India, Feb. 12 -- In a rare moment of candour, Pakistan's defence minister Khawaja Asif admitted in parliament that the rise of terrorism in his country was the outcome of its involvement in the two wars in Afghanistan, the first in the 1980s against the USSR-backed regime in Kabul, and then as part of the war against terror in the 2000s. "We deny our history and did not accept our mistakes. Terrorism is a blowback of the mistakes committed by dictators in the past," the minister said.

Pakistan's evolution and trajectory are rooted in a denial of history and a refusal to recognise its mistakes and correct course. Its leaders broke with the composite nationalism of the Freedom Movement to privilege a faith-centric idea of nation-State and...