/11 to the Times Square attack to San Bernardino massacre -- involved Pakistanis who invariably escaped to Pakistan and were captured there before being extradited.

"They don't go to Iran or Iraq or Syria or Venezuela or Cuba... they go back to the motherlode of terrorism, Pakistan," one member said in frustration during the visit that made little impression on the Trump administration, recalling the names of Osama bin Laden, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Ramzi Yousef, Ramzi bin al Shibh, Mir Aimal Kansi, and many others who were captured in Pakistan after terror attacks on the US.

The Pakistani imprint on terrorism in the US was established yet again on Tuesday when the Justice Department announced the extradition if Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, whom it described as a "Pakistani citizen residing in Canada" for the Brooklyn terror plot.

Rather than hold Pakistan responsible for spawning terrorists, US attorney general Pam Bondi trained her gun at the amorphous terrorist group ISIS, saying, "it remains a clear and present danger to the American people, and our Jewish citizens are especially targeted by evil groups like these."