| News Details |
| “India dossiers” fly in Pakistani face | |
By Manzoor Ahmed
For nearly seven years, Pakistan has dismissed all evidence sent by India on what happened before, during and after the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks as ‘here-say’, ‘speculation’, ‘stories’ and even if recognized as intelligence, “not actionable.”
Now it has something to ponder about the “India dossiers” that it has produced to nail India’s alleged role in fomenting trouble and ‘destabilise’ Pakistan.
This pondering is forced after the way Pakistan’s Foreign Affairs Advisor Sartaj Aziz told a parliamentary committee that the three dossiers “did not contain any material evidence.”
What then are the dossiers all about, Aziz and his government has been asked. Red-faced, they are unable to give a convincing answer.
There is only a pro-forma statement from the Foreign Office spokesman that denis repots in a section of Pakistani media and insists that the dossiers contain “irrefutable evidence” against India.
Explanations and clarifications given by Aziz have not cut any ice. It has embarrassed both the civilian government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and the military bosses who control just about everything that Pakistan does vis a vis India.
Was it a slip of tongue, or an alleged case of collective misreporting, or inadvertent telling of truth?
The Dawn newspaper, generally critical of Aziz, demanded in a hard-hitting editorial on November 23, 2015: “WHAT happens when those who aren’t supposed to be conducting foreign policy assert themselves and those who are meant to be doing so meekly surrender?”
The attack is both on Aziz and the military, not the least, on Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
“The case of the so-called India dossiers is an illuminating answer. Last week, the adviser to the prime minister on foreign affairs, Sartaj Aziz, caused a stir in parliament and outside by suggesting that the three dossiers prepared for the yet to be held NSA meeting between Pakistan and India did not contain any “material evidence.
“A day later, Mr Aziz tried to clarify his comments while replying to a question in the National Assembly, but the damage was done — clearly, the federal government is not on the same page as the military leadership when it comes to dossier diplomacy. This is unsurprising. It has not been clear what the dossiers are meant to achieve in the bilateral relationship,” Dawn said.
For a bit of background, it is about a year since the Pakistan Government thought of countering the Indian campaign of Islamabad sponsoring and condoning the “non state actors” operating from its soil by accusing New Delhi of fomenting trouble in Balochistan, FATA and Karachi city, the last one being through alleged help to elements belonging to the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM), the party of Mohajirs, the migrants from India.
Reports about dossiers being readied were trickling in each time there were protests from India on border violation and statements came forth from American lawmakers alleging (what India has been saying) that Pakistan is badly mixed up with the militants and terrorists operating in Jammu and Kashmir and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The breakthrough on dossiers came earlier this year when Pakistan got a story sponsored on BBC, quoting Pakistani officials (with no cross-checking, no attempt at getting further corroboration and no effort to get the Indian response) that some MQM received funds from Indian agency, RAW.
That ‘story’, very much unlike BBC and its reputation, has since become the template of Pakistan’s campaign against India, with the thrust being to put the MQM in the dock to derive domestic political advantage.
The dossier story gained momentum after that through media and foreign office briefings. The worsening bilateral ties have given fillip to them, making them an integral part of Pakistan’s litany against a “Hindu” India.
So much so that respectable persons like The Friday Times editor Najam Sethi have referred to them more than once, not approvingly or passing any judgment. But the very mention, like “there is growing conviction in the Establishment” about India’s role in “destabilising parts of Pakistan”, as Sethi didin an editorial gave it respectability and currency among the country’s elite. Army Chief Gen Raheel Sharif too has made a mention of this at an Army Commanders’ Conference.
Aziz waved three files before the media after his visit to New Delhi in August to hold talks with Indian NSA Ajit Doval did not come about. He told the media that had he made it to India, he would have handed over the said documents to Doval. This gave the dossiers further currency.
Dawn editorial says: “To be sure, there is a strong likelihood that there is a great deal of truth to what has been alleged about Indian involvement in Fata, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Karachi.”
It pointedly asked: “Yet, when the dossiers were compiled to take to the NSA meeting, and then when that meeting was postponed they were shared with the UN secretary general’s office and US secretary of state, what was it meant to achieve?”
“Raking up allegations of Indian meddling follows the old tit-for-tat formula that has helped bog down Pakistan-India relations for decades,” the newspaper sagely says, then asks: “But what is the alternative?”
The civilian government needs to rethink its dealings with the military particularly when it comes to India, the newspaper has advised.
And then it has attacked the Nawaz government: “By reluctantly going along with security establishment demands and later showing its disinterest, the PML-N government is unwittingly sending the wrong signal to India too, making it even easier for New Delhi to reject meaningful talks with a lame-duck government in Pakistan.”
After what seems Aziz gaffe, India need not say anything. It should only feel confident that neither the US, nor the UN Scretry General, seem not to have taken the dossiers seriously and have made no mention of them while talking to India.
(The author is a Kashmir based Freelance Journalist)
(Disclaimer: The views, observations and opinions expressed in above write up of Scoop News are strictly author's own. Scoop News does not take any onus or liability for the veracity, accuracy, validity, completeness, suitability of any of information in the above given write up. The information, facts or figures appearing in the write up in no way manifest the position, standpoint or stance of Scoop News and the Scoop News does not assume any encumbrance or answerability of the same.)
Editor
Scoop News,(scoopnews.in)..
... |
| |
|
|
Share this Story |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|