Indian intentions

Permanent representative of Pakistan to UN Munir Akram, while participating in a debate in the General Assembly on adding new permanent members to the UN Security Council, strongly rejected Indian candidature maintaining that India does not qualify for a seat in the UNSC as its permanent member.

He declared that India has waged 20 wars since independence and fomented terrorism and instability across the region, especially in Pakistan. Akram said: “We have clear and ample evidence of this state-sponsored terrorism. It stands in violation of UNSC resolution in Occupied Kashmir and has deployed nine hundred thousand troops to crush the legitimate freedom of the people of Kashmir. Settlers from outside Jammu and Kashmir were being brought in to transform the region's demography. It threatens aggression against Pakistan and resorts to daily artillery and small arms fire targeting innocent civilians on our side of the Line of Control”.

A day earlier, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a statement called upon the world to hold India accountable for its role in sponsoring terrorism against Pakistan, and prevent it from doing so in the future. Pakistan maintained that use of terrorism as an instrument of state policy by India makes it culpable under international law, the UN sanctions regime and international terrorism conventions. It also briefed envoys of the permanent members of the Security Council on the contents of the dossier that Pakistan had prepared to sustain its claim on Indian involvement in terrorism.

It is pertinent to mention that Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and DG ISPR Major General Babar Iftikhar in a presser on November 14 presented gruesome details of the various strategies employed by the Indian enterprise of terror for supporting terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It was for the first time that such a detailed description of Indian acts of terrorism supported by irrefutable evidence in the shape of audio tapes of conversations have been made public and form part of the dossier which Pakistan contemplates to send to the UN, OIC, P5 countries and other forums.

My argument is that the intentions of India as a nation state are very much clear. India seeks to destroy Pakistan as it has not reconciled to the idea of partition of the Subcontinent. It is in pursuance of this objective that it has been conspiring right from the beginning to harm Pakistan. It played an active role in the dismemberment of Pakistan in 1971 about which Modi is on record to have boasted.

Since 1989, when the people of Kashmir launched their freedom struggle, India has not only used ruthless military might to crush the movement but has also been working on different plans to foment insurgency in Balochistan and acts of terrorism in the country. The capture of Kalbhushan Jhadav in Balochistan and his confessions about Indian support for insurgency in the province and acts of terrorism in Pakistan present irrefutable evidence of the adoption of terrorism as a state policy by India.

India has also been trying to sabotage CPEC and inflict economic and financial ruin on Pakistan through its efforts to push the country into black list of FATF.

The foregoing facts and the dossier compiled by Pakistan on Indian involvement in acts of terrorism within Pakistan leave no doubt about the adoption of terrorism as a state policy by India. Now that Pakistan has concrete and irrefutable evidence about Indian involvement in terrorism, it must not let go the opportunity to expose the real face of India before the global community and preferably raise the issue at the UN Security Council.

India surely deserves to be held accountable for its actions. A state which has disputes with all its neighbours and has hegemonic designs does not qualify to be the permanent member of the UN Security Council.

My view is that India is not going to respond positively to overtures for peace. It will remain hostile towards Pakistan and persist with efforts to harm it in any possible way. Unfortunately, we will have to live with this reality and recalibrate our foreign policy in line with the existing ground realities. Strengthening national unity, building a strong economy and impregnable defence capability are the prerequisites to ward off the Indian threat.

The writer is a freelance contributor. Email: ashpak10@gmail.com