Pakistan rejects BRICS' statement on militant groups

[My-Analogous]

Pakistan rejects BRICS' statement on militant groups

Defence Minister says no terrorist organisation has a complete safe haven in Pakistan

PHOTO: PID

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Tuesday rejected a statement by the five emerging-market BRICS powers that militant groups in Pakistan pose a regional security concern, with its defence minister saying no group operates freely inside Pakistan.

The minister’s response follows a statement on Monday by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa that also called for patrons of the Pakistan-based militant groups to be held to account. “These organizations, they have some of their remnants in Pakistan, which we’re cleaning,” Defence Minister Khurram Dastagir Khan told a private news channel, without specifying which groups he was referring to.

BRICS summit: LeT, JeM ‘threat to regional peace’

“But Pakistan, we reject this thing categorically, no terrorist organization has any complete safe havens.” The groups named by the BRICS include anti-India militant factions such as Jaish-e-Mohammad, which was blamed for a 2001 attack on India’s parliament, and Lashkar-e-Taiba, which India blames for cross-border attacks including a 2008 assault in its financial capital Mumbai in which 166 people were killed.

Another group the BRICS named was the Haqqani network, which is allied with the Afghan Taliban militants waging war on the US-backed government in Kabul and foreign forces there. The United States has been calling on Pakistan to do more to tackle alleged Haqqani network sanctuaries on the Pakistani side of the Afghan border, or it might cut military aid. China is also concerned about militant influence spilling over from Pakistan and Afghanistan into its far-western Xinjiang region, where some members of a Muslim minority chafe at Chinese Communist Party rule.

Pakistan inflation rate rises to 3.42%

In response to a question regarding the BRICS’ leaders summit document, the spokesperson expressed Pakistan’s concerns over the threat posed by terrorism and extremism in the South Asian region.

Many terrorist groups based in the region, including in Afghanistan, such as the TTP and its associates like JuA have been responsible for extreme acts of violence against Pakistanis. “We are deeply concerned with the presence of groups like Daesh, ETIM and IMU in the ungoverned spaces in Afghanistan as they pose a threat to peace and security in the region. Pakistan also remains concerned due to the rise of extremist ideologies and intolerance in the region encouraging social stratification and systematic targeting of minorities,” the spokesperson shared.

Countries attending a December conference aimed at stabilising Afghanistan made a similar statement, naming several Pakistan-based groups as a source of concern. Pakistan has always strongly denied offering safe havens to militants groups.

https://tribune.com.pk/story/1498499/pakistan-rejects-brics-statement-militant-groups/

Yes Pakistan can do that but India can't. ISIS and other group mentioned in that declaration

 

[Solomon2]

Okay I get it then all this declaration drama was just to satisfy occasional regular name calling and Pakistan bashing urge?

Is China usually a party to "regular name calling and Pakistan bashing urge"?

What significant role india -.

Smear jobs. Don't you understand your efforts make you look worse without staining your targets in the slightest?

​

The wall of BRICS
Khurram Husain Updated September 07, 2017

The writer is a member of staff.

IF you hide from reality for long enough, you can land up in a place from where it is next to impossible to find your way back. Something like that may be happening to Pakistan, where for more than a quarter century, our state has come to be virtually held hostage by a reality that we have been denying in almost every forum around the world. This reality is that within Pakistan, as a matter of official policy, violent militant groups have been nurtured, trained, supported and nestled within the general population for use as assets in an underground geopolitical game that we have tried to play in the region.

This history has been told so often, within and outside Pakistan, and evidence of the official patronage that these groups and their larger milieu enjoys has now mounted to such levels, that it has become an act of wilful schizophrenia to actually deny it now. Where exactly does one even begin to explain this to those who remain unaware of this fact even today, and resistant to really internalising its import?

For years, we have found different rationales to either justify or explain this away. Most recently, when the BRICS countries pointed to three specific groups in Pakistan and labelled them as terrorist entities, they were only echoing what the UN Security Council had done more than a decade and a half ago. Still the line came up that ‘these groups are already proscribed in Pakistan’, as a rationale or soft justification for the fact that the groups not only exist, but operate freely and openly, propagate their literature in society, operate giant administrative operations, and in some cases, are actually being mainstreamed into society as bona fide political parties.

What does proscription actually mean in Pakistan when the same members of the group in question need only start another organisation under a different name?​

What does proscription actually mean in Pakistan when the same members of the group in question need only start another organisation under a different name and carry on business as usual? One need only take a close look at what happened to the case against the Lal Masjid cleric who less than a decade ago had taken up arms against the state, and triggered a confrontation that actually resulted in the deaths of scores of military personnel. The case fell apart (take a look sometime at how this happened), and the cleric in question continues to live and preach openly in the same mosque. How did this come about if some form of official support was not available to him?

Another line told us that we need not worry. The countries that are crying foul over this situation are biased against us, and need to be perceived more as enemies than allies. Now we have China, we were told, which will stand by us and has no intention of similarly wagging a finger at us on this point. And with China we have CPEC, which is our road to future prosperity, something we have believed for generations now is given by a big brother, not earned through one’s own smarts and hard work.

