Pakistan made public a dossier containing `irrefutable proofs’ of the Indian sponsorship of terrorism in Pakistan and called on the world to stop India’s rogue actions for saving the region’s peace and security.
India’s ill intentions
PAKISTAN has taken an important step in its counterterrorism efforts with the launch of a dossier that claims to have substantive evidence of India’s active sponsoring of terrorism inside Pakistan. Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and DG ISPR Maj Gen Babar Iftikhar unveiled details that included audio conversations between people identified as Indian intelligence agents and terrorists inside Pakistan.
Payments made by Indian agents in bank accounts for terrorist activities on Pakistani soil are also documented. The dossier details the involvement of Indian intelligence agency RAW in specific incidents of terrorism in various regions of Pakistan leading to substantial loss of precious lives. This dossier was unveiled a day after India unleashed yet another unprovoked attack across the Line of Control resulting in the martyrdom of a Pakistani soldier and five civilians including a teenage girl and a toddler. According to Pakistani officials, Indian forces used heavy-calibre weapons to fire indiscriminately on the civilian population in Azad Kashmir.
The international community should be concerned at this swiftly deteriorating situation. However, it should not be surprised. India’s belligerence and its muscular policy towards Pakistan has been on the rise since Narendra Modi became the prime minister. For years now, India has been consistently painting Pakistan as the source of instability in the region. Successive governments in New Delhi have accused Pakistan of ‘cross-border terrorism’ while whitewashing their own policies of brute repression and human rights violations in India-held Kashmir.
For various reasons, India was able to largely convince the international community that its narrative was correct while Pakistan’s response suffered from credibility issues. It is the right time now for Pakistan to reverse the narrative and make effective use of diplomacy and strategic communication to find international traction for this dossier. The idea of India as a state sponsor of terrorism may be hard for the international community to digest — fed as it appears to be on a diet of slick Indian propaganda backed by the image that the country has crafted for itself — but this is exactly the challenge that Pakistan must accept.
At the same time, Pakistan should be ready to counter any military misadventure from India. The signs emanating from New Delhi project mal-intent. Bellicose rhetoric and threatening posturing from civil and military leaders across the border have sadly become a norm. Added to this is the pressure on the BJP government after the dismal failure of its attempt to control the situation in occupied Kashmir.
India should, however, know by now that if it attempts to cross any red lines, the response is likely to be swift and hard, as was demonstrated earlier in 2019. For the sake of both countries, indeed the region itself, the international community should make India step back before it is too late.
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Qureshi says bank transactions, letters, communication intercepts show India’s terror financing, arms supply, training to and harbouring of militants
• PM maintains world can’t stay silent over ‘irrefutable proof’
• Dossier being shared with UN, OIC, influential world capitals
Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, accompanied by military spokesman Maj Gen Babar Iftikhar, while sharing salient features of the dossier with the media at a presser at the Foreign Office, emphasised that the world could not afford to ignore India’s “rogue behaviour” and said Pakistan reserved the right to defend itself in every possible way.
Pakistan has accused its arch-rival neighbour of aiding and abetting terrorism for destabilising the region in the past as well, but this time the allegations are backed by specific evidence of financing, training, harbouring, and weapons supply in the shape of copies of correspondence, bank transactions and communication intercepts.
“The [specific] evidence presented by Pakistan provides a concrete proof of Indian financial and material sponsorship of multiple terrorist organisations, including UN-designated terrorist organisations Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, Balochistan Liberation Army and Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan,” explained Mr Qureshi.
The dossier exposing India’s real face before the international community was being shared with the United Nations (UN), Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (UNSC) as well as other influential world capitals, he said.
Diplomats, military and intelligence officials of India had been working with the Pakistan-centric terrorist groups based in Afghanistan, it stated. The dossier has been made public before Prime Minister Imran Khan’s expected visit to Kabul next week.
The foreign minister, in a tweet after the presser, said: “This one-sided narrative ends today. For too long India has gotten away with state-sponsored terrorism & cultivating seeds of hatred across the border”.
“Today we presented irrefutable evidence to the world on Indian state’s insatiable appetite for terrorism, violence and instability, funding banned organisations, arming terrorists, savage attacks on innocent civilians and desperately trying to lobby against Flag of Pakistan’s growing global role of peace and progress; India has become a rogue state. It is time the world wakes up to an Indian state that is only incredible in its fanaticism,” he maintained.
World can’t stay silent: Imran
Later in the evening, Prime Minister Imran Khan expressed the hope that the world after looking at the “irrefutable evidence” given by Pakistan would not be able to remain “indifferent or silent” and would “force India to end its terrorism and bring to justice those responsible for killing thousands of innocent people in Pakistan”.
“Our resilient and courageous security agencies and forces will continue to give their all to protect our people,” he underscored.
The foreign minister earlier told the presser that the recent spike in terrorist attacks, especially the incidents in Quetta and Peshawar, were the manifestation of India’s ‘grand design’. He said India was doing so to destabilise Pakistan, disrupt its journey towards economic revival, cause political upheaval, and sabotage China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
Consortium of terror groups
These actions, the minister said, were being directed by a special cell that works directly under Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He said the cell had so far distributed Rs22 billion among the terrorist groups.
Mr Qureshi feared another spike in terrorist attacks in Pakistan, particularly in Karachi, Lahore, and Peshawar, over the next few months as India was attempting to build a consortium of terrorist groups including TTP and Baloch militant organisations BLA, BLF, and BRA. India, he said, a few months back facilitated reunification of the TTP, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, and Hizb-ul-Ahrar.
