Right from the terror attack on Mumbai, one thing that has been intriguing is the way in which Pakistan has flip-flopped on various issues:

First things first, their foreign minister, Qureshi, was in Chandigarh at the time of the attack. He said the intelligence chiefs of India and Pakistan must have a hotline for information sharing. Then, prime minister Gilani agreed to send the Inter Services Intelligence chief to India for helping with the investigations.

After a high level meeting of president Zardari, prime minister Gilani and the army chief Kayani, they changed gears and suddenly found that the ISI chief was too senior an official and decided that a representative of ISI would visit India instead.

At first it seemed that they were acknowledging that the attack originated in Pakistan. Then the new media in Pakistan went on an overdrive saying that Pakistan was being wrongly accused of this massacre.

Then suddenly, Pakistan switched its stand hinting that it would go to war with India if necessary. These shifting stands were clearly designed for domestic consumption and international assurance.

As the crackdown began, there was news that the chief of Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Tayyeba were put under house arrest. Now, they claim that they do not know where JeM chief Ashar Masood is. Isn’t that strange?

What is happening in Pakistan? Who is in control? Or, is anybody in control at all?

These continuing flip flops only add to the confusing signals that Pakistan has been sending out. It is time, Pakistan made a proper assessment and spoke in one voice about what is happening in Pakistan and what it is doing to contain the terrorist activities emanating from there.

Under Musharraf, such flip flops did not happen that often because all the information came from one source. Now there are as many versions as there are mouths. That is dangerous both to Pakistan as well as to the international community.