During the last couple of weeks several high profile American leaders visited Pakistan. But none of them, not even the charming and articulate Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, could give a convincing reply to Pakistan’s question why America does not stop India from sponsoring terrorism in Balochistan province and even in FATA.
Pakistan has repeatedly charged India with supporting terrorists and separatists in Balochistan. This has been going on since the time of Pervez Musharraf who used to say he was ‘110 percent sure’ of India’s involvement in terrorism in Balochistan. The allegation has been repeated time and again by the present leaders of the government including the prime minister and the interior minister. Prime Minister Gilani even raised the matter with the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the Sharm el Sheikh moot some months ago and had it mentioned in the joint communiqué issued after their meeting.
Pakistan had always suspected that India’s RAW had been operating in the FATA area supplying arms and money to the Taliban terrorists in order to destabilise Pakistan. Now this has been confirmed with seizure of Indian made arms and explosives from terrorists in South Waziristan recently. This matter too has been raised by Pakistan but to no avail.
In fact the most uncalled for and ill-advised part of the US policy in Afghanistan is inclusion of India and an effort to help establish Indian hegemony in the region.
The US should have known that India has always played a very negative role in Afghanistan. It has tried to use Afghanistan as a tool in its anti Pakistan policy.
Just as it has been using Afghanistan as a base for inciting trouble in Balochistan now, India used Afghanistan in the past as a mouthpiece for the Pakhtoonistan stunt. And there are strong reasons to believe that India was behind Afghanistan’s historical folly of opposing Pakistan’s admission to the United Nations.
India has always exploited Afghanistan to further its machinations in the region. It had aligned the ruling family in its conspiracies against Pakistan but was hated by the people of Afghanistan. During the Soviet invasion on Afghanistan, India sided with the former and backed the Soviet puppets in Kabul during the war. India was thrown out of Kabul along with the Moscow puppets when the Soviet Union withdrew from there. It has now sneaked into Afghanistan again by supporting the Northern Alliance, all for pursuing its evil designs against Pakistan.
The US should realise that India is a liability, rather than an asset for it in Afghanistan. It has been working on its old agenda of destabilising Pakistan; it has been arming and funding the terrorists as part of that sinister policy. But the Indian machinations are going to prove counter productive in the US war against terrorism.
The US has called Pakistan its most allied non-Nato ally (in the war against terror). One wonders how the US can countenance India’s conspiracies against Pakistan. Besides, how can the US close its eyes to India’s role in Kashmir. India has no justification to continue to keep Kashmir under its occupation against the will of its people. It is an aggressor in Kashmir and the UN Security Council had resolved as early as 1948 that the Kashmiri people should be enabled to decide their political future through an internationally supervised plebiscite. Only the modalities of holding that plebiscite had to be finalised. But India, knowing what would be the verdict of the Kashmiris wriggled out of its commitment. Since then it has kept on denying the Kashmiris their right to self determination on one pretext or the other. To keep the people under its bondage India has been deploying 600,000 troops in Kashmir, the heaviest deployment of troops anywhere in the world today.
The Kashmiris have been waging a struggle for self -determination which India has brutally suppressed and to get international support it has dubbed the Kashmiris’ struggle as terrorism.
Here it would be pertinent to recall President Obama’s campaign statement wherein he recognised Kashmir as the major problem in the sub-continent which brooks early solution. But after his election, presumably under the influence of the Indo-Israeli lobby, he did not pursue his plans. The question arises: are the American soldiers in Afghanistan giving their lives in defense of the US interests or they are being sacrificed to support Indian machinations against the US allies in the war? The US leaders must resolve this contradiction.
Gilgit –Baltistan Elections
For the past few weeks, notwithstanding the war in Waziristan and the terrible suicide bombings by the Taliban, the attention of all the major political forces was focused on Gilgit - and Baltistan which was having its first ever election for its newly created 24-member assembly. Almost all the big parties put up their candidates. But the party which drew special attention of the media was the MQM. It caused surprise by fighting an election so far from its traditional strongholds in urban Sindh. The party started its campaign quite early and at times it looked that it would claim four to five seats. Some media commentators including the BBC Urdu had predicted on the basis of the large crowds the Muttaheda had been attracting that it might get at least three seats. MQM leader Altaf Hussain addressed several meetings and also spoke to the press twice. Later Mian Nawaz Sharif and Prime Minister Gilani also visited Gilgit, as did the leaders of other parties including Maulana Fazlur Rahman. But the election day was marred by severe protests and allegations of rigging by the administration. There were fights and violence in some of the constituencies due to which polling had to be suspended. The results came as a big shock to most of the parties. The PPP claimed the lion s share of 11 seats out of 21 whose official results were announced. The PML-N and the PML-Q won two seats each while the MQM and JUI and ANP got only one seat each.
The election ended with serious allegations of rigging against the ruling PPP, which reminds one of the 1977 elections. Incidentally, this was the first important election after 1977, held under the PPP government.
