The whole Pathankot affair smells of an in-house action taken in order to prevent negotiations with Pakistan
KARACHI: Strange things are going on in the Pakistani government. First, an FIR was lodged in Gujranwala for a terrorist attack that took place in Pathankot, India. Typically, when one tries to lodge an FIR at a police station when the residence is within its jurisdiction, the police will not entertain him or her unless he or she is somebody important. Their usual pretext is that the place of incident does not fall within their jurisdiction. Here, however, the incident took place in a foreign country and the Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs, Sartaj Aziz, called it “a logical and positive step”.
Secondly, Sartaj Aziz recently revealed that one of the mobile phones allegedly belonging to the Pathankot Airbase attackers had been traced to the Jaish-e-Mohammed group’s headquarters in Bahawalpur. And, all this, after Pakistanis and Indians have both been unable to explain how and where the alleged terrorists crossed the border. This new statement of the government does not make any sense. It seems to be a coup that tries to make fair weather with India so as to get a date for the foreign secretaries’ meeting out of it.
It is on record that the Pathankot