Dr. Kuldeep Singh
As and when Pak fails in own country’s problems, anti-Kashmir rant starts. Heart surgery of Pak PM Nawaz Sharief coincided with two happenings. One, the killing of Burhan Wani followed by disturbances in Indian Kashmir. Second, the elections in PoK.
Pak PM cashed these situations openly airing full support to Kashmiris on protest and said Inshallaha, Indian Kashmir will be Pakistan.
Nawaz Sharief requires medicines to cure after heart surgery. His rhetoric on Kashmir is itself condemned in Pak press.
Slamming Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for saying he was waiting for the day all of Kashmir will join Pakistan, a Pakistani daily urged him not to indulge in “wishful thinking”. “Such statements are nothing more than rhetoric,” the Daily Times said in an editorial.
“Instead of indulging in wishful thinking, the PM needs to sit back and think with a cool mind the ways to resolve the regional issues,” press added.
Pakistan is itself sitting on the bomb of terrorism. They terrorist already has caused great harms to Pakistan. Recapitulating the past there had been unaccountable mishappenings.
On 13th April, 2016, at least seven policemen and four ‘criminals’ were killed in an exchange of fire in the Kacha (riverbed) area of the Indus River between Districts of Rajanpur and Rahim Yar Khan in Punjab Province. While eight ‘criminals’ who sustained injuries managed to escape, 22 policemen were taken hostage by the ‘criminals’. On 14th April four injured policemen were released but the remaining 18 were still in captivity.
On 7th April, 2016, unidentified militants shot dead at least three Shias at the Najaf Imambargah (Shia place of worship) in North Karachi Town, in the provincial capital of Sindh.
On 4th April, 2016, Feroze Shah, the Personal Assistant to Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) leader Mohammad Ateeq, his daughter Tasbiha (8), and a city warden, Abid, were killed in a targeted attack while they were traveling in a van that looked like a police vehicle near Furniture Market in the North Karachi Town.
On 31st March, 2016, at least five people were killed and several others were injured when a blast occurred inside a vehicle on Kashmir Road in the Jani Khel area of Lakki Marwat District in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP).
In the worst attack of 2016 so far (till 17th April), at least 74 people were killed and more than 300 were injured in a suicide blast inside the Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park in the Iqbal Town area of Lahore, the provincial capital of Punjab, on 27th March, 2016. Significantly, a large number of people, mostly Christians were present in the park, celebrating Easter.
According to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP) database, 831 terrorism-linked fatalities have already occurred in Pakistan in 2016, including 222 civilians, 102 Security Force (SF) personnel and 507 terrorists/militants. The country has also recorded 82 major incidents (each involving three or more fatalities) resulting in 715 fatalities (183 civilians, 68 SF personnel and 464 terrorists). Further, 43 blasts accounting for 176 deaths and over 520 injuries in the current year.
During the corresponding period of 2015, Pakistan had seen 1,334 terrorism related fatalities, including 351 civilians, 107 SF personnel and 876 terrorists. The country witnessed 111 major incidents resulting in 1,021 fatalities (147 civilians, 59 SF personnel and 815 militants) in this period, as well as 83 blasts accounting for 214 deaths and over 398 injured.
Through 2015, Pakistan recorded a total of 3,682 fatalities, including 940 civilians, 339 SF personnel and 2,403 terrorists/militants as against 5,496 fatalities, including 1,781 civilians, 533 SF personnel and 3,182 terrorists/militants in 2014. The number of major incidents also declined from 402 (accounting for 4,173 deaths) to 322 (resulting in 2,923 fatalities) over this period. Similarly, 2015 recorded 216 incidents of bomb blasts resulting in 495 deaths, down from 388 incidents resulting in 840 deaths recorded in 2014. Moreover, as against 25 suicide bombings accounting for 336 deaths in 2014, year 2015 recorded 19 such incidents resulting in 161 deaths.
