Is it time to designate Pakistan a terror-supporting state? Abdul Rauf Azhar, whose death in Pakistan was announced today, is a case in point. Indians despise him for a 1999 civilian plane hijacking and other atrocities. For Americans, he’s linked to the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Affiliated with Al Qaeda and Jaish-e-Mohammed, Washington has named Azhar in its terrorist lists and today India killed him.   

As Pearl’s killers got set to slash Pearl’s throat in 2022, his last words were: “My name is Daniel Pearl, my father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, and I am a Jew.” Two weeks ago, before gunning down 26 tourists in Kashmir, the killers demanded their victims explicitly confirm they were of the Hindu religion. What connects these atrocities — and many similar horrors — is the cruel Islamist fanaticism that animates them. 

Pakistani officials protest that they’re not responsible for the terrorists among them. Yet, Indians of all political colors consider their neighbor a terrorist state. “Don’t ever forget, they are a country that claimed not to know where Osama bin Laden was until he was found hiding in a Pakistani military encampment in Abbottabad,” a leftist opposition member of parliament and former top UN official, Shahsi Tharoor, tells India Today. 

The April 22 Kashmir terrorist attack launched the current South Asia hostilities. Claiming responsibility was an offshoot of Azhar’s Jaish-e-Mohammed. Most Pakistani casualties in India’s Operation Sindoor so far are members of known terrorist groups or their affiliates. Islamabad is claiming Pakistani civilians were killed, but its Inter-Services Intelligence has long been documented to cultivate violent Islamist factions to battle India.  

Our own Department of State acknowledges that Pakistan is a “safe haven” for anti-India terrorists, but suggests it’s not an outright terrorism supporter. It treats the two sides as equals. In a call to India’s foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Secretary Rubio emphasized today the “need for immediate de-escalation,” according to the Department of State. Mr. Rubio made the same plea in a subsequent call with Prime Minister Sharif of Pakistan.  

It makes sense to urge the sides to lower the flames. After all, as nearly every headline notes, India and Pakistan are nuclear-armed. America, too, has had long ties with both countries. The notion of “both sides,” though, is wrong. These are two decidedly different countries. The Indian economy, for one, is 11 times larger than its neighbor’s. India is an imperfect democracy but army-dominated Islamabad imprisons its most popular politician, Imran Khan. 

Prime Minister Modi has shed most of India’s phony “non-aligned” past and is now an important American ally. While New Delhi also maintains ties with Moscow, it is arguably Asia’s strongest buffer against Communist China. Beijing, meanwhile, is tightening relations with Islamabad. In today’s warfront news, Pakistan is boasting that its Chinese-made J-10C fighter jets downed several French Rafale planes of the Indian army. 

Can America urge India and Pakistan to de-escalate even as we separate friend from foe? In today’s phone call, Mr. Rubio urged Mr. Sharif to “take concrete steps to end any support for terrorist groups.” That is a step, if only that, in the right direction. While the cross-border escalation is worrisome, the cause for the current flareup is inescapable. India could not have ignored a terrorist attack that was launched from Pakistan’s territory. 

Pakistan increasingly accuses India of aggression. Flipping the script, it even cries “genocide.” The American press dutifully cites statements from both sides as if they’re part of a “he said, she said” spat. Fence-sitting, though, is far from the only way to pacify warring sides. An official designation of Pakistan as a terror-sponsoring state could open it to all sorts of consequences designed to force it to stand down.