Mahvish Malik
QUAID-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah once alluded that, “our object should be peace within, and peace without. We want to live peacefully and maintain cordial friendly relations with our immediate neighbours and with the world at large.” Pakistan desires peace and stability with all its neighbours including India; hence its foreign policy is based on a similar notion as stated by Pakistan’s founder. Despite repeated Indian attempts to incite violence across the country, Pakistan remained hopeful to resume the Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) with India.
India’s belligerent attitude and its current ruling elite’s ‘Hindutva/anti-Pakistan’ mindset have continually repudiated such peace efforts. In this context, the facets of India’s ‘sham diplomacy’ on seeking peaceful engagements towards its neighbouring states have been exposed.
Pakistan has provided ‘irrefutable evidence’ on Indian state-sponsored terrorism to the world. Pakistan has revealed that India has managed funding 87 terrorist camps: 66 in Afghanistan and remaining in India. Many Indian diplomats and officials have visited said camps and prompted nefarious terrorist activities across the border inside Pakistan.
India is also involved in funding the UN banned terrorist organizations – Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and Jamat-ul-Ahrar (JuA)- to incite sectarianism and violence in Pakistan. Some other reports also suggest that India is backing the ISIS in Afghanistan, with an aim of sponsoring terrorism in Pakistan. The Afghan soil is being used for planning and executing terrorist activities in the region. Contrarily, India is using its ‘sham diplomacy’ to project support for Afghan peace process and commitment to provide security training and humanitarian aid to the Afghan people. All of this is being done to cover up its terrorist activities.
Moreover, the Indian domestic politics is also advancing the ‘Hindu nationalism’ against its Muslim population and Pakistan for seeking political gains. In this regard, the BJP government and Indian Army remained involved in staging false flag operations –Pulwama and Uri attacks –to go against Pakistan. Recently, the leaked transcript of Indian anchor and journalist Arnab Goswami’s chat exposed that prior intelligence information on ‘staging’ these 2019 surgical strikes was released.
In the chat, he touts the strikes as“…bigger than a normal strike”. The conversation also endorsed that Indian Army was ready to cause more violence in India-occupied Jammu & Kashmir to justify its actions against Pakistan consequently. These revelations offer no surprise to Pakistan as it remains aware of such traditional Indian military adventurisms under PM Modi’s extremist state policies vis-à-vis Pakistan.
On the other side, while India celebrated its win over assuming the chairmanship of the UN 1373 Counter Terrorism Committee (CTC) and the Taliban Sanction Committee; Indian diplomats failed to garner full political support for other committees like 1267 Al-Qaeda/Daesh Sanctions Committee, 1540 Non-proliferation Committee, and the Afghanistan file in the Security Council. Considering the constraints of the Indian lobby over chairmanship issue, it is reported that the two year duration for the CTC chairmanship is further reduced to one year for India. Reportedly, the Indian state terrorism against Kashmiris has acted as a roadblock for India in gaining support from major states for leading chairs related to UN Committees on counter terrorism.
With regard to the 1540 Committee, many Western states have shared their concern on Indian nuclear status since it is a non-party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In the Afghanistan file, states remain skeptical about India’s positive role in advancing the Afghan peace process in future.
Hence, the international community should hold India accountable for spreading terrorism and violence in the region. The evidence-based dossier should encourage UN states to sponsor a resolution against Indian barbaric acts. It is important for states to realize that such erratic Indian behaviour, if not prevented, would jeopardize peace and prosperity for all regional states.
—The author is a former participant at the Nuclear Security Policy Boot Camp, George Washington University, USA.
