India, Sept. 20 -- Pakistan's latest overture to the Financial Action Task Force follows a script that has by now become almost ritualistic. Days before the October 26 plenary in Paris, Islamabad raised the bounty on Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Maulana Masood Azhar to seventy lakh rupees and reprinted his name as a "fugitive" in the Federal Investigation Agency's Red Book. Indian officials dismissed it within hours as a gimmick; defence analysts called it a smokescreen-and fairly, since the gesture arrived with no verified United Nations Security Council 1267 asset freeze, no extradition cooperation, and no dismantling of Jaishe-Mohammed's institutional infrastructure. What Pakistan has produced is a "effective action."

The pattern has become...