The security agencies said that as many as 48 terrorists were killed in the Valley this year till June 1….Sumit Kumar Singh
Even though not a single incident of ceasefire violation has taken place along Line of Control (LoC) ever since an agreement was reached in February between Indian and Pakistani forces, incidents of terror activities in Jammu and Kashmir do not seem to stop.
The security agencies said that as many as 48 terrorists were killed in the Valley this year till June 1. Last year till June 1, a total 60 terrorists were neutralised in the Valley.
“The incidents of terrorists killed so far this year compared to last year is due to the heightened security apparatus,” said a senior government official.
The figures with the security agencies state that in 2020, a total of 221 terrorists were killed, while 158 militants were gunned down in 2019 by the forces.
The security establishments pointed out that despite Pakistan agreeing to maintain peace along the LoC, it has not stopped sponsoring terror activities in the Valley.
Further, the intelligence agencies have alerted security establishments about a flurry of terrorist activities in their hideouts close to the LoC in areas under the control of the Pakistan Army.
Sources said that terrorist training camps have been active in Pakistan and groups have gathered across the LoC, possibly for infiltration attempts.
According to intelligence agencies, on June 1, different groups of terrorists gathered in the Lipa Valley opposite Keran, Naugam and Rampur sectors.
The agencies further pointed that last month, 24 terrorists had begun training in Nikial — four from Jaishe-e-Mohammed, 10 from AI Badr and 10 from Laskhar-e-Taiba — preparing for infiltration.
“All the terrorists are being trained by a retired SSG commando colloquially named Abu Tala, and Major Umar of 15 SIND (Nikial),” intelligence agencies stated.
Sources said that inputs are very clear that terror groups still have all the support of the Pakistan Army even though there has been a decision to restore ceasefire and no violations have taken place since February 25.
Similarly, frequent gatherings of a group of terrorists have been reported over the last month.
On May 24, simultaneous gatherings of groups ranging from 5-8 terrorists were reported from Tanagdhar, Naugam and Poonch.
Again on May 25, a group of four Hizbul Mujahideen terrorists divided into two groups concentrated opposite Uri.
The pattern has been similar over the last one month, official said, based on reliable inputs that have been coming in.
Volkan Bozkir, President United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) (Manuel Elias_UN Photo_Handout via Xinhua_IANS)
By suggesting to the Pakistan government to ‘work harder to raise the issue (of Kashmir) internationally, and specifically to bring it to the United Nations platform more forcefully’, and suggesting that ‘Pakistan could initiate a debate on the Kashmir issue at the UNGA supported by other states’, Bozkir has seemingly sided with Pakistan, writes Dr Amjad Ayub Mirza
The President of the United Nation General Assembly, Volkan Bozkir, has said that Pakistan needs to ‘work harder to raise the issue (of Kashmir) internationally, specifically to bring it to the United Nations platform more forcefully.
The statement was issued on his arrival in Islamabad on May 27.
Commenting on Bozkir’s statement, Pakistani Daily ‘Dawn’ in its editorial on May 29 had endorsed his comments by calling “the Kashmir issue a major stumbling block to peace in south Asia”.
Well, Pakistan, and not Kashmir, is the stumbling block to peace in South Asia unless it withdraws its military and all aliens from the occupied territories of Pakistan occupied Jammu Kashmir (PoJK) and Gilgit-Baltistan (GB), a demand that was made in the UN Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 47 passed on April 21, 1948.
Indo-Pak border
The UN resolution clearly states that Pakistan must “secure the withdrawal from the state of Jammu and Kashmir of the tribesmen and Pakistani nationals not normally resident therein who have entered the state for the purpose of fighting” (i.e. military forces).
Earlier, in January 1948, the UN Resolution 39 had been adopted and the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP) was established. The above mentioned statement of the UNSC had come only after the UNCIP had held discussions with both India and Pakistan and issued its findings and subsequent recommendations to the UNSC.
It had asked for a “complete withdrawal of Pakistan’s fighting forces, including the army, tribes and other Pakistani nationals”.
Did Pakistan abide by the dictates of the UNSC? No. On the contrary, Pakistan has made her military presence a permanent feature of the geographical landscape of PoJK and Gilgit-Baltistan.
Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and UNGA President Volkan Bozkir in Islamabad (Phototwitter.comSMQureshiPTI)
The UNSC had also asked Pakistan to withdraw “tribes and other Pakistani nationals” from the occupied territory of Jammu Kashmir. Did Pakistan comply? No. Instead, Pakistan brought in more aliens into PoJK and Gilgit-Baltistan, setting up training camps for jihadist to be sent into the Vale of Kashmir to cause violence and unrest.
And to hide her evil doings, Pakistan keeps pointing her finger towards the presence of the Indian army in Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir.
Well, the UNSC has permitted India to maintain an army presence in the region that might be “required for maintaining law and order”.
Army Chief in Kashmir to take stock of security situation along LoC on Wednesday June 02, 2021(Photo Nisar Malik_IANS)
It was on October 22, 1947 that Pakistan attacked the state of Jammu and Kashmir despite the fact that a Standstill Agreement had already been signed between Maharaja Hari Singh and the Governor General of Pakistan, Muhammed Ali Jinnah.
Bozkir said that “parties to the conflict, i.e. India and Pakistan, must not change the status of the disputed territory till the matter is resolved”.
Well Sir, with due respect, allow me to bring to your attention the instrument of accession signed on October 26, 1947 between the Maharaja of Jammu Kashmir and the Republic of India. It was signed in accordance with the India Independence Act of 1947, according to which the 565 princely states of British India “would be free to accede to one or the other of the new dominions”.
By suggesting to the Pakistan government to ‘work harder to raise the issue (of Kashmir) internationally, and specifically to bring it to the United Nations platform more forcefully’, and suggesting that ‘Pakistan could initiate a debate on the Kashmir issue at the UNGA supported by other states’, Bozkir has seemingly sided with Pakistan.
The UNGA President should be a neutral entity.
Pakistan and not India is the one which has been declared as an aggressor by the UNSC. It is Pakistan which has been settling outsiders from Punjab and the neighbouring province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa into PoJK and Gilgit-Baltistan in order to alter the demography of the occupied region, and it is Pakistan that has deprived the people of the so called Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan of their basic human rights by imposing an interim constitution called Act 74 and Schedule Four.
To come up with such a statement as given by the President of the UNGA is at best naive and devoid of any factual research. Especially at a time when the Pakistani army is increasing its military presence in PoJK and POGB by the hour.
(Dr Amjad Ayub Mirza is an author and a human rights activist from Mirpur in PoJK. He currently lives in exile in the UK. The views expressed are personal)
Despite an avalanche of negativity promoted in the media, including the social media, many in Pakistan, especially in the powerful military, have concluded that after the abrogation of Article 370 nearly two years ago, it’s game-over in Kashmir, reports Atul Aneja
The Pakistan-based faction of the Hurriyat conference is set to launch a Kashmir-centric campaign to promote a separatist narrative on Kashmir, by falsely pivoting the May 21 gunning down of Mirwaiz Moulvi Farooq and Abdul Ghani Lone as turning points of a Kashmiri secessionist movement.
The cynical use of the two as symbols of separatism is both counter-factual and farcical.
But the Hizbul Mujahideen under instructions from Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) had to kill both these leaders – Mirwaiz Farooq on this day in1990 and Lone 12 years later, for exactly the opposite reasons. Their target, in the end, was not only the two iconic leaders, but Kashmir’s mainstream ideology. Far from supporting secession, the two tall leaders of Kashmir — Mirwaiz and Lone– were the embodiments of quintessential Kashmiri values – Kashmiriyat, Insaniyat and Jamhuriyat, While Kashmiriyat stood for inclusivity and peaceful co-existence especially with Hindu Kashmir pandits, Insaniyat spotlighted a mindset based on universal human values. Jamhuriyat, in turn, illuminated the path to good governance.
But the Pakistan driven discourse in Kashmir has been exactly the opposite. Its essential ingredient was ethnic cleansing, which led to the tragic exodus of Kashmiri pandits from the valley due to targeted violence. Instead of Jamhuriyat, Pakistan promoted an Islamic theocratic model of “governance”, gender-discrimination on an industrial scale and establishment of a Jihad factory.
