To assuage surcharged anger, sparked by the massacre of school children in the Army School in Peshawar, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif made some frantic announcements. He withdrew moratorium imposed on death penalty to terror culprits. Actually two criminals were hanged within days of lifting the moratorium. They were charged with hatching a conspiracy of killing the former President General Musharraf. However Pakistani authorities gave no clue whether the executed persons were part of any known and established terrorist organization like Jaish-e-Muhammad or Lashkar-e-Toiba? Containing terrorism on the soil of Pakistan actually means dismantling known terrorist organizations like LeT which has openly announced its agenda of separating Kashmir from India through force of arms.
Jamaatu’d-Dawa, the parent organization, was running for many years under the cover of a social organization engaged in social and humanitarian enterprises. However, when it surfaced that the organization was recruiting youth for joining the Islamic jihad in Kashmir and elsewhere, and had established links with other international jihadi groups like Al Qaeda, the State Department brought it under its scanner.
LeT is actually the creation of Pakistani Army and ISI in combination. The strategy of raising this highly indoctrinated and committed group of jihadis in Pakistan is to raise second combat line in a fight with India. In other words, LeT is the outcome of Indophobia that has gripped Pakistani religious zealots. Pakistani army has been training its volunteers and cadres. Besides having close liaison with Pakistani army and ISI, Hafiz Saeed has links with Al Qaeda, Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, Haqqani group in Afghanistan and the ideologues of Wahhabism inside and outide Pakistan… He has created a vast network of sympathizers of LeT in western countries who have established fake NGOs using these as conduits for transmission of huge funds for running the jihad in Pakistan, Kashmir and elsewhere. It has also established its moles among the extremists in India. LeT is behind patent subversive activities like manufacturing fake Indian currency in Pakistan and transporting it to India clandestinely through hired conduits. LeT is also facilitating drug peddlers in Pakistan to carry the drugs across the border and utilize its returns for anti-Indian jihadi activities on Indian soil and Kashmir separatism.
Pakistan is hell bent on damaging India’s interests. Besides printing of fake Indian currency, pushing infiltrators and suicide bombers into our territory, firing and shelling border villages, Pakistan is also encouraging drug peddlers to clandestinely transport narcotics through the LoC trading points. Couple of days back J&K Police seized ten kilograms of narcotics from a Pakistani truck at Salamabad, Uri check point. On January 17 last year, police had seized 350 packets of brown sugar from a Pakistani truck at the same check point. These smugglings cannot be called stray incidents but are a part of larger scheme of things designed by ISI.
The trans-LoC trade between two parts of Kashmir had begun just a year after the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service was inaugurated. But over the years, several incidents have happened in which drugs and narcotics carried clandestinely by in-coming trucks were seized by our police at the check point. These smugglings have political dimensions in the sense that they lead to suspension of trade and transit and the very purpose of improving bilateral relations is defeated. Instead of reacting to ground situation objectively and pragmatically, Pakistani authorities stop the movement of our trucks and thus the purpose of opening the trade points stands defeated.
LeT recruits Kashmiri youth, subjects them to intense anti-India indoctrination, provides them training in terrorism and then pushes them to the LoC to sneak into Indian Territory. LeT chief Hafiz never masked his organization’s agenda of fighting to separate Kashmir from Indian Union.
Under pressure from the US and in the background of the Peshawar army school massacre, Nawaz Sharif gave vent to his displeasure and anger, announced imposing of ban on terrorist groups in accordance with the UNHRC declaration. But there is hardly any coordination between what Pakistan says and Hafiz Saeed, the chief of LeT is moving around in the country like a free bird.
General Hooda, GOC-in-C, Northern Command is right in commenting that there is nothing by the name of ‘ban’ imposed by Islamabad regime on LeT. It is nothing more than eye wash. Its structure is intact, its intentions are unswerving, its jihadis continue their bid for infiltration, and it is vigorously conducting anti-India propaganda campaign and distortion of facts. Therefore to say that militancy has come down in Kashmir is only the half truth. The full truth is that jihadis are looking for every opportunity of infiltrating into our side of the LoC and also the IB. Our forces along the LoC are denying them opportunity of infiltrating and resorting to subversion.
General Hooda has expressed his confidence in his field commanders and jawans giving a befitting reply to Pakistan’s firing and shelling or bid to infiltrate terrorists. As a matter of ground reality, we need to be apprehensive of threat from every fundamentalist-terrorist organization wherever it is functional. India has to be prepared to meet this challenge. We are proud of our security forces, who are responding very adequately to subversive and inimical activities of Pakistan against us.
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