Anwar Iqbal | Naveed Siddiqui
7-8 minutes
Pakistan has handed over a
dossier on India’s terror campaign to United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, urging him to prevail on New Delhi to desist from its illegal and aggressive activities.
The secretary general promised to “study the dossier and take appropriate action”, said Pakistan’s envoy to the UN Munir Akram, who presented the dossier to the UN chief on Tuesday afternoon. Pakistan reserved the right to “act in self-defence” against India’s unending aggressions, Akram warned.
Pakistan also plans to draw the attention of relevant UN bodies, including the Security Council, to India’s sponsorship of terrorism.
Later, at a news briefing at the Pakistan Mission, Ambassador Akram explained how India’s irresponsible behavior could jeopardise the entire region.
“There is a complacency because there has been a deterrence between India and Pakistan since the 1988 nuclear tests,” said the Pakistani envoy when asked why major world powers were underplaying the consequences of a simmering conflict in a nuclearised region.
“But the situation may not remain as stable as people assume because of India’s involvement in terrorist activities against Pakistan,” he warned. “That’s why Pakistan wants the international community not to ignore the threat of a potential conflict between two nuclear-armed states.”
In his meeting with Guterres, Ambassador Akram explained to the UN chief how India was violating international law, the UN Charter and UNSC resolutions by stoking terrorism inside Pakistan.
“We have urged the secretary general to play his role in persuading India to halt its terror and subversive campaign against Pakistan,” he said.
Akram said as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the secretary general had witnessed Pakistan’s operations against terrorist outfits and appreciated the sacrifices Pakistan had made in successfully defeating terrorism.
Since 2014, Pakistan has lost 83,000 civilians and soldiers in the fight against terrorism, which also caused a massive setback to the country’s economic and social development — to the tune of $126 billion.
While Pakistan has successfully eradicated terrorist outfits from its soil, over the past few months cross-border terrorist attacks from ungoverned spaces in Afghanistan have escalated.
“We knew of India’s hand in such attacks,” Ambassador Akram said. “We now have gathered irrefutable evidence that India is engaged in a systematic campaign to destabilise Pakistan through terrorist attacks, promotion of secession and subversion in what is called Hybrid/5th generation war.”
Quoting from the dossier, the ambassador explained that the Indian campaign against Pakistan includes:
- Promotion/ sponsorship of listed terrorist organisations — Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA), which were uprooted from Pakistan, to conduct cross-border attacks
- Sponsorship of Baloch insurgents inter alia to disrupt the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)
- Merging TTP splinter groups and creating a coalition between the TTP and the Baloch secessionists
- Providing weapons, ammunition and IEDs to these groups
- Raising a special force of 700 to sabotage CPEC; training anti-Pakistan terrorists in camps in Afghanistan and India — 66 such training camps have been identified in Afghanistan and 21 in India
- Tasking terrorists with conducting targeted killings of important Pakistani personalities
- Organising of a new militia, based in Nangarhar (Afghanistan), called “Daesh-Pakistan” by India’s spy agency (RAW)
- Setting up a dedicated cell to subvert CPEC projects with Rs500 million to subvert Pakistan’s progress and economic strength
Ambassador Akram said the dossier also contains evidence of Indian subversive actions in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Gilgit Baltistan and in Karachi.
India, he said, was also seeking to utilise UNSC mechanisms to defame Pakistan by portraying itself as a victim of terrorism. “It is abusing the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to damage Pakistan’s economy.”
India’s hybrid war was accompanied by threats of aggression against Pakistan, and daily
violations of the ceasefire along the Line of Controls (LoC) in disputed Jammu and Kashmir, he added,
“India’s terrorist and subversion campaigns are being directed from the highest levels of the Indian leadership,” he told journalists.
“Pakistan has called on the secretary general and the international community to take note of Indian terrorism and subversion against Pakistan and to prevail on India to desist from these illegal and aggressive activities,” he said.
Qureshi writes to UNSC on IOK situation
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has written another letter to the UNSC president and the secretary general to update them on the "grave situation" in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJ&K).
According to a statement from the Foreign Office, the letter highlights the "gross and systematic violations of human rights taking place in IIOJK along with the threat posed to peace and security by India". The letter also informs the leaders of the "
illegal demographic changes" that India is bringing in the occupied valley in violation of UNSC resolutions, the UN Charter and international law including the 4th Geneva Convention.
Qureshi also apprised the Security Council of India's "implementation of an elaborate strategy of military occupation, land confiscation, influx of non-Kashmiris, and creation of alien settlements" in occupied Kashmir.
"As a result of the Indian agenda to convert the Muslim majority of IIOJK into a minority, the indigenous Kashmiris are losing their political and cultural identity, their rightful demographic majority, and ownership of their properties in their own homeland," the letter pointed out.
It also brought to the attention of the UNSC India's ceasefire violations along the Line of Control (LoC) and the Working Boundary. "The over 2,700 ceasefire violations committed by India this year have resulted in the death of 25 innocent people and serious injuries to more than 200 civilians."
The foreign minister called on the UNSC to "exercise its direct responsibility to prevent India from perpetrating its criminal colonial project to change the demographic structure" of occupied Kashmir and to ensure the implementation of the body's resolutions regarding the disputed territory.
"The letter by the foreign minister is part of Pakistan’s consistent efforts to keep the UNSC and the secretary general regularly informed of the serious situation in IIOJK, and to demand resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute in accordance with UNSC resolutions," the FO said in its statement.
Pakistan reserves the right to “act in self-defence” against India’s unending aggressions, warns Pakistani envoy to UN.
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