EU Raps Pakistan

India Vindicated

Image Courtesy: zackvision.com

The European Union’s severe indictment of Pakistan’s involvement in harboring terrorism in the Kashmir valley has brought to light what India has been trying to say for the last 2 decades. The indictment is contained in a report brought out by the union on the Kashmir issue and is a severe blow to Pakistan’s efforts to distance itself from terrorism in the region. The report has asked Pakistan to disarm militants, shut down terrorist training camps, end the flow of weapons and money to the Taliban and other militants based in Pakistani territory, and it also accuses Pakistan-based militant groups Lashker-e-Taiba and Harkatul Mujahideen of continuing operations in Kashmir.

Image Courtesy:migrantinfo.org

What is even more damning to Pakistan is that it comes at a time when President Pervez Musharaff has asked his PM Shaukat Aziz and Foreign Minister Kurshid Kasuri to rasie the Kashmir issue at the SAARC summit. It is believed that the President has done this mainly to shift the focus of attention from the criticism he has been facing back home with respect to the chief justice issue. Also it is believed that he did this to put India on the defensive at the SAARC summit.

However his plan has now suffered a major setback after the EU report’s indictment. Shaukat Aziz was involving in grandstanding on Sunday when he said “SAARC has a lot of potential. But dispute resolution, particularly the Kashmir issue and peace and harmony, is a must to realise this potential.” He now finds himself with egg on his face because the report specifically reads, “Without an end to terrorism, there can be no real progress towards a political solution or in improving the economic situation of the population of Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan has provided Kashmiri militants with training, weapons, funding and sanctuary and has failed to hold the militants accountable for atrocities they have committed on the Indian-administered side.”

Image Courtesy: achievement.org

Pakistan will now find itself on the defensive what with Hamid Karzai, the Afghanistan president too blaming Pakistan for supporting the Al-Qaeida. He has even gone so far as to say that Osama-bin-Laden is hiding in Quetta, a province of Pakistan. If Pakistan raises the issue of terrorism at the SAARC summit it could find itself facing a tough time from India and Afghanistan who have got a shot in the arm from the EU report.

India will be pleased with the recent developments because even during the height of the Kargil War, India was finding it tough to convince the international community about Pakistan’s hand in terrorist infiltrations and cross border terrorism at the valley.

Image Courtesy: guardian.co.uk

On a lighter note Bollywood has always shown Pakistan’s involvement in terrorism. Although previously everyone, including yours truly, dismissed it as being an overtly patriotic and a jingoistic view of the issue, they have now been vindicated in what they had been saying all along. Movies like “Border” and “Lakshya” clearly showed Pakistan’s involvement in the Kargil war. But the most realistic of them all was “Kabul Express”. It showed Pakistan’s involvement in the terrorist activities in Afghanistan vividly. And remember it was semi-autobiographical too. Just goes to show that even our movies are not all fiction. Maybe our movies are not as full of crap as we think they are. Pakistan too should realize that they can’t fool the world forever.