Terror-related fatalities have sustained a declining trend in Pakistan since the peak of 2009 when fatalities totaled a staggering 11,704 (2,324 civilians, 991 SF personnel and 8,389 militants). 2014 saw a transient aberration in the trend, with 5,496 fatalities, a marginal increase, on year on year basis, from 5,379 fatalities recorded in 2013. All four Provinces of Pakistan – Balochistan, KP, Punjab, and Sindh – along with the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) recorded declines.
Operation Zarb-e-Azb (sharp and cutting) launched on 15th June, 2014, in the tribal areas of Pakistan has been significant in bringing about this relative improvement. During the operation, domestically oriented terror groups have been targeted with full military might. Director General (DG) of Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR), Lt. Gen. Asim Saleem Bajwa, claimed, on 12th December , 2015, that since the launch of the operation “3,400 terrorists [were] killed, and 837 hideouts from where they were carrying out their terrorist activities [were] destroyed… Success came at a heavy price as 488 valiant officers and men of Pakistan Army, FC [Frontier Constabulary] KP [Khyber Pakhtunkhwa] and Bolan and Sindh Rangers sacrificed their lives, while another 1,914 were injured.”
Most recently, on 3rd April, 2016, ISPR claimed that SFs had ‘cleared’ 4,304 square kilometers of area in the North Waziristan Agency of FATA and “restored the writ of the government in all areas especially in remote areas of FATA.”
Despite the rhetoric of “not discriminating among terror groups”, however, Pakistani Forces have carefully avoided inflicting any harm on terrorist formations which serve perceived ‘state interests’. Islamabad’s policy of selective targeting of terror groups leaves the environment that breeds terrorism intact. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) in its annual report released in March 2016 thus observes
The year 2015 could be flagged as one in which Pakistani state took some definitive steps to recover its lost writ in places as diverse as rugged mountainous Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and thickly populated and crime-infested Karachi… The military crackdown on some of the militant groups sheltering in the country’s northwestern tribal areas brought terrorist attacks down by almost half… Plainly the war was not over yet. Ending extremism required that there should be no pick and choose… .
Crucially, as SAIR has repeatedly emphasised, Islamabad continues to allow terrorist groups serving its supposed strategic interests in neighboring Afghanistan and India to operate with impunity from its soil. In the most recent and brazen move, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) founder and Jama’at-ud-Dawa (JuD) ‘chief’ Hafiz Muhammad Saeed reportedly set up a Sharia’s (Islamic law) Court in Lahore to dispense “speedy justice”, taking up citizens’ complaints and issuing summons carrying a warning of strict action in case of non-compliance.
This is the first instance of such a parallel judicial system to be established in the Punjab province. JuD claimed the Court only offers arbitration and resolves disputes in accordance with the Islamic judicial system, but failed to justify the summons. The impunity with which Saeed operates clearly confirms the support he receives from the Pakistani establishment. Saeed is the mastermind of the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai (India) and in 2012 the United States (US) put a USD 10 million bounty on his head.
Further, despite repeated US calls to target the Haqqani Network – one of the most vicious terrorist formations operating from Pakistan into Afghanistan – in Operation Zarb-e-Azb, no visible action in this direction has been taken thus far. Significantly, according to an 13th April, 2016, report published by the US National Security Archive, “a series of DIA cables (from 11th January, 2010, and 6th February, 2010) show that some funding for Haqqani [Haqqani Network] attacks are still provided by the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, including $200,000 for the 30th December, 2009, attack on the CIA facility at Camp Chapman.” At least 10 people, including two female American CIA agents, Jennifer Lynne Matthews, who commanded the base; and Elizabeth Hanson, a targeting analyst; were killed in the attack.
There are number of militant related activities within Pak. Terrorism is the enemies of humanity. Terrorists are the friends of none. They regardless of affiliations/interests need to be tackled globally. Once, Indian Kashmir manages to fully control militants and their activities, the militants operative in Pak shall eliminate Pak from the map of the world.
Wisdom is in joint operations against terrorists and terrorism. If people have political aspirations, let it be peaceful struggle involving no arms on the philosophy of Gandhi The Truth, Tolerance, Non-violence. Reunion of whole of J and K is the better solution.
