Jammu, January 13: Pakistan did it and so did the pressure exerted by Modi government but still the doubts remain the same and question mark on Pakistan’s sincerity will also remain there till actual peace returns to the subcontinent as Pakistan has used such attention diverting tactics earlier too but succumbed to the terrorists later.
The reported detention of Pathankot attack mastermind Masood Azhar and some of his associates by Pakistan from Muzafarabad is a good indication as far as Modi’s pro-active Pakistan policy is concerned but one must remember that it was just a detention and not formal arrest of a man who has tremendous clout inside Pakistan having backing of powerful ISI and Pak Army.
The sincerity of Pakistan will always remain doubtful as same Massod Azhar was arrested earlier on two occasions but subsequently released once by the government and once on the court orders which speaks volumes about the democratic system of Pakistan.
While it is heartening to see that finally there is a government in place which has created such a pressure that Pakistan was forced to act even if cosmetically over the pre-conditions set by India on FS level talks on January 15, 2016 the fact is that there are still many hurdles to be cleared before India and Pakistan governments can move forward on real peace process.
The current talks and pre-conditions are just the warm-up sessions before serious talks can be initiated which solely depend on Pakistan’s response to Indian concerns and how it tames the vast terror network breeding inside the country.
The rise of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) during past few years has been phenomenal and the clout it exerts in Pakistan and PoK has matched to Let and Al Qaida with JeM marching forward by leaps and bounds.
The speed with which JeM has progressed in Pakistan can not be possible without full support of Pakistani Army and ISI thus negating the whole drama of his detention to act as a true ally in war against terror in the world.
According to a news report, “considered to be the biggest danger to India after Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jaish has managed to raise enough funds for a lavish new 16-acre headquarters in Pakistan’s Bahawalpur. According to South Asia Terrorism Portal, Azhar was the general secretary of the newly established Harkat-ul-Ansar (HuA) in 1994 and was on a ‘mission’ in Jammu and Kashmir when he was arrested on 11 February.”
The report further adds, “The outfit is run by mobilising hard cash. The organisation revived the al-Rahmat trust, once run by Allah Baksh, the father of the Azhar brothers. The trust began soliciting funds in Pakistan and the Gulf monarchies, to build 313 mosques and seminaries, according to reports.
Even though a few countries have banned al-Rahmat — in November 2010, the US imposed sanctions calling it the “operational front” for JeM, and the UAE followed — it continues to operate through publicly-advertised bank accounts in Pakistan.
Jaish’s weekly magazine al-Qalam, in which Azhar publishes under his pen-name ‘Saadi’, is openly sold along with other daily which glorifies Taliban violence.
Anticipating the ban on its funding activities and asset freeze in 2002, JeM withdrew most of its bank assets, dispersed some of it among low-ranking members for safekeeping, and invested in legal businesses. The group began to raise money through legal activities that include commodity trading, real estate, and production of consumer goods, an extensive research by the Stanford University, mapping militant organisations across the world, revealed.
However according to Livemint, in 2013 ISI began to cultivate Azhar, in an effort to use pro-government jihadists as a counterweight to anti-Pakistan jihadists. He found a ready pool of cadre in southern Punjab. “Having no alternative ideology like Marxism or Liberalism which may challenge the feudal stranglehold, Deobandi militancy remains one of the few ways to counter it,” social scientist Tahir Kamran told the publication.
Whether Pakistan’s bold step of apprehending several JeM terrorists and detaining Azhar himself will yield any results is still unknown, the fact that JeM has become a talking point and made it to the headlines is not good news. Not for the security of the nation, not for the political situation in Kashmir or for ties between India and Pakistan.”
It is therefore still premature to draw conclusion on the intentions of Pakistan after some small steps taken by it as a lot remains to be done to gain the credibility as a responsible nation in the modern world.