Pakistan@In-Denial.Com

The second anniversary of 26/11 has rolled past. It suits Islamabad to appear unremitting in pursuit of justice but to let matters drift.

By B G Verghese

New Indian Express, 5 December, 2010

Mr Chidambaram’s lament on the second anniversary of 26/11 that Pakistan has reneged on its promises to bring its handlers and masterminds to justice expeditiously will be widely shared. The low-credibility in-camera trial in Rawalpindi of some of the accused arrested for complicity, drags on. Yet another judge hearing the case has recently resigned and an nth appointment is awaited. This is farcical though Islamabad pleads that India is delaying its personnel access to Kasab’s interrogators in Mumbai.

Pakistan’s ruling military establishment appears to have little intention of ending the charade. It suits Islamabad to appear unremitting in pursuit of justice but to let matters drift. The same thing has happened in matter of following up on the UN investigation findings on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. This found the Army and ISI obstructing the course of justice and noted that the ISI was continuing to use the LeT and other jihadi terror elements as strategic assets against India. No wonder Chidambaram felt he must “caution people” against such a neighbour. This comes close to naming Pakistan a rogue state.

On November 10, Pakistan criticised Obama’s statement of support for India’s candidature for a permanent seat in an expanded Security Council that reflects new global realities, whenever this happens. It said that any such move would have “implications for peace and stability” in South Asia. This is a cantankerous harking back to the discredited two-nation theory that sought parity in all matters between Pakistan and India.

Interestingly, on November 12, the Pakistan Army, for the first time admitted through a posting on one of its websites that its troops had taken part in the Kargil war which it had thus far described as a Kashmiri mujahideen uprising within India. It had mobilized troops along its side of the LOC only to prevent any spill over of fighting across the border. The world was not persuaded and the truth was soon all over the Pakistani media which wrote scathingly about how the Pakistan Army had ignominiously repudiated its dead. Some of its men buried by the Indian Army were later exhumed at the request of grieving Pakistani widows and mothers and returned to their families for performance of the last rites back home.

The tragedy of Pakistan is that it has lived in denial from its very birth. It has denied its history and civilisational identity and continues pathetically to define itself negatively as the India’s “other”. Jinnah, repudiated the two nation theory comprehensively and eloquently in his very first address to the Pakistan constituent assembly in Karachi on August 11, 1947. More demonstrably, that myth was shattered with Bangladesh’s declaration of independence in 1971 and Pakistan’s refusal to repatriate from its erstwhile eastern wing the Biharis who had once again declared for Pakistan at that crucial moment.

Between August and October 1947, Pakistan denied grossly violating its Standstill Agreement with a then independent J&K, hoping to compel it to submit through an economic and financial blockade.

It denied its invasion of J&K from October 22, 1947 through tribal lashkars raised, equipped, officered and supported by it despite clinching evidence of its culpability. The truth was later revealed by Major General Akbar Khan, the Pakistani officer who planned the attack under official instructions from the very top. (See his book, “Raiders in Kashmir”).

The UN Representative, Owen Dixon, stated, ‘When the frontiers of the state were crossed on, I believe, October 20 1947 by hostile elements, it was contrary to international law, and …when, as I believe, units of the regular Pakistan forces moved into the territory of that state, that too was inconsistent with international law”. That was a finding of aggression.

Joseph Korbel of the UN Commission for India and Pakistan said India was confronted with a “bombshell” in July 1948 by Pakistan’s bland but belated admission moved three Army brigades into J&K in May to prevent India’s spring offensive spilling over its border. Yet a few months later, Pakistani forces were knocking at the gates of Leh, hundreds of miles west.

Gilgit, Hunza and Nagar were fraudulently annexed in November 1947.

The UN Resolution of August 13, 1948, by which Pakistan swears, called for a ceasefire followed by a truce during which all tribal irregulars, Azad Kashmir forces so-called and the Pakistan Army would be withdrawn from J&K and the territories evacuated administered by the local J&K local authorities under UN supervision. It was only after peace and normalcy had been restored, the intruders expelled and refugees and other displaced persons restored to their homes that a plebiscite would be held under UN auspices. Pakistan reneged on Parts I and II, rendering Part III nugatory. The UN Resolutions are now dead.

In 1965, Pakistan mounted another invasion of J&K through Operation Gibraltar. This failed and was denounced by the UN in the face of Pakistani denials. Years later, the then Pak Air Chief, Air Marshal Nur Khan had this to tell Dawn of Karachi on September 6, 2005: (The Army) planned Op Gibraltar for self-glory… They misled the nation with a big lie that India rather than Pakistan had provoked the war and that we were victims of Indian aggression”.

Pakistani violations of the LOC were routine. But by 1980s, it had altered the map by re-drawing the extended LOC at its northern terminus grid reference point NJ 9842 to run just west of the Karakoram Pass, thus appropriating the bulk of the Siachen glacier. This was in flagrant violation of the parent Karachi Agreement of July 27, 1949 delineating the ceasefire line from the south up to NJ 9842 “thence north to the glaciers”.

The Kargil operation fetched farcical denials from Musharraf. But later, Group Captain Kaiser Tufail, then Director of Operations, PAF, revealed how it had been rashly planned by the Pakistan Army. He concluded: “Kargil, I suspect, like the’65 and ’71 wars, was a case of not having enough dissenters, devil’s advocates if you will, in planning because everyone wanted to agree with the boss”. (See Defence Watch, March 2009).

Cross border armed intervention and jihadi terror sponsored by Pakistan were later to meet a wall of bland and brazen denials. Those lies have also been torn apart by the US, UK, Afghanistan, the UN and others. Yet Islamabad denies that the LeT, Jaish and other fanatical groups function exactly as before under new names, spawning terror.

The Indian Parliament was attacked by Pakistani terrorists and, like the attacks on the Red Fort, the J&K Assembly and other targets, was strenuously denied. Then on March 19, 2004, Lt Gen Javed Ashraf Qazi chief of ISI and then Railway Minister in Musharraf’s government said, “We must not be afraid of admitting that Jaish-e-Mohammed was involved in the deaths of thousands of innocent Kashmiris, in the bombing of the Indian Parliament, in Daniel Pearl’s murder and in attacks on President Pervez Musharraf’s life”.

So Pakistan has been and remains in denial. Its tardiness in acting on 26/11 is in keeping with its past. Two or five years from now, some high ranking source involved in planning these dastardly crimes will confess all.

Further updates from Pakistan@In-Denial.Com.

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