After he is designated international terrorist by the US, Salahuddin, the self styled chief of the conglomerate of Pakistan based terrorists groups named United Jihad Council has come out with open confession of having engineered 9/11 attack in Mumbai. He has lionized Hizbul Mujahideen, of which he is the so-called chief commander, as having plans of conducting more attacks not only in Kashmir but in other parts of our country.
Though the US designated him global terrorist hours before the formal meeting between President Trump and Prime Minister Modi in White House yet the US has its own reasons to do so. India has appreciated the announcement as right step in right direction but the fact of the matter is that US did not do it for the love of India. If it were so, the US would have designated more dangerous terrorists based in Pakistan much earlier when India repeatedly brought the phenomenon of Pakistan allowing its soil to be used by terrorists against her to the notice of the US. The US just did some lip service by taking recourse to patent rhetoric of facilitating a bilateral dialogue. Thus the US was eager to project itself as the arbiter of disputes among sovereign states rather than demonstrating its principled policy of clipping the wings of international terrorism. And when the US-UK jointly moved the resolution of designating Azhar as a global terrorist, China scuttled it twice and the two countries showed little interest in pushing the matter which India insisted and had provided all the available proofs. Justice and true world leadership demanded that after China had, for the second time, scuttled the resolve of the SC to designate Azhar, they should have openly and vigorously put the blame on China of conniving at the disruption of world peace by throwing her lot with the terrorists. They took no further step.
The question is what actual and practical benefit accrues to India by the US designating Salahuddin as a global terrorist? Salahuddin is a small fry in the entire Kashmir proxy war. He has been used by ISI to tell the big lie to the world that armed insurgency and terrorism let lose in Kashmir are not terror but a so-called national freedom struggle. Basing the UJC in Muzaffarabad, and installing an ethnic Kashmiri as its chief commander, too, is a camouflage for Kashmir terror to profile it freedom struggle. Salahuddin is a pawn which ISI uses on the chessboard of Kashmir politics.
The same is true about the US. It should be known that the designation sword fell only when Salahuddin announced that he was inviting both ISIS and Al Qaeda to become accomplices in UJC and that he was dovetailing his organization to mission Islamic Caliphate.
Salahuddin is based in PoK, which is administered by Pakistan. Pakistan cannot and does not say that she has nothing to do with Kashmir proxy war and that it is the affairs of Kashmiri leadership. Nobody will accept that UJC is not provided space and base by Pakistan. Moreover, the open confession of Salahuddin of receiving arms, funds, logistics etc. from Pakistan belies all her assertions of having nothing to do with Kashmir insurgency. New Delhi should understand that designating Salahuddin as international terrorist hardly brings her any solace. Salahuddin is only a minion an odd man terrorist chiefs. The US has done the eyewash and nothing more. Neither the UJC nor the HuM, of which Salahuddin is the chief commander, matter in the US-Pakistan political chemistry. It is the Pakistan army that matters and the US has been using and shall be using it to further her interests globally. The reason for that are more than one like its larger interests in Afghanistan, in the Gulf, in West Asia and in the Middle East. After China’s increasing footprints in the Karakram-Badakhshan region, the US interests in Pakistan have received a boost. Therefore, we think that we should be too euphoric about the designation of Salahuddin But what we need to understand is that Islamabad has chosen him this time to convey a brazen and naked threat to India not as just Islamic Republic of Pakistan but as the frontline crusader for the establishment of Islamic Caliphate.
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