Daily Times

India’s long adopted falsely created stance that it will not hold bilateral talks with Pakistan, unless it gives up supporting terrorism in the region, is a well thought out strategy meant to mislead the world that the Jammu and Kashmir freedom struggle is terrorism supported by Pakistan. India’s this strategy is also aimed at blaming Pakistan for sponsoring terrorism in Afghanistan and Kashmir to blemish Pakistan for money laundering and terror financing to harm Pakistan economically by bringing it under sanctions by moving it to the FATF’s blacklist. Above all India blames Pakistan for supporting terrorism to hide its own state sponsored terrorism in the region.

In the FATF context,as reflected in the Print, dated 16 January 2020, a recent statement of India’s new Chief of Defence Staff, General Bipin Rawat is noteworthy.General Rawat, in his remarks at the Raisina Dialogue 2020, on 16 January 2020, while blaming Pakistan for supporting terrorism in Kashmir and Afghanistan, had admitted that New Delhi was actively seeking to put Pakistan on the black list of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).

As far as India’s state terrorism is concerned, it is beyond any doubt that it is seriously involved. India presents itself to be a victim of terrorism only to blot out its state terrorism in Pakistan as well as in other South Asian states to institute its hegemony, apart from unleashing its state terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir, where it has deployed more than 900,000 troops since 1989, and has put the Kasmir valley under curfew and internet/telephone blockade for the last 168 days, to commit genocide to crush the Kashmiris’ peaceful freedom struggle.

Evidence of India’s state sponsored terrorism in South Asian countries is so clear that it cannot be refuted by that country at any forum. India is encouraged to sponsor terrorism because it knows that the world’s major powers, such as the US, UK, France and Russia,will not clearly blame India for sponsoring terrorism because of their strategic and commercial interests linked with it, although they give veiled references of India’s involvement in international terrorism.

There are many examples, which confirm that India sponsors and fuels terrorism against her neighbours and even in other regions of the world. The international press has reported incidents of India’s involvement with ISIS and terrorist outfits in Afghanistan.

India is encouraged to sponsor terrorism because it knows that the world’s major powers, such as the US, UK, France and Russia, will not clearly blame India for sponsoring terrorism because of their strategic and commercial interests linked with it, although they give veiled references of India’s involvement in international terrorism

As published inThe Daily Mail dated 18 November 2015, India’s National Security Advisor, Ajit Kumar Doval, who is also the former Chief of India’s Intelligence Bureau and headed a variety of IB’s foreign operations in the region and beyond, carried out a series of open and secret visits to Iraq and Syria in 2014. During these visits, he held high profile meetings with the Daesh leadership and proposed them to establish a nexus with the Pakistani Taliban, who were on the run, due to the operation Zarb-I-Azb launched by the Pakistan military in 2014, in the Waziristan area.

As per the Nepal Today (Gorkha Weekly), The Daily Mail’s investigations, indicate that during a visit to Iraq,Doval had offered to the Daesh leaders that the Indian government was ready to extend them a handsome financial and weaponry support, via TTP nexus as India was already funding and arming TTP in Pakistan with no objection from major world leaders.

In 2015, International Business Times unearthed that four men with links with ISIS were deported from UAE and later detained by Indian Intelligence agencies, and with their help Doval had partially succeeded to bring ISIS franchise in Afghanistan and IOK.

India is already known to have waged a proxy war in Sri Lanka for 26 years by supporting LTTE.Indian consulates in Afghanistan are known to be supporting terror acts in Pakistan through TTP and other proxies.Serving Indian Navy Commander Jhadav is in Pakistani custody and has revealed how his network was being used to spread terror in Baluchistan and Karachi.

India has actively engaged in coercion inthe domestic politics of Maldives. It also coerced and stopped medical supplies to pressurize Nepali government to change Nepal’s constitution. The news printed in the Indian media that Pakistan and China had joined hands to get declared by the UN, five Indian nationals (who were part of ISIS) also indirectly prove that India was involved in sponsoring terrorism.Indian policy of using the ISIS franchise in Afghanistan and IOK failed only after Russia and Turkey used decisive force against ISIS, exposing India and its friends to expand ISIS to other regions.

In view of the above, it is very evident that India will continue with its policy of sponsoring terrorism in the region, and blame Pakistan instead for the same, knowing fully well that the major powers, except China will not blame it. It should also be clear to Pakistan that India will continue to blame it for financing terrorist networks, and mislead the FATF for blacklisting Pakistan, instead of declaring it white despite its best efforts to meet the FATF requirements.

The writer is a former Research Fellow of Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI), Islamabad and Senior Research Fellow of Strategic Vision Institute (SVI), Islamabad]