Arun Joshi  

Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Saturday has done a great damage to the people Kashmir.

He repeatedly accused the eastern neighbour to tell the world that whatever is wrong with Pakistan is due to India. Then, he stunned Pakistanis more than the rest of the world when he alleged that India patronised the terrorists who massacred 132 uniformed children at Army Public School in Peshawar on December 16, 2014.

To date, Pakistan had been blaming, chasing and killing terrorists belonging to the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan — a baby nurtured by the ISI — for the gruesome tragedy that the world counts among the worst acts of terror alongside 9/11 and 26/11.

The Pakistan army killed TTP terrorists, including mastermind of the massacre Umar Mansoor, whom it held responsible for the macabre act of terror. The group too had owned up the responsibility for the deadliest attack in its history.

Then Pakistan army chief Gen Raheel Sharif had ordered the execution of four terrorists in Kohat jail, and a ruthless operation against the TTP because it was becoming an unmanageable monster.

Qureshi invented his own version as he raised a curtain of deception to hide Pakistan’s failure to set its own house in order. He also repeated the charge of “atrocities of the Indian security forces” in Kashmir. By peddling the false claim about Peshawar attack, he unequivocally defended the homegrown terrorists and laid the blame on the doorstep of India in his vain bid to involve India in the atrocity.

Even the people of Pakistan whose lives underwent drastic changes after the massacre at school don’t trust what Qureshi said. They know the truth.

Qureshi was ranting because India had cancelled the proposed meeting between foreign ministers of the two countries in New York after Pakistan mutilated the body of a BSF jawan and its entities abducted and killed three policemen in Kashmir.

This was a blow to Pakistan that had sought to end its international isolation by seeking a place at the table with India on the sidelines of the UNGA. It was bruised. Its raking up of Kashmir has become a boring story at the UNGA sessions, so no one was listening in particular. Qureshi’s drumbeat about the human rights violations in Kashmir with a reference to a report by the office of the UN Human Rights Council was a testimony to the fact that the document was inspired by it.

Now, Pakistan Foreign Minister’s claims, exaggerated of course, about the human rights violations in Kashmir would be taken as fake, like his phoney allegation about the Peshawar atrocity.

Courtesy: The Tribune: 1st Oct, 2018