Outside Kashmir the ISI had, by the mid-nineties, already perfected its medieval socio-political model in Taliban ruled Afghanistan. From around 1996, Afghanistan became a safe haven for international terror groups, led by Al Qaeda, which demonstrated its psychic inhumanity with the 9/11 attacks on the twin-towers in New York. Stoning to death of Afghan women became a regular public sport. Flogging and amputations of people accused of petty crimes, based on a gross misinterpretation of Shariyat were routine. It is therefore not implausible to conceive that had Pakistan succeeded in its version of “mission Kashmir,” the nefarious shadow of the Hindukush and Global Jihad, along with its unbelievable depravity would have loomed large over the picturesque valley.
The brutal killings of the revered Mirwaiz and Lone, were therefore essential turning points to rail Kashmir along the path of radicalism, where Wahabi and Salafist tradition of Islam would become predominant, torching the unique fusion of Sufi Islam and Hinduism that for centuries had elegantly knitted the social fabric of Kashmir.
But after several false starts, Kashmir is coming back into its own. Despite an avalanche of negativity promoted in the media, including the social media, many in Pakistan, especially in the powerful military, have concluded that after the abrogation of Article 370 nearly two years ago, it’s game- over in Kashmir. The massive turnouts in the Kashmiri panchayat elections, the promise of structural integration of the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh through bold connectivity projects of building roads, tunnels and railways demonstrate that Kashmir and the rest of India are set to bond with each other tighter than ever before.
Besides, the sharp drop in street protests, despite the so-called bogey of “state-repression” are blaring signs of a fundamental turnaround in Kashmir, which the big boys in Pakistan fully understand.
Those in the Pakistani wing of the Hurriyat conference, which are planning their stir today, little realise that their messaging of Kashmiri separatism is now anachronistic. It is no longer capable of stirring a critical mass of support among Kashmir’s computer-savvy youth, who see a bright future for themselves not in holding the Kalashnikov but in mass entrepreneurship, start-ups, and access to micro-finance that India, an emerging economy, and not Pakistan, can provide them in abundance.
Unsurprisingly, the real puppeteers of the Hurriyat in the GSQ in Rawalpindi have already read the tea leaves right. Despite the expected flip-flops because of domestic pulls and pressures, the generals in Rawalpindi know that, in the end, only a constructive engagement with India on Kashmir can work for them. International pressures on Pakistan, especially from the rich Petro-monarchies of Gulf countries, and even within the OIC mainstream are bearing powerfully on Islamabad, exhorting it to change track on Kashmir. Despite backtracking later, none other than Pakistan’s hawkish foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has gone on to acknowledge on public television that Article 370 is India’s internal affair.
Earlier, Pakistan agreed to revive a dormant ceasefire agreement along the Line of Control (LOC) and the International border, which essentially implied, at least theoretically, that Islamabad will not infiltrate cross-border militants under the cover of fire from across the LOC.
Abandoned by the people and in the end, its Pakistani masters, the Hurriyat is indeed doomed. It is time for it to shed the blinkers, get real, and so long as the opportunity exists, head for the negotiating table rather than stream into the streets for a cause that no longer exists.
(This content is being carried under an arrangement with indianarrative.com)
Acting on a tip-off, the 16 Rashtriya Rifles and Jammu and Kashmir Police launched the operation in the general area of Phagla…reports Asian Lite News
In a joint operation, Army and police have recovered 19 grenades in Jammu and Kashmir’s Poonch district on Sunday morning, likely averting a major attack on security forces, said an official statement.
Acting on a tip-off, the 16 Rashtriya Rifles and Jammu and Kashmir Police launched the operation in the general area of Phagla and recovered the ammunition which was allegedly to target security forces at National Highway 144 A.
“Relentless development of intelligence by both the agencies led to the discovery of a huge cache of grenades in general area Phagla hidden in a well-concealed natural hideout. A total number of 19 hand grenades have been found from there,” the Army statement said.
Busting the packet in which the grenades were hidden averted a likely major plan of attack on security forces at the National Highway 144 A, it added. (ANI)
