Posted on 07/16/2002 10:06:16 AM PDT by swarthyguy
KARACHI - At a time when the United States and other Western countries are placing heavy pressure on Pakistan to resolve the Kashmir dispute in a manner acceptable to them - such as rejecting the militant struggle - the Pakistani army remains obsessed with supporting Kashmiri militants at all costs.
This is in defiance of Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf, who has publicly committed to Washington that he will curb cross-border terrorism from Pakistan territory into Indian-administered Kashmir.
Now it appears that the army leadership in Pakistan will continue with its long-standing policy of supporting training camps for Kashmiri separatists, both in Pakistan and Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.
While Musharraf has banned some of the smaller Pakistani militant groups, such as the Jaish-i-Mohammed and the Lashkar-i-Taiba, to much praise from the US, the mainstream and larger Kashmiri groups operate freely from Pakistan. These include the largest group, Hezbul Mujahadeen, whose chief Syed Salauddin orchestrates his militants in Indian Kashmir from Pakistan.
With assembly elections due in October for the state assembly of Indian-administered Kashmir - Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) - the US (as does New Delhi) wants as many Kashmiri groups as possible to participate to lend the polls credence. This includes the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, an umbrella organization of separatist groups that has traditionally boycotted any polls in J&K.
But before Musharraf could put any pressure on these groups, the army made it perfectly clear to him that it would not change its position (support for militants) and that any attempt to force the groups into the electoral process would amount to Islamabad accepting J&K as an undisputed territory.
Now it emerges that the army will continue its policy of complete solidarity with the Kashmiri military struggle and its commitment to boycotting the elections. This already appears to have manifested itself with the weekend attack in Kashmir in which 28 civilians died in gunfire on a shantytown near Jammu in J&K, considerably raising tension in the Valley.
This is exactly counter to what the global powers want in the region, especially with regard to oil and gas, such as a proposed major pipeline that would run from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and Pakistan and on to India and in which US companies such as Unocal are particularly interested. Obviously, such a pipeline could only be built in times of peace.
Russian President Vladimir Putin recently urged Musharraf to restrain cross-border incursions and encouraged a continued crackdown on all militant organizations to once and for all break their networks in Pakistan. US Secretary of State Colin Powell's visit to Pakistan at the end of the month is expected to reinforce this message.
Pakistan, to be sure, did help in arresting many Arab fighters who slipped into Pakistan after the US strikes on the Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan earlier in the year. However, none of the US's most wanted terrorists have been arrested - starting with Osama bin Laden and other operatives of his al-Qaeda. In particular, US authorities point to the presence in Pakistan of people such as Khalid Shiekh Mohammed, whom law enforcement agencies have not been able to apprehend. The Kuwaiti is on the FBI's most wanted list in connection with an aborted plan to bomb Los Angeles airport in 1996.
Even Pakistan's operations in the volatile tribal belt have fallen apart. Islamabad deployed troops in this region (in conjunction with US operatives) on the advice of the Minister of the Interior, Moinuddin Haider, to track down militants, especially those believed to have escaped from Afghanistan. But after a showdown with suspected al-Qaeda fighters in the Wazirstan Agency, Pakistan lost 10 soldiers. This was a major propaganda reversal for the government and resentment to the army in this region has become so strong that its operations there have virtually come to a stop.
Following this incident there was another clash between law-enforcement agents and al-Qaeda in Kohat in North West Frontier Province (NWFP) in which five al-Qaeda men died. As a result a strike was called, and interestingly it was led not by Islamic parties but by ordinary citizens rallied by a former parliamentarian of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), Javed Ibrahim Paracha. The city was shut for several days.
NWFP is the main constituency of the Pakistan army from where many top and middle ranking officials hail. Even Musharraf's intelligence apparatus has warned him that his actions in trying to curb cross-border activities across the Line of Control in Kashmir and in acting against the Taliban and al-Qaeda within Pakistan have caused deep ripples in the Pakistan army.
And further, Musharraf has been advised that such is the resentment among some generals that the chances of a conspiracy against him cannot be ruled out.
This is crappy journalism, and it sounds like the rants of someone who is lazy and with an agenda.
Sure, because you want to believe every word of it.
You posted this as a news story. If it's an editorial, then it's fine for the writer to make all these unsubstantiated statements, even thought they're wrong.
I already told you other things that are wrong with this report. Where is the acknowledgment of the arrests of key al-Qaida terrorists in Pakistan? Why didn't this lazy reporter bother to check to see if the Unocal pipeline story was nothing more than a rehash of old speculation?
Where are the facts that show the army is defying Musharraf?
I'm not going to apologize for analyzing stories here in an effort to determine the bias of the writer. That's a key function of this forum.
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