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Tuesday March 19, 2024

Massive policy failures in Indian-held J&K

By Waqar Ahmed
March 22, 2019

The clash between India and Pakistan is a well-established fact. Also that the tensions are somewhat apparently reducing between both the countries. However, the Pakistan armed forces are ever ready to reply to any possible Indian miscalculation.

It is also well-known that India never hit a militant training camp in Balakot and nobody died there except for nine pine trees and one unfortunate crow.

Despite the fog of war being created by India and propaganda campaign unleashed, the claim for the JeM attack was made from inside India; it was an inside job for all practical purposes. Pakistan had nothing to do with it.

There is also realization in India that they have failed to stabilise Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) under the Modi Sarkar and now remain vulnerable to an indigenous ever-expanding freedom movement. This shows massive policy failures in the Indian-held J&K. Where is Ajit Doval now hiding?

For long, the Indians have boasted in official and non-official forums that New Delhi will be compelled to respond robustly if it suffered another large scale terrorist attack in held Kashmir. It believed that it had prepared all possible options to deal with such an eventuality and prepared all types of contingency plans. This line is now over and out. The nonsense about so-called ‘telling response’ is finished.

Yes, Indian analysts are deeply worried about the rise and rise of Taliban in Afghanistan. No Pakistan does not and will not sponsor any activity in held Kashmir. The alleged JeM attack was stage-sponsored by Modi Sarkar to right his sagging electoral fortunes. Yes, the deteriorating Kashmir situation is a product of hardened and failed Indian policies in occupied J&K and failure to talk to Pakistan.

What is happening in India is exposed by Indian journalist Barkha Dutt who admits: “We live in the age of the mob. Self-styled policemen of patriotism patrol our social media posts and navigate the imagined interiors of our minds to see if we pass or fail tests set by them.

Television anchors — who have never known the grief of funerals, never seen the sight of either blood or bodies and have never reported from any conflict or war zone — pompously hand out certificates of nationalist and anti-national every night. Right wing thugs thrash poor Kashmiri vendors on the streets of Lucknow. On Twitter, their more upscale versions threaten and smear those who dare to bring nuance into any conversation. I experienced this personally.

For suggesting that those turning on innocent Kashmiri students were only playing into the hands of Pakistan — and for offering to help stranded Kashmiris — I was targeted in a coordinated mob attack… This coarseness is vile. If anyone is anti-national, it is these bullies and goons. They are not nationalists; they are pseudo-patriots. I would even say that, by their own definition, they are traitors.

This is because nothing suits the Pakistani script more than Indian citizens quarrelling among themselves. We must ask ourselves how we got to this point. How did this brute, ugly, bully’s rulebook come to define how we see ourselves and each other?”

The Indians are fighting among themselves as the elections loom. Meanwhile, the Pakistani media has behaved sensibly and maturely, without raising jingoism.

The Indian media has been at its worst as pointed out by Ms Dutt.