news details |
|
|
| Advantage New Delhi: Musharraf has only acknowledged what everyone in India knew | | | EARLY TIMES REPORT
Jammu, Oct 6: Former Pakistani President and the one responsible for the 1999 Kargil misadventure/intrusion Pervez Musharraf has finally publicly acknowledged that Pakistan did train underground militant groups to fight in Kashmir. Actually, he acknowledged the Pakistani dirty role in an interview to the one German magazine, Der Spiegel, only the other day in London, where he has been living in self-imposed exile. "They (underground militant groups to fight against India in Kashmir) were indeed formed," Musharraf told German magazine Der Spiegel in an interview.
Significantly, Musharraf didn't express any regret for what Pakistan did to bleed and dismember India and annex the Indian Jammu and Kashmir. He held the then Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaj Sharif responsible for the extreme step Islamabad had to take to attract the attention of the international community to the "Kashmir problem." He attributed the move of training underground militant groups to fight against India to what he called the "apathy" of Nawaj Sharief "to the Kashmir issue," as also to the indifferent attitude of the western world to the "Kashmir issue." His charge against the West was specific and it reads like this: "The West was ignoring the resolution of the Kashmir issue, which is the core issue of Pakistan. We expected the West -- especially the United States and important countries like Germany -- to resolve the Kashmir issue," but they did nothing in this regard. "The West blames Pakistan for everything. Nobody asks the Indian prime minister, why did you arm your country with a nuclear weapon? Why are you killing innocent civilians in Kashmir? Nobody was bothered that Pakistan got split in 1971 because of India's military backing for Bangladesh. The United States and Germany gave statements, but they didn't mean anything," he also told Der Spiegel.
Musharraf accused the former Prime Minister and leader of the Pakistan Muslim League -Nawaz (PML-N) of "turning a blind eye to the (Kashmir) dispute." But more than that, he defended the Kargil intrusion and the decision of Islamabad to train militant groups to fight in Kashmir, saying "Yes, it is the right of any country to promote its own interests..." He asserted that Pakistan had to train the militant groups because India was not prepared to "discuss" Kashmir at the United Nations and was not prepared to "resolve the dispute in a peaceful manner."
What Musharraf, who suggested the 4-point Kashmir formula (demilitarisation, irrelevant Line of Control, joint management/joint-control over Jammu and Kashmir and greater autonomy) when he was the President of Pakistan, told the German magazine should not surprise anyone in India. For, everyone in this country, which has been suffering from the Pakistani onslaughts and depredations ever since its formation on August 14, 1947 on the basis of the pernicious 2-nation theory, knew everything about Pakistan and the activities it has been undertaking to foment trouble in Kashmir for New Delhi. Everyone in India knew that Pakistan regards Jammu and Kashmir as an unfinished agenda of partition and that it would not take rest till the time the state remains part of India.
Who doesn't know that Pakistan waged three full-scale wars on India in 1947-48, 1965 and 1971 with a view to annexing Jammu and Kashmir, but without any achieving any success whatsoever. On the contrary, the Pakistani establishment had to quit what is called Bangladesh in 1971. It suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Indian Army, with over 90,000 Pakistani soldiers and commanders raising their hands and laying down their arms before the victorious Indian Army. Again, who doesn't know that it was the desperate and frustrated Pakistan that invaded Kargil in 1999 to capture Jammu and Kashmir, but had to vacate the aggression, with the Indian Army making supreme sacrifices and fighting the enemy operating and firing on our jawans from impregnable points? And, who doesn't know that the defeated and embarrassed Pakistan, which has become the epicentre of global terrorism, has been carrying on since 1989 a low-intensity proxy war in Jammu and Kashmir to achieve the same goal - annexation of the Indian Jammu and Kashmir. Hence, what Pakistan, according to General Pervez Musharraf, did during his time to prepare jihadis to fight in Kashmir is not at all surprising.
India knew it and that was the reason Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee made Musharraf to make a categorical commitment in 2004 from the Pakistani soil itself that he would not allow the Pakistani territory and the occupied territories to be used for exporting terrorism to India. That is also the reason that India wants Pakistan to first dismantle the terrorist producing factories in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied-Jammu and Kashmir and then think in terms of holding a composite dialogue with New Delhi. Leave alone a few blunders New Delhi has committed in between, including the Havana fiasco and shame of Sharm-el-Sheikh.
It may be recalled that at Havana (Cuba), our Prime Minister had gone by what Musharraf told him and declared that Pakistan, like India, was a victim of terrorism and that at Sharm-el-Sheikh, our Prime Minister had virtually endorsed the viewpoint of his Pakistani counterpart and allowed a reference to the alleged involvement of India in the subversive activities in Baluchistan (Pakistan). It would also be not out of place to mention here that our Prime Minister had revealed during the 2009 election campaign that he had virtually reached an agreement with Musharraf as far as the resolution of the Kashmir issue was concerned, but this didn't happen because of the revolt of the Pakistani judiciary against Musharraf, as also because of political instability in Pakistan, which culminated into the disgraceful end of the Musharraf era.
Anyway, now that one of the Pakistani top-ranking leaders, Pervez Musharraf, has publicly and unambiguously admitted the Pakistani involvement in what has been happening in Kashmir it is time for New Delhi to take make optimum use of the opportunity provided by the former Pakistan President and expose Islamabad to the extent possible. It should also expose those in Kashmir like Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, Yasin Maik, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, Mehbooba Mufti and the NC leaders who have been saying that Pakistan has nothing to do with what has been happening in the Valley and that whatever has been happening in the Valley is "indigenous." It's advantage India. India must exploit the opportunity, expose Pakistan with the help of what Musharraf has admitted and tell Kashmiri leaders of all shades of view that enough is enough and that it would not tolerate any non-sense. What Musharraf acknowledged is a god-sent opportunity and the Indian nation would want New Delhi to make optimum use of it and corner and isolate Islamabad, which has become a threat to global peace, unity and integrity of India and to Afghanistan. Statesmanship demands New Delhi to act and act swiftly and resolutely to show Pakistan its rightful place. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
STOCK UPDATE |
|
|
 |
| BSE
Sensex |
 |
| NSE
Nifty |
|
|
| |
CRICKET UPDATE |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
