This is a familiar script that is being played out in Islamabad all over again. Daylight harassment of diplomats posted in the Indian mission. There is nothing diplomatic about it. Rather, it reveals the mindset of the rogue state. A vulgar display of such behaviour was there on an Islamabad street last week when the Indian acting high commissioner was harassed and humiliated while he was travelling in his official car. It didn't stop there. He continues to be treated with the respect deserved for, say, a criminal on the loose: he is kept under "aggressive surveillance", that too despite strong protests from New Delhi. Does it defy logic? No. This violation of established diplomatic norms is in tune with the Pakistani tradition in which every act of state-sponsored thuggery is shrugged off as an "Indian fabrication" to cover up the harassment of Pakistani diplomats in Delhi. And that exactly is happening now. And it is happening at a time when the India-Pakistan relationship, hardly ever warm, is at its chilliest. This street-level rowdyism of the state is not going to help.

Then, Pakistan is not a normal state anyway. Perhaps, a state that doesn't have an evolved civil society is not expected to show civility in its behaviour. Since this state is at permanent proxy war with India, every means is acceptable. What is generally applicable to civilised nations is not there in its rule book. That is why Pakistan is one of the most functional terrorism-sponsor states in the world, in the company of Iraq and North Korea, though the world is not in a mood to fully come to terms with this reality-the outcome of the selective morality of the post-9/11 America. Pakistan, to be fair, is doing its best to be accepted by the world as a state whose defining character is terror, within and without. The physical harassment of the Indian diplomat has to be seen in this context. What is significant here is not the magnitude of the act but the attitude. Even when there is hostility between two states, diplomats are rarely treated as symbolic targets. Pakistan has never behaved gently with India. As long as the two countries have diplomatic relations, it should learn to conduct diplomacy-and treat Indian diplomats-with civility and dignity. By the way, Kofi Annan, a friend of the politically correct victims, was in Islamabad last week, but India didn't hear him.