Pakistan not responsible for unrest in IHK: Omar Abdullah

SRINAGAR: Former chief minister of Indian-held Kashmir (IHK) and opposition National Conference (NC) working president Omar Abdullah on Saturday gave a clean chit to Pakistan, saying the country cannot be blamed for the ongoing unrest in Kashmir.

He said distorting the current unrest in the Valley as a simple manifestation of terrorism or external interference would be a grave mistake, the Indian media reported.

“We told the central government to act on the promises that it has made to people of Jammu and Kashmir. We told the Centre to understand the betrayal it has been committing for so many years against the State,” Omar said, while addressing the party delegates’ convention in north Kashmir’s Baramulla Dak Bunglow on Saturday.

Kashmir has been witnessing unrest after the killing of 21-year-old Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani on July 8. At least 94 people have been killed, over 13,000 injured and more than 8,000 arrested during the over four-month-long unrest in the Valley.

Pakistan has glorified Burhan and described him as “martyr”. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif raised Burhan’s killing during his speech at the UN in September and described him as a 'young leader', who was ‘murdered’ by Indian forces and who has emerged as a symbol of latest Kashmir Intifada, a popular and peaceful freedom movement.

Omar Abdullah said: “Don’t be under the false impression that the unrest in Kashmir has been ignited by Pakistan.

“Pakistan has no role in triggering the present uprising in the Valley. They might have taken advantage of the situation or added fuel to it but Pakistan is not responsible for present unrest,” he said, adding, “We found that some people at the Centre willingly or unwillingly wanted to keep themselves ignorant about the situation in Kashmir. It was easy for them to blame Pakistan. But we kept trying to make them understand that the unrest in Kashmir has not been created by Pakistan. It is the result of our mistakes.”

The former chief minister said it would be a grave mistake to always blame Pakistan and turning a blind eye to internal issues.

“Distorting the current unrest in Valley as a simple manifestation of terrorism or external interference would be a grave mistake. To blame Pakistan alone for the political situation or the current unrest in the Valley is a distortion of the truth,” he said.

Omar said the IHK people have espoused a political sentiment even when there was no external interference and this political sentiment forms the basis of the State’s special status that has since been eroded by extra-constitutional machinations.

He said the political issue in Kashmir was neither an invention nor a creation of Pakistan but because of historic blunders and broken promises by successive dispensations in New Delhi.

“The situation today stands compounded because of the present Central Government’s refusal to even acknowledge that a problem exists in Kashmir,” Omar said.

Taking a dig at the PDP-BJP coalition government in the IHK, he said the alienation in the Valley had been compounded by the opportunistic PDP-BJP alliance, whose inherent contradictions had translated into never-ending U-turns on crucial evocative issues.