Drishtikone
It is amazing how India and its politicians continue to fall into the trap set by Pakistan all the time! From 1948 Kashmir trap to 1971 Bhutto trap (where he got 90,000 PoWs back for nothing to give), to Kargil to now! Let us understand one thing CLEARLY.. Pakistan, as long as it is ruled by the Army will NEVER change!
Here is a fantastic article of how it is exploiting the latest dialogue between India and Pakistan. What is interesting is that many left wing "analysts" are being used very well by the Pakistanis to achieve their ends!
After Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh agreed with General Pervez Musharraf during their meeting at Havana in September last year to set up this joint counter-terrorism mechanism, I have been repeatedly cautioning in my writings and speeches that the Pakistani authorities would misuse this mechanism to discredit the Baloch freedom struggle by projecting it as an Indian-sponsored terrorist movement.
Just as they sought to have the Sindhi freedom struggle discredited during the dialogue of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
That seems to be exactly what they did at the just concluded first meeting of the new mechanism.
They tried to keep the focus of their presentations, publicity and propaganda concentrated on their so-called dossier on Balochistan after having derisively dismissed Indian requests relating to the terrorist strikes in Mumbai’s suburban trains in July last year in which 184 Indian nationals were killed and in the Samjhauta Express near Panipet last month in which 22 Pakistani nationals and 27 Indian nationals were killed.
They tried to divert attention from the terrorist attack on Mumbai, which was the third major mass casualty suffered by Indians since Pakistan started sponsoring Indian terrorist groups.
The first was the blowing up of the Kanishka aircraft, and the second the Mumbai explosions of March 1993.
What they did was to have a terrorist strike by jihadi terrorists carried out in the Samjhauta Express before the meeting of this mechanism and then exploit it as an example of Indian inaction against terrorism endangering Pakistani lives.
There was another worrisome aspect of the meeting of the mechanism and the events preceding it.
Those closely monitoring comments in Pakistan would have noticed a wave of orchestrated insinuations that the alleged Indian inaction was because so-called Hindu extremists were involved in the attack on the Samjhauta Express.
This mischievous campaign has two purposes — to create a divide between the Muslims and the Hindus in India and to prepare the ground for a Pakistani stand that Musharraf’s implementation of his commitment of January 2004, not to allow any terrorism against India from any territory controlled by Pakistan, would depend upon a similar Indian commitment not to allow its territory to be used by so-called Hindu extremists against Pakistan and its nationals.
One continues to feel disturbed by the kind of spins being disseminated by the government and Delhi-based analysts projecting the first meeting of the mechanism in a positive light while wilfully suppressing the worrisome aspects of it.
B Raman is retired additional secretary, Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India, New Delhi, and, presently, director, Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: [email protected]
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