He said a 700-member strong militia, working under 10 personnel of India’s prime intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), had been raised for targeting CPEC projects.
The Pakistan military spokesman, Maj Gen Babar Iftikhar, said as part of efforts to create terror consortium, Indian intelligence officer named Col Rajesh, working at Indian Embassy in Afghanistan, held four meetings with commanders of these terrorist organisations to coordinate and intensify their activities in Karachi, Lahore, and Peshawar in November and December.
The ISPR DG further said Indian intelligence agencies were trying to establish ‘Daesh-e-Pakistan’. In this regard, he said, 30 Indian Daesh militants were relocated from India to various camps along Pakistan-Afghanistan border by two Indian intelligence agencies operatives. These militants, he said, were handed over to Daesh Commander Sheikh Abdul Rahim alias Abdul Rehman Muslim Dost.
He said the Indian ambassadors in Afghanistan had been regularly supervising various terrorist activities. In one such instance, he said, Indian ambassador to Afghanistan and Consular in Jalalabad discussed with collaborators about providing financial support to TTP and Baloch dissidents.
Terror financing
Maj Gen Babar also gave specific details about terror financing by RAW. He cited two transactions made through Indian Banks – an amount of $28,000 was transferred by Punjab Bank India, while in the second instance a transaction of $55,851 was made by Mr Manmeet (an Indian national) from Indian Bank, New Delhi was received at Afghanistan International Bank.
Showing letters in Dari, the military spokesman, said India paid $820,000 to TTP leadership through its collaborators.
He said $60 million was spent on raising militia for sabotaging CPEC. Similar payments were made to the sub-nationalists in Balochistan to cause unrest in Pakistan, he said.
He also referred to the confessional statement of Sarfraz Merchant and Tariq Mir, which revealed that RAW had funded Altaf Hussain for terrorism in Karachi.
Arms, suicide jackets supply
The Pakistan military spokesman also touched upon the weapons and ammunition and other arms provided by India to terrorist groups. He said recently a RAW-sponsored network of six terrorists was unearthed that had linkages with the attack on Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSE) and is also involved in delivery of suicide jackets to various terrorists groups operating in Pakistan besides undertaking terrorist activities.
Citing the confessional statement of MQM militant Ajmal Pahari, Gen Iftikhar said India had been providing weapons and ammunition to the Altaf Hussain-led Group. He said Pahari had confessed that India ran four training camps for Altaf-led group militants at Deradhun, Haryana, in North and North-East India. About 40 terrorists belonging to his group had received training in India, he said, adding that the terrorists used to travel to New Delhi through a third country.
“We also have the evidence of RAW providing weapons, ammunition and IEDs to TTP Commanders. The letter in Dari reads that TTP leaders after collecting the weapons reached back their safe locations after crossing the border into Pakistan,” he said, adding that a letter included in the dossier shows that a RAW agent had been instigating the residents of tribal districts in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province to send young men to Afghanistan for militancy training. The letter in Dari reveals that RAW handlers also delivered improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and weapons in the bordering areas of Waziristan during his visit, he added.
He said Indian intelligence agencies were running 87 terrorists’ camps targeting Pakistan. Sixty six of the 87 terrorist camps were located in Afghanistan, whereas the 21 others were functioning in India, he pointed out.
A former Indian ambassador and an Indian army general visited a Baloch militants’ training camp in Haji Gak area in Afghanistan, which housed 150 militants, he said. India spent $30 million to establish a camp in Sarhad Leva Kandahar for Baloch dissidents. A letter in Darri showed that RAW was responsible for provision of weapons and ammunition for which four helicopters were utilized, he explained.
About RAW’s involvement in terrorist attacks in Balochistan, he said that the BLA and the BLF attacked Pearl Continental (PC) Hotel in Gwadar on May 11, 2019. The attack had been planned by RAW officer Anurag Singh for which $500,000 was spent by the Indian intelligence agency, he added.
The attacker Hamal Nawaz used an Afghan phone number and remained in contact with an Indian phone number during the attack. He said the attack was masterminded by Dr Allah Nazar and Aslam Achoo, both of whom had travelled to India on fake Afghan passports. Aslam Achoo, he said, remained admitted in Indian hospital while he travelled under the cover name of Abdul Hamid, while Allah Nazar travelled to India under the cover name of Haji Nabi.
The Pakistan military spokesman disclosed that the investigation in the attack on Agriculture University in Peshawar on October 26, 2017 led to masterminds of Army Public School attack. RAW, he said, for planning the attack on the agriculture university had hired three facilitators including Malik Faridoon who was also involved in the planning of the school attack. He said Malik Faridoon had visited the Indian consulate in Jalalabad after the APS attack, while he also visited India for medical treatment in 2017 where he remained admitted in Primus Hospital.
He said tangible evidence showed that RAW was involved in subversive activity in Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan. “India has for long been endeavouring to create unrest in GB. In the context of provisional provincial GB status being discussed in Pakistan, on 28 Sep 2020, an important meeting was held in Ministry of Home Affairs (New Delhi), to deliberate upon the methodology to trigger negative reactions,” he said and gave the details of the plan chalked out to pre-empt the development.
He said Indian foreign missions in Financial Action Task Force (FATF) member countries also extensively lobbied with the host countries prior to FATF meetings to undermine Pakistan’s achievements and push for its grey/ blacklisting.
Published in Dawn, November 15th, 2020