File photo of JeM chief Masood Azhar

WASHINGTON: Global outlook and perception of Pakistan have hardened in course of the latest flashpoint between India and Pakistan - which has been defused for the moment.

Broad reactions and pronouncements from across the world show that Pakistan was seen as the serial provocateur who triggered yet another face-off and India was recognised as the victim who was reacting in self-defense to the aggravation.

It was the Trump White House that first laid down the line on this, making it clear soon after the Pulwama suicide bombing (and even before India’s attack on a terrorist camp inside Pakistan) that New Delhi had the right to self-defence, virtually greenlighting an Indian response.

Washington later described India’s attack on the terrorist camp as counter-terrorist action, setting the tone against any perception that New Delhi was the aggressor. Separately, France and Russia took the same line.

Even China, all too familiar with terror groups within Pakistan, did not challenge the description.

Although the Pakistani government was not directly implicated in the Pulwama attack, the forbearance of successive Pakistani establishments towards terror groups, and its military’s nurturing of what it regards at its “strategic assets,” irked policy makers in Washington to repeatedly speak of Pakistan’s supportive ecosystem for terror groups.

The Pakistani coddling of terror groups came into glaring focus on Friday when the country’s foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi publicly glossed over the presence of Masood Azhar, leader of the Jaish-e-Mohammed , who has bragged about terrorist attacks on India, including the Pulwama bombing.

“Masood Azhar is in Pakistan, he is very unwell, he's unwell to the extent that he can't leave house because he is really unwell,” Qureshi purred on CNN about a globally designated terrorist, adding, “If they have evidence share with us so that we can convince the people and the judiciary.”

The foreign minister, who incidentally was visiting India during 26/11 attack and hurried back even as it transpired that the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI planned and executed the attack with its LeT jihadi assets, was called out for his brazen defence since Azhar was sprung from an Indian prison after the Kandahar hijacking in a prisoner-for-hostages swap. That would make Pakistan officially a violator of international norms and treaty.

All this has hardened the attitude of policy makers and legislators in the US where Pakistan hardly has any friends or defenders left.

After Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan warned of “miscalculation” by India that could lead the two dies down a slippery slope of war, Eliot Engel, chairman of the US House Foreign Affairs committee, responded, "To avoid the kind of miscalculation Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan rightly fears, Pakistani leaders must take demonstrable action against Jaish-e-Mohammed and the terrorist infrastructure on Pakistan's soil.”

“We affirm India's right to self-defence in response to attacks planned and executed by Pakistani-based terrorist groups designated by the United States and United Nations. We share your position that Pakistan must do more to combat these anti-India extremist groups that destabilise the region and urge you to use your authority to pursue a peaceful resolution to this conflict before it grows,” added Senators Jerry Moran from Kansas and Jeanne Shaheen from New Hampshire.

In Pakistan though, there did not appear to be the slightest change in attitude.

Pakistan reserves the right to respond to any aggression displayed against it as a matter of self-defence, the country army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa was quoted as telling the the military chiefs and ambassadors of major western powers and China even after being called out for being the aggressor and the burden of self-defense hoisted on India.

