The United States has offered a bounty of $10 million on the head of Hafiz Saeed, the founder of the terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT) and the so-called charity organisation Jamaat-ud-Dawa. The LeT is responsible for various acts of terror in India, including the 10-man attack on Mumbai on November 26, 2008 that killed more than 170 people of various nationalities.

There could various reasons for this bounty — the US might want to prevent Saeed, who is gradually getting into Pakistan’s political mainstream and regularly holding political rallies, from being influential in the formation of the next government. It could also be that Washington has lost all confidence in Islamabad’s ability to dismantle the military-jihadi complex.