Musharraf’s Kashmir remarks: India doing only lip service! Chief Reporter

Musharraf’s Kashmir remarks: India doing only lip service!
Chief Reporter
 

Posted by Administrator on Oct 7th, 2010

courtesy: http://php.statetimes.in/news/2010/10/07/musharrafs-kashmir-remarks-india-doing-only-lip-service/

NEW DELHI: It seems that New Delhi is going to waste the opportunity in the form of former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf’s criminal admission about Kashmir. Instead of putting International pressure on Pakistan over insurgency in Kashmir, it is only doing lip service. India on Wednesday said that Musharraf’s reported remarks about Pakistan training militants against India in Kashmir confirmed what it has been saying all along and asked Islamabad to honour its commitment not to allow its territory for anti-India activities.

“This is a widely accepted fact and General Musharraf’s assertion only confirms the veracity of what we have been repeatedly saying over the years,” external affairs ministry spokesperson Vishnu Prakash told reporters here.

“This is precisely why India has sought a firm and abiding commitment from Pakistan that it will not allow its territory and territory under its control to be used for the aiding and abetting of terrorist activity directed against India and for providing sanctuary to such terrorist groups,” he says.

In an interview to German magazine Der Spiegel, Musharraf admitted that militant groups “were indeed formed” to fight India in Kashmir.

Islamabad was taken aback when Musharraf unmasked its Kashmir design. “I do not know really what prompted him (Musharraf) to say this because he’s not in Pakistan.

But, Basit also knows that Pakistan is behind the killings of common Kashmiris. Musharraf admitted the crime because of his political aspirations. Former Pakistani Army Chief also unmasked Pakistani Army’s real face.

Except Pakistan and her alter-egos, the whole world knows that most of the separatist militant groups are based in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir (also known as Azad Kashmir). Some like the All Parties Hurriyat Conference and the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, demand an independent Kashmir. Other militant groups such as Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed favour a Pakistani-Kashmir. These groups have contacts with Taliban and Bin Laden. Both the organisations no longer operate under these names after they were banned by the Indian and Pakistani government, and by other countries including the US and UK. Of the larger militant groups, the Hizbul Mujahideen, a militant organisation based in Kashmir, unlike other groups, has only kept its name.

Despite casualties, the militants are still believed to number thousands rather than hundreds. Several new separatist organizations have also emerged. According to US Intelligence, Al-Qaeda also has a main base in Pakistani Kashmir and is helping to foment terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir. However, Pakistan and the separatist organizations call this as hoax.

Militancy had reached its peak in 1994 when the region saw more than 6,043 incidents and has since declined. However, Kashmir continues to remain as the most volatile region in the world with an average of 2,500 incidents every year.

In 2008, Richard Benkin compared the Islamist militants in Kashmir to Palestinian militants, stating that Kashmir is a transitory goal in the Islamist goal to control India:

“Kashmir is South Asia’s West Bank. Just as Pakistan and its Islamist allies ultimately seek to turn all of India into an Islamic state; so, too, the Arabs have tried again and again to destroy the Israel and even had that as their stated policy. After their colossal failure to do so in 1967, they tried once more to invade Israel with national armies only to fail again. So they changed tactics and stopped talking about their ultimate goal. Instead they focused on “the occupation” (West Bank and Gaza). Their real aim-to destroy Israel and turn it into an Islamic state-never changed. This tactic successfully distracted a gullible Europe which supported Arab calls for