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| Pakistan’s blame-India game is unlimited | |
By Manzoor Ahmed
“Lakh dukhon ki ek dawa hai…” This popular Bollywood song sums up Pakistan’s remedy for all its ills. That remedy is to blame India.
Rao Anwar, SSP of Malir, Karachi, who on April 29 blamed India for ‘training’ workers of the opposition Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) was within a day transferred for “misuse of power”. The action came on orders of Sindh Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah.
The officer had paraded before the media two persons, their faces conveniently covered, as the culprits, along with documentary evidence and even a purported “confession letter” admitting to going to India and being trained to carry out “sabotage against the nation.”
It was a popular story on a day Pakistan Army Chief, Gen. Raheel Sharif was in town to study the spate of violence and vowed to the officials he addressed to “finish mafia rule” in Karachi.
The police may have thought they must show some ‘results’ to the all-powerful visitor. The charge of the India-trained MQM workers would seem a “good performance.”
That MQM denied the charge, even while defending the “hereditary right and responsibility” of its members to “visit India”, ostensibly because they are Mohajirs (migrants from undivided India) who have relations across the border is besides the point.
Also besides the point is the punishment meted out to the accusing police official who may have over-stretched his limits in his anti-MQM campaign, implicating India.
This came on a day of posturing by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif who, on one hand accuses India of “not responding to requests” for talks yet, on the other, telephoned Prime Minister his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi to praise India’s effort to rush relief to earthquake-hit Nepal.
This made the Karachi policeman’s act jarring. Of course, no mention was made of what the officer’s “misuse of office” was all about.
The fact is that Pakistan lives and thrives on blaming India.
Politicians, retired generals, so-called security analysts and of course, the Islamists – both organized political parties and the militants enjoying support of the intelligence agencies – find it easy to blame India for just about everything. Indeed, it is a popular -- and profitable -- industry.
At times, the federal and provincial ministers jump in to gain popularity among the awam. Federal Defence Minister Khawaja Asif had claimed that India was helping terrorist groups in Pakistan to carry out "heinous acts".
Those coy or restrained about naming India use the word “foreign hand”. The so-called liberals among politicians, like the foreign educated Imran Khan, also join in to take pot shots at India and at the government for “not doing enough” to counter India.
It is also an effective opium to drug the populace with – even though there is no dearth of the real opium coming from the poppy fields of the tribal areas of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, also supplied at a price by the friendly Taliban from the neighbouring Afghanistan.
Making anti-India allegation is a favourite sport on the media, raising TV channels’ TRPs and readership of the Urdu press. The English media engages in it only when the frenzy in the ‘native’ media is difficult to ignore. But then, there is not much of English language media and the readership is limited.
India is blamed on many bizarre things, like floods and famines, scarcity of onions and other food items, cattle required for sacrifice during religious festivals – ostensibly for trying to curb smuggling.
On a higher scale, in March 2009, for plotting the terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team. Then Interior Minister Rahman Malik “shared intelligence” with British and Americans that Indians had organised the attack in a plot to isolate Pakistan and exclude it as a joint host for the 2011 Cricket World Cup.
The Telegraph, London, had then reported: “The accusation contradicts earlier statements by President Asif Ali Zardari in which he blamed Islamic militants based along the border with Afghanistan. It also ignores the similarities between the estimated 12 suspected militants who launched the attack in Lahore and those who launched the Mumbai attacks which left more than 170 people dead last year. Both groups of men were young and clean-cut, wore Western clothes and backpacks, and were heavily armed.
“CCTV images show two of the attackers running from the scene to collect motorbikes and make their escape. There was no evidence that they were being pursued by police, fuelling suspicion that policing was either inadequate or conspicuous by its absence.”
Pakistan’s most favourite anti-India accusers are former ISI chief, Lt. Gen. (rtd.) Hamid Gul and Lashkar-e-Toyaba founder Hafiz Saeed.
Both have blamed India for whatever the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) does, in attacking prisons, the General Headquarters (GHQ), the police establishment near India border, the naval establishment in Karachi and so on.
Indeed, Gul has blamed India creating TTP itself, and all its attacks.
Anti-India fulminations are a favourite game of former military ruler, Gen. (rtd.) Pervez Musharraf. He blamed India for the December 2014 killings of students in Army Public School in Peshawar. He used the diplomatic route, alleging that the TTP had been taking shelter in Afghanistan that was for 12 years ruled by Hamid Karzai who distrusted Pakistan totally.
The fact is that despite Taliban gunmen taking responsibility for the deadly attack at a military-run school in northwestern Pakistan, where over 100 school children were killed, many Pakistanis are still blaming India for the 'massacre.'
The most prominent among these accusations came from the Pakistani security analyst Syed Zaid Zaman Hamid, who blamed India for the horrendous terror attack in the school in Peshawar.
"India, we will NOT forgive you for this atrocity ! You chose the day of December 16th to rub it in. We stand firm, united & will crush you !," the 50-year-old security analyst lashed out on Twitter.
Later when the TTP claimed responsibility for the incident, Hamid posted a series of angry posts stating that India was funding the terrorist organisation. He also said in another post that all the prisoners of the TTP should be taken out of the jail and hanged from Peshawar to Karachi.
Hamid later even put up a blog post calling on the readers for a "ruthless response" against the group that is funded by India.
Soon many others joined in with Hamid to blame India for the Peshawar attack. A Pakistani national @imran_sidra tweeted: "It was brutality by India on 16 Dec 1971..Its brutality once again by indian agents today on 16 Dec 2014 #PeshawarAttack #IndianTaliban".
If only Pakistan army, politicians and its people learn to worry about their own country, they would see Pakistan’s stature soar for the good at the international scene.
(Opinions expressed in write-ups/articles/Letters are the sole responsibility of the authors and they may not represent the Scoop News)
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