May 23, 2024

Imran Khan, the Pakistani prime minister, in a televised address, mouthed the script written for him by the Pakistani army. He demanded proof of Pakistan’s involvement in the Pulwama attack on the CRPF convoy in which 40 Indian security personnel were martyred. He said he gives a guarantee that he will take action against those involved if proof was provided. He also warned India that if there was a military operation against his country, Pakistan would retaliate. Khan perhaps forgot that it is India that will retaliate, for the Pakistanis are already engaging in proxy war for a long time.

This is an age-old route the Pakistanis take every time there is a terrorist attack on India. They did so after the Mumbai bomb blasts and the Pathankot air base attack. India provided proof. They rejected it summarily. They denied that the persons involved were Pakistani nationals, choosing to call them stateless individuals. They said that the Pakistani origin of weapons and blast material was of no importance as anyone could source it and transfer it to India.

What else can one expect from a country that allows terror groups like Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), Jamaat-ud-Dawa and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), among others, to target India and the Haqqani Network that targets Afghanistan to operate from its soil? Not only that, it provides them with funds, training, material and logistical support through its military intelligence arm, the ISI, to target India. It also provides them with army cover to cross over into India territory. Despite intense international pressure, it refuses to declare Masood Azhar a terrorist. Pakistan has been indulging in this proxy war against India for as long as one can remember but keeps on denying it. Imran Khan has continued with the tradition.

Coming back to Pulwama, the biggest proof is that Kamran, or Abdul Rasheed Ghazi, the mastermind of the attack, was a Pakistani national who was trapped and killed by the security forces just a few kilometers from the attack site. He was a JeM commander. JeM has claimed responsibility for the Pulwama attack. The next proof is that the RDX used in the blast was sourced from Pakistan. Further proof is that Adil Ahmed Dar, the local boy who was used as the suicide bomber, had joined JeM just a year back and was in Pakistan for a long time to get trained and brainwashed into carrying out heinous attacks like the one he did.

But these proofs will not carry any weight with Imran Khan, as the proofs provided after Mumbai and Pathankot did not ‘satisfy’ earlier Pakistani prime ministers. Imran Khan is just a prop. The real authority in the country lies with the army and the ISI. Their strength comes from their network of terrorists and the ease with which they can carry out this proxy war against India. As long as the army calls the shots, no Pakistani prime minister can explain why terrorists are allowed a free run in their country, why there are terror launch pads in close proximity of the border and why Pakistan keeps violating the ceasefire to indulge in unprovoked shelling from across the border. In fact, one is quite sure that if an opinion poll was carried out in Pakistan, Imran would find that Hafeez Saeed of LeT and Masood Azhar of JeM were more popular than him.

Hence, providing proof to Pakistan is of no use. Instead, India must ask the international community, including Pakistan’s biggest supporter, China, to ensure that the terrorist network in that country is dismantled. It must ensure that the Western nations not to get fooled into funding Pakistan thinking that Pakistan is a bulwark against terrorism. The money provided is instead used to shelter and give birth to more terrorists. State-sponsored is the biggest industry in Pakistan and the earlier the international community realizes this, the better for the world.