New Delhi: Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is working on an elaborate plan to push Pakistani nationals into India in full public view from Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) and ensure a bloodbath to draw international attention on the Kashmir issue. For this purpose, last week, a team of ISI officials and “preachers” visited Balochistan and Pakistani Punjab to recruit people willing to enter India to “reclaim what is of Pakistan” and “defeat the occupying force” of India, which has “seized the holy land of Kashmir”. This was revealed to The Sunday Guardian by sources based in Pakistan and Balochistan.
The intention behind this, as per those who are aware of the goings-on, is to internationalise the Kashmir issue, which they think will happen, once the Indian Army, manning the border, does what it has to, to stop the infiltration bid.
An authoritative Pakistan-based source said: “The ISI’s plan is to force the Indian Army to shoot at the ‘unarmed pro-Kashmir protesters’ once these people try to enter Jammu and Kashmir from Pakistan occupied Kashmir in full public view. These protesters, numbering in thousands will have the support of armed Pakistani army irregulars. They will try to cross the border, leading to action from the Indian Army. What happened in East Timor in the late 1990s might be re-enacted in Kashmir. These Pakistanis are expecting that they will be joined by the pro-Pakistan group based in Kashmir once they gather at the border. Once a bloodbath takes place, as it will, Pakistan’s policymakers believe that the international community will be forced to intervene in Kashmir.”
Indian officials tracking these developments said that Pakistan—through at least three influential senators in Washington DC and one very influential London-based think tank, supported by pro-Pakistan Members of Parliament in the UK, who support Pakistan’s “rightful claim” on Kashmir for reasons other than ideological—has managed to influence a section of media in the US and UK to take a pro-Pakistan stand on this issue.
This is evident from the stories that the international media has been carrying in the last one week, highlighting the “atrocities” taking place in Kashmir after Article 370 was abrogated from the state on 5 August.
On Thursday, the BBC carried a detailed “report” carrying “unverified pictures” that showed the “torture” that the Indian Army was indulging in Kashmir. The Indian Army strongly denied the claims made in BBC’s report.
This came soon after Indian intelligence agencies generated inputs that pro-Pakistan groups active in the valley, including over-ground workers, were asked by their handlers to make a serious effort to turn “Kashmir into a humanitarian crisis” by using the international media and social media.
An official, who is a part of the Kashmir security apparatus, said: “Fake pictures, images that give an impression that armed brutalities are going on in Kashmir, are being generated and circulated for the consumption of the international media. If we do not allow the international media to come here, they will say we are hiding something; but if we allow them, as we so far have, front pages stories based on false images and accounts will be published. It is up to the people in Delhi to decide what to do.”