Author: K.K. Katyal
Publication: Yahoo News
Date: June 2, 2002
URL: http://in.news.yahoo.com/020601/16/1pann.html
The Pakistani President, Pervez
Musharraf's assertion that no infiltration is taking place across the Line
of Control in Jammu and Kashmir or that Pakistan is doing nothing across
LoC stands contradicted by reports in the newspapers of his own country.
During the week preceding his address to the nation on May 27 - and even
after that - the Pakistani press carried accounts of the continued activities
of jehadi outfits and their support to "freedom struggle'' in Jammu and
Kashmir.
There has been no dearth of warnings
by Pakistani commentators in regard to the adverse fallout of the actions
of the extremist groups, on Pakistan itself, apart from other areas. Also,
foreign correspondents during their visits to Pakistan wrote extensively,
on the basis of firm evidence, about the functioning of the militant groups,
despite the embargo announced by Gen. Musharraf on January 12.
On May 29 - that is, two days after
the General's address - a Dawn commentator, Mahir Ali, had this to say:
"Just as it is absurd of New Delhi to pretend that there is virtually no
such thing as indigenous Kashmiri militancy, it is ridiculous of Islamabad
to insist that cross-border infiltration is broadly a myth, or that jehadi
groups managed to mount their operations without any Pakistani assistance.
Independent reports suggest that the extremist organisations ostensibly
banned earlier this year are still active, with the Lashkar-i-Taiba, for
example, openly soliciting donations. A Lashkar official told a foreign
correspondent last week that a suicide squad from the group's Al Mansoureen
wing carried out the attack on an Indian Army base near Srinagar that killed
34 people, many of them women and children - and provoked Vajpayee's frenzied
war-dance.''
The same correspondent quotes a
Pakistani military source as saying: "Every jehadi has links with the ISI.
You cannot be a jehadi without having links with the ISI." This would suggest
that Musharraf's purge of the ISI has been less than effective. The President
is either ignorant of the ISI-jehadi activities or insufficiently powerful
to do anything about them. Neither of these likelihoods reflects too well
on him. A military dictator unwilling or unable to rein in the army he
commands cannot expect high marks for credibility.
According to another writer, Kunwar
Idris, the world opinion held that the General's effort to deal firmly
with the armed fundamentalists was tempered by political expediency. In
his view, "the statements by some political leaders and Pakistan's own
press about the guerrilla training camps in Azad Kashmir and elsewhere
fly in the face of the now trite official contention that Pakistan's support
to popular uprising in Kashmir is no more than political, moral and diplomatic.
When our own people do not believe it, how would the rest of the world?
The U.N., the E.U. and the rest are justified in demanding a sterner control
over the religious groups who train the Kashmiri or foreign fighters and
a greater vigilance across the Line of Control to check their entry into
occupied Kashmir.''
