by Nilesh Kunwar

That Rawalpindi would immediately out rightly reject Indian army chief Gen Upendra Dwivedi’s matter-of-fact and internationally accept observation of Pakistan being the “epicentre of terrorism” as fake news was expected. However, with Rupees two billion recently allocated to fight fake news in its pocket, one had thought that Pakistan army’s media wing Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) would do a more professional job by supporting its rebuttal with facts rather than using its age old strategy of using counter allegations in an attempt to divert attention by obfuscating the issue.

Pakistan’s continuing romance with terrorism is no secret. During his 2010 interview with Der Spiegel, didn’t Pakistan’s ex-President and former army chief Gen Pervez Musharraf reveal that “when we fought the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s… It was jihad and we brought in militants from all over the world, with the West and Pakistan together in the lead role”? In July 2019, while addressing a think tank in Washington, didn’t Pakistan’s then Prime Minister Imran Khan himself admit that “when you talk about militant groups, we still have about 30,000-40,000 armed people who have been trained and fought in some part of Afghanistan or Kashmir"?

Has ISPR forgotten about US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s incisive observation during the joint press conference on termination of her 2011 Pakistan visit about Islamabad’s ongoing support to terrorism that “You can’t keep snakes in your backyard and expect them to only bite your neighbor”? In November 2021, when the counsellor in India’s Permanent Mission to the UN reminded the world that Pakistan “Holds the ignoble record of hosting the largest number of terrorists proscribed by the UN Security Council (UNSC),” the Pakistani Mission had no option but to maintain a stoic silence on this factual disclosure!

Perhaps it’s Gen Dwivedi highlighting the fact that 60 per cent of the terrorists eliminated in J&K during the last year were Pakistanis that rattled Rawalpindi for two reasons. One, J&K police implicitly follows the laid down procedure for identifying the bodies of slain terrorists and intimating personal particulars of deceased belonging to J&K, and as such the figures quoted by the Indian army chief are indisputable. As this revelation buttresses the fact that Rawalpindi continues to sponsor terrorism in J&K as part of its continuing proxy war, Pakistan army’s top brass are naturally upset.

Two, the fact that currently the majority of terrorists in J&K are Pakistanis unambiguously exposes Rawalpindi’s claim that J&K is witnessing a popular and indigenous “armed struggle.” The reality that Pakistan army’s more than three-decade-old ploy of inciting young Kashmiris of impressionable age to wage war against the Indian state is something that Rawalpindi cannot digest. Unable to counter the Indian army’s chief’s remarks, ISPR has gone into its characteristic deflection mode relying heavily on rhetoric.

ISPR has accused the Indian army chief of “blaming Pakistan for indigenous reaction to state-sponsored brutality,” adding that this was “an attempt to deflect the world’s attention” from India’s brutality in J&K. These allegations are indeed laughable for more than one reason. Firstly, with 60 percent of the slain terrorists in J&K being of Pakistani origin accounting for, even a greenhorn would agree that what ISPR touts as “Indigenous reaction” is in fact a big fat lie.

Secondly, ISPR’s allegation regarding “state-sponsored brutality” in J&K is equally ridiculous, and the fact that no instance has been cited to support this accusation clearly indicates that the Pakistan army’s media wing is yet once again shooting in the dark. In his 2019 UN General Assembly address, Prime Minister Imran Khan claimed that “Kashmiris are caged like animals” and once the curfew imposed as a precautionary measure after Article 370 abrogation was lifted there was bound to be a “bloodbath.”

After Article 370 abrogation in August 2019, Islamabad vociferously leveled the ‘genocide in Kashmir’ allegation against India and Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi even declared that “An in-principle decision has been taken to take the issue of Kashmir to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).” However, a month later, Pakistan’s Law Minister Farogh Naseem clarified that it was not possible for Pakistan to approach ICJ on Kashmir as “Pakistan and India have not signed any agreement in this regard.”

However, by maintaining that Pakistan could raise the Kashmir issue with “UNSC or UNGA, which in turn could refer the Kashmir case to the ICJ on the basis of human rights violations," the law minister gave the impression that Islamabad had not abandoned its plans of approaching ICJ against what it alleged was genocide in J&K. less than a month later Pakistan’s Lawyer at ICJ Khawar Qureshi admitted during a TV interview that as both India and Pakistan were signatories to the Genocide Convention of 948, Islamabad could take New Delhi to ICJ on this issue. He however clarified that “in the absence of these pieces of evidence (of genocide in J&K), it would be very difficult for Pakistan to take this case to the ICJ.”

It’s ironic that at a time when the Pakistan army is brazenly disappearing innocent civilians in Balochistan, ISPR is pontificating on the virtues of civility and professionalism. It’s also amusing that when Pakistan army chief Gen Syed Asim Munir is himself neck-deep in politics and playing the role of king-maker by holding parleys with Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, the army’s media cell should be interpreting Gen Dwivedi’s epicenter of terrorism remark as “pandering to political exigencies.”

With such unconvincing arguments and an equally pathetic narration, it seems that impoverished Islamabad's two billion investment in ISPR’s war against fake news could may well be a bad idea!

Nilesh Kunwar is a retired Indian Army Officer who has served in Jammu & Kashmir, Assam, Nagaland and Manipur. He is a keen ‘Kashmir-Watcher,’ and after retirement is pursuing his favourite hobby of writing for newspapers, journals and think-tanks. Views expressed above are the author's own