Everyone, except Colin Powell, knows that the terrorist attack on Indian Parliament has Pakistan's fingerprints all over it. Everyone also knows that Kashmir's movement for azadi melted a few years ago into the larger Islamic jehad that destroyed the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and everyone, even Powell, should know that if Afghanistan was the headquarters of Allah's warriors, Pakistan was the war's hinterland. If by the time you read this Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar remain un-captured, you can almost be certain that it is to this hinterland that they have fled for shelter and succour. If this happens, the American State Department may wake up to the fact that Pervez Musharraf is not General Goody-two-Shoes but we, in India, have more important things to worry about than America's fork-tongued foreign policy.

We don't need the FBI's help to find out if Pakistan's generals back the terrorists that perpetrate vile crimes on our soil. We know that without the support of the Pakistani Army, groups like the Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed would collapse just like the Taliban did. The problem is, what can we do about it? Since December 13, the demands that the Government "do something" have reached a crescendo. Barring a handful of leaders in the Congress and on the lunatic fringe of the Left, there is a consensus that the attack on Parliament was a defining moment for India and that if the Government fails yet again to take convincing steps, there will be a dangerous loss of faith in its ability to act.

What most people mean by decisive action is a strike against Pakistan. They want to see India take revenge just like America does. There is some hesitation about using the word "war", but much talk of limited war and hot pursuit. This has been heightened by statements of the prime minister and Union home minister that indicate this time they do not plan to just sit back and condemn cross-border terrorism as they did after IC-814 was hijacked, after the Red Fort was attacked and after the Legislative Assembly in Srinagar was nearly blown up.

But would an attack on terrorist camps in Pakistan be a solution? Personally, I fear not. Having pursued the terrorist camp trail in the 1980s, I can report that the information given by "authoritative" sources in the Government was wrong. I was given a list of camps that turned out to be inaccurate, and discovered through an accidental meeting with a Sikh priest in Lahore that "the boys" who came across from Punjab after Operation Bluestar were taken to Faisalabad jail where they were trained in the use of arms and explosives. This information proved accurate when some of these boys returned to India and got arrested by the Punjab Police. Nothing that our intelligence agencies have done in the 10 years since indicates that they have improved their information gathering systems. So the question is do they really know where the terrorist camps are now? From all accounts many of Kashmir's terrorists were being trained in camps in Afghanistan that have already been destroyed.

The absence of full comprehension of the nature of the problem we currently face was evident in Union Home Minister L.K. Advani's statement in the Lok Sabha last week. He talked about "20 years" of Pakistani terrorism apparently without noticing that the present phase is different. In the 1980s and early '90s, we had political problems in Punjab and Kashmir that bred violence. Currently, we are dealing with jehadi terrorism of an altogether different and infinitely more dangerous kind. It weakens our case to argue that there is any kind of continuity.

The other frightening aspect of the Government's understanding of the problem is that almost nothing has been done to train our police force in dealing with terrorism. Those who prevented the suicide squad from entering Parliament House showed remarkable bravery but, by and large, police work in India remains shoddy and amateur. Interrogation methods continue to be primitive and usually when a terrorist act occurs policemen can be seen trampling flat-footedly over evidence instead of sifting through it with the necessary care. The result is that the police is much better at catching innocent citizens than terrorists and it is nearly always after the event that we hear about accomplices being caught. The Home Ministry needs to concentrate on improved police training instead of worrying about "hot pursuit".

The prime minister needs to start asking questions on why the criminal justice system moves so slowly that men like Azhar Masood and Omar Sheikh managed to remain in our jails for five years without facing trial. It would also be interesting to know what steps we took to track down the hijackers of IC-814. The terrorism we now face requires that the criminal justice system be made to function more efficiently. POTO is no solution. Nor is war, limited or not.