Chairing a meeting of the core Gupkar Gang, former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah pontificated that the Government of Narendra Modi should play its role in stopping bloodshed in Gaza and bringing peace to the Middle East.
Abdullah added that the government of the land of Gandhi should carry the message of peace to the Middle East. He may have said something more, but we only confine our views to the printed word.
These are pious words any rational being will welcome. But coming from the mouth of a veteran political leader of the sub-continent, people will ask questions, likely to cast doubts on the sincerity and conviction of Gupkar’s leadership.
Selective Reaction
Abdullah has not seen or heard what is going on in the Balochistan province of Pakistan for a long time. The Gupkar Gang wants “greater autonomy” for J&K but would not react to the repression of the Baloch Liberation Movement for autonomy or independence.
The reason is simple. He does not want the Muslim-dominated state of J&K to be integrated into a Hindu-majority Indian Union, nor does he want a Muslim-dominated region of POJK (Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir) to seek independence from a military-dominated regime in Islamabad.
In more straightforward language, Dr Farooq Abdullah opposes democratic dispensation for the Muslim ummah, whether in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan or J&K, a federating unit of the Indian Union.
Take another example. Nearly 1.1 million Afghans — all Muslims — had sought asylum in Pakistan when the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan in 1979 forced their displacement from their homeland. They have been living in different make-shift refugee camps on Pakistan territory for nearly four decades, remarkably close to Quetta, the capital city of Balochistan province.
Their younger generation grew up in Pakistan, speaks Urdu, the language of Pakistan, and has become part of Pakistani society. Pakistan has been receiving massive aid from private and official sources, including the United Nations, by way of donations for the hapless Afghan refugees.
Where have those billions of dollars landed, nobody knows. The Afghans lived in huts while the Pakistani Generals bought themselves palatial residences in posh areas of big American or European cities.
Only weeks ago, the caretaker government in Islamabad ordered that the Afghan refugees have to return to their native land. The order was implemented immediately.
So far, nearly 150,000 Afghan refugees have been pushed back despite protests by the victimized people that they have no means of subsistence and no homes and shelters in Afghanistan where they could hide their heads.
We have seen heart-rending visuals of emaciated children, women, and old people in tatters trekking back to the Afghanistan border. We have seen the visuals of aged and famished Afghans supplicating for non-displacement but to no avail.
They say they are thankful to Pakistan for giving them asylum for nearly four decades, but the way they are pushed back and thrown into poverty is unbearable. Compare this to the large-heartedness of the European countries and the United States, which have given asylum to millions of Muslim migrants from African, Asian, and South American continents.
Politicizing Faith
Where is the Islamic brotherhood (akhuwat)? Where is OIC, which broadcasts its concern for the Muslim ummah? Where is Erdogan, the nascent champion of Islamism, and where are the Ayatollahs of Iran whose patriarch announced during the heyday of Iran’s Islamic revolution that the “sword is the gift given by the providence to the ummah.“
Where are the Pakistani leaders who swear by the resolutions of the UN on Kashmir but turn a blind eye to what the UN Charter stipulates in the case of international refugees’ return to their native countries?
Where are Farooq Abdullah and his Gupkar Gang, who embraced thousands of Rohingya Muslim refugees and resettled them illegally in Jammu Division (not Kashmir) on humanitarian grounds but will not speak a word on the plight of the Afghan refugees in Pakistan?
Farooq Abdullah and his Gupkar gang will lament the loss of life in the Gaza Strip but remain lip-sealed when Azerbaijan destroyed Armenians with Turkish Bayraktar drones or when it recently drove away thousands of Armenians from their native habitats in Nagorno Karabakh.
Pakistan’s Argument
Pakistani argument is that these Afghan refugees are in nefarious collusion with an anti-Punjabi segment of the Pakistan Army called TTP and, hence, must face punishment.
TTP is the armed uprising of the Pathans and Pashtuns of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa against the domination, deprivation, and discrimination by the Punjabis who dominate politics, economy, and military power in Pakistan.
The Afghan refugees have close ethnic, linguistic, social, and religious ties with the Pashtuns of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Their empathy with these kinsmen is almost of the same genre as claimed by Pakistan for Kashmiri Muslim insurgents.
But a democratic India will not and should not mete out identical punitive treatment to Kashmiri separatists, militants, and subversives operating from their hideouts because it is unjust, inhuman, and contrary to the UN Charter on Human Rights. No argument will justify India replicating Pakistani heartless treatment of Afghan refugees.
Leaders of many Islamic states like Iran, Turkey, Jordan, Syria, and Pakistan have given a call to the Muslims of the world to unite and fight Israel to finish. In Pakistan, Maulanas have been screaming that the Muslims of the world should join to destroy Israel and “liberate Kashmir.”
They covertly tell the ummah that how the attack of Hamas on Israel was planned, funded, and executed successfully on October 7 should be the formula for liberating Kashmir.
The Hamas suicide bombers could have been trained by Pakistan’s ISI somewhere in northern Pakistan, as per reports. Reports are that the Pakistan army has even started glider training for the terrorists to make them airborne for aero-infiltration in Kashmir.
In J&K, Pakistani Rangers have intensified firing and shelling forward Indian army posts and pickets and increasing attempts of sneaking terrorists across the LoC as well as the international border.
Along with this threatening posture, Pakistani leaders and Maulanas have become more vociferous about Pakistan exercising the nuclear option against Israel and India. They have become assertive because they think their suicide bombers (fidayeen) will be as successful in a blitzkrieg in Kashmir as Hamas on October 7.
In the final analysis, it is neither Palestine nor Iran nor Hezbollah or Hamas that are seriously ready for a nuclear option. It is Pakistan that has created compulsions for itself to go for the nuclear option.
The reasons are more than what we might imagine. A vast gulf appears between the Pakistani masses and the Punjabi-dominated administration, political and military power. Economically, Pakistan finds no relief even if granted alms by some Arab states or global lending agencies.
India refuses to have any dialogue on bilateral issues, including Kashmir with Pakistan, unless Pakistan winds up its terror shop. The TTP is successfully and relentlessly humiliating the cowardly Punjabi army.
The Baloch Liberation Army has made the Punjabi army’s patrolling of the Baloch–Afghan border a death trap, which has destroyed hundreds of Pakistan’s Punjabi soldiers.
The hostile behavior of the Taliban regime to the west of Pakistan has dashed to dust the long-standing ambition of Pakistan’s “Westward Depth” formula, together with the enormous popularity of a sycophant like Imran Khan has left no option for the Pakistan army to ask for war and disaster. If they are sincere in their idiocy, they will get both.
It is for the people of Palestine to understand how the fanatical Islamic leadership is dragging them to the abyss of destruction.
- KN Pandita (Padma Shri) is the former director of the Center of Central Asian Studies at Kashmir University. Views Personal.
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