A pre-meditated stunt?
PAKISTAN Interior Minister, Rehman Malik, who was in India on an official visit ostensibly to operationalise a new visa regime as a Confidence Building Measure (CBM) did exactly the opposite – created more mistrust in India about Pakistan’s intentions. He displayed extreme insensitivity on issues like cross-border terrorism, 26/11 attack on Mumbai and equating it with demolition of disputed structure – issues that are critical to our territorial integrity, security and national pride. He went berserk even in the presence of Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde yet the latter failed to refute Malik’s outrageous comments to nation’s great discomfiture.
Pak Minister’s tirade against India on Indian soil reminds one of equally provocative remarks made by the then President Pervez Musharraf at his televised address to the editors of media outlets during the infamous Agra Summit. The summit collapsed and the dictator had to return home empty handed. Malik too ended up poisoning Indo-Pak relations. He tricked India to secure an invite and exploited the opportunity to spread canards that immensely pleased jihadists back home. It is by now obvious that he came here with a malicious intent and his verbal attacks were pre-meditated. Irked by his conduct, New Delhi cancelled a joint press conference and declined to issue a joint statement on the conclusion of the visit to minimise the damage caused to India’ interests by our Home Minister’s lack-luster performance. External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid’s observation that if he were present, he would have snubbed the visiting minister is an apt comment on Home Minister’s skills.
One of Malik’s most outrageous observations was that India had no reason to blame Hafiz Saeed and his terror group Lashkar-e-Toiba for 26/11 on the spurious argument that the terror group had been banned in Pakistan and was not in existence. He blamed Indian intelligence for its failure to prevent the attack and said India had not provided “convincing evidence” of Saeed’s involvement in Mumbai attack. Another white lie he dished out was that the mastermind of 26/11 was arrested more than once on this count but was released by courts for lack of evidence. Indian officials later discovered that the documents passed on to them by Pakistan showed that the terrorist had been detained not for his involvement in the Mumbai attack but on charges that had nothing to do with it. Malik was not misinformed, as our Home Minister told Parliament but indulged in sophistry. He needs to be exposed as a trickster. His claim that that there was on infiltration from Pakistan only migration of people is more outrageous. Terrorists trained by ISI in terror camps in PoK and armed to the teeth with sophisticated weapons crossing over to India in hordes over decades can by no stretch of imagination be called migrants. They cross over with the help of Pakistani forces and occasionally get killed by Indian army. Most of them are jehadhis from Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Middle East. Extremely offensive and insensitive is the Minister’s remark that Capt Saurbh Kalia might have been killed by harsh weather. Our brave army officer and four other soldiers were brutally tortured while in Pak army’s custody for 20 long days during the Kargil conflict. Supreme Court of India is seized of a petition seeking a directive to the Government to drag Pakistan to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for war crimes. What a shame that the Government neither took the matter to the ICJ nor it took up the war crime issue during talks with Pakistani delegation.
There is no end to falsehood the Pak Minister dished out. He claimed that Abu Jundal, the terrorist who choreographed 26/11 and was recently deported by Saudi Arabia, was an agent of an elite Indian intelligence agency without producing an iota of evidence. Jundal travelled on a Pakistani passport and Islamabad had made feverish attempts to prevent his deportation to India claiming he was a Pakistani citizen. It is our Government’s duty to ensure that Pakistan doesn’t succeed in changing the narrative from the core issue, namely that 26/11 was conceived, planned and directed from Pakistan and that it took no action to prevent it or to take action against those involved in it. India’s perceived failure to prevent the attack can’t be used to obfuscate the fact that state actors were involved in the conspiracy and that a major of Pakistan army was among the handlers of ten Pakistani terrorists who carried out the attack.
Malik’s dubious attempt to equate 26/11 with demolition of the disputed structure is outrageous. He has no business to link an internal affair of India with a terrorist attack on India from Pakistani soil. His defence of Pak’ refusal to handover handlers of 26/11 terrorist attack who are roaming free in that country convinced no one. He dismissed evidence produced by Indian agencies as mere “calls, letters and information”, and asked for convincing evidence. As usual, Islamabad is in a denial mode like the proverbial Mr. Adamant who said he would accept the argument if he were “convinced” that two and two make four. The twist is that Adamant was so adamant that he would never be “convinced”. Malik’s argument that since Lashkar-e-Toiba had been banned by Pakistan, therefore there was no question of the outfit having any hand in Mumbai attack is downright silly. Does a terror outfit disappear from earth just because it has been banned? It went underground and continued to indulge in terror as an arm of the ISI. India will have to do something more than providing clinching evidence to convince Pakistan to handover the terror mastermind to India. For that the country needs a Government capable of effectively dealing with attacks on Indian sovereignty.
Indo-Pak composite talks were suspended as a response to 26/11. Islamabad has shown no sincerity in delivering on our minimum demands on 26/11. The question the Government must answer is what prompted it to resume talks with the rogue state. UPA’s policy towards Islamabad is inconsistent and based on an elusive Aman ki asha. They invited Malik to India knowing full well that he is notorious for his bluster against India. Why didn’t the Government strongly and promptly contest his malicious attacks? Why was he allowed to get away with his propaganda stunt? Is the Government serious to bring the perpetrators of 26/11 to justice? These are some of the questions, the Government must answer.