Well now China has added its voice to the list of those countries pointing out that the presence of militant groups in Pakistan is a problem. To add meat to the proposition, they point to a “comprehensive approach in combating terrorism”, to include countering radical ideologies, halting the movement of terrorist fighters as well as their recruitment, interdicting their finances and much more. This is a heavy menu, and notice that all of what the BRICS declaration is committing to is within the framework of the United Nations, and an extension of what other leading powers in the world have already been saying for many years.

If anybody out there thought that somehow the emergence of China on the global stage, and its growing stakes in our neighborhood as well as others, along with its creed to not interfere in the ‘internal affairs’ of other countries, meant that finally we would have a free pass to engage our great game fantasies without let or hindrance, they ought to be in for a rude shock. The person who is still spinning the words to mean something other than what they say is like that person who has lived so long with his or her lies that they are unable to find their way back to reality.

Everything in the declaration shows that the BRICS countries, that include Russia and China, will not advance an alternative set of norms to those around which the Euro-American world order is constructed. To combat terror financing, for example, they seek to work with the UN resolutions and the Financial Action Task Force that has for years been pointing out the vulnerability of the Pakistan financial system to being used by designated terrorist groups because the latter operate with impunity in Pakistan.

Yes there have been huge successes in our own war against terror. Groups like the TTP have been pushed out of Swat and North and South Waziristan, and the sacrifices made by Pakistan’s soldiers in the course of this fighting have been admirable and deserve commendation. Yes, the security situation has improved from a decade ago, although much ground remains to be covered.

And yes, let’s also add that much of the finger-wagging from the West, particularly America, is in bad faith. America is not losing the war in Afghanistan because of Pakistan. America is losing the war for the simple reason that no sooner had the fighting commenced in earnest in Afghanistan, it lost its focus and went barrelling into Iraq instead. All else is detail.

But there is a reason why Pakistan has had such a difficult time getting the world to recognise this simple reality: because we have been lying to ourselves and our allies about the nature of our involvement in this war all along. If Abbottabad didn’t establish this, surely the death of Mullah Mansour on Pakistani soil, with Pakistani credentials in his pocket, did.

 

[I.R.A]

Is China usually a party to "regular name calling and Pakistan bashing urge"?

I will take this as your final effort to come up with some reasonable, logical, valid response / excuse.

 

[Solomon2]

I will take this as your final effort to come up with some reasonable, logical, valid response / excuse.

Wilful schizophrenia on your part, indeed. The inmates are running the asylum and producing nuclear weapons. How shall the neighbors respond? How can schizophrenic people be a reliable party to mutual deterrence?

 

[I.R.A]

Wilful schizophrenia on your part, indeed. The inmates are running the asylum and producing nuclear weapons. How shall the neighbors respond? How can schizophrenic people be a reliable party to mutual deterrence?

You surely have lost it all. Willful blind eye to accepting a normal peaceful people, self created boogeyman out of hatred may be. There is not one single instance that can question Pakistan's nuclear capability and its safegaurds, it is as much risky as india or israel having these weapons, both of which have been killing innocent unarmed civilians just because they wish to oppress and hate that people and their beliefs.

 

[pragmatic_dude]

Oversimplification, my friend. That shift, over a considerable period of time, doesn't come from Indian diplomatic efforts alone. Though, I would gladly agree that your diplomacy has always been better at ours, at nearly everything. Military blunders, geo-politics and lack of self-reliance have all played their part. But this time, I believe, that the state of Pakistan is more than sincere in its efforts to combat terrorism and there's no double-dealing on this particular issue.

While I agree wholeheartedly with the first part , only time will tell how true your latter assertion is.The problem I think about this assertion is that it can only be temporary.
There will be in future some voilence of one or other kind in the Kashmir valley.There will be populist calls to help the separatist and there is only so much the establishment can do to resist a populist demand

Dont doge the question just because you dont have an answer to it. Ok let me ask you another question
How come a country who regularly accuses, blames and threaten Pakistan over Haqqani network seldom speaks about Pakistan's role in habouring Osama? In fact they did quite the opposite and defended Pakistan and its institutions over OBL.

Who gave you an idea that they don't.The thing why U.S does not make a big hue and cry over it is because it achieved it's objective while voilating Pakistan soverignity.I think even India's statement at that time was very measured because we did not want American troops physically infiltrating any of our neibhouring country to meet their objective.

 

[IceCold]

Who gave you an idea that they don't.The thing why U.S does not make a big hue and cry over it is because it achieved it's objective while voilating Pakistan soverignity.I think even India's statement at that time was very measured because we did not want American troops physically infiltrating any of our neibhouring country to meet their objective.

They bombed a country on false pretext of WMD's and here you are talking about World's most wanted man found inside a country and you dont make hue and cry about it? Please!

 

[idune]

So, china just exercised its self interest? What chinese members have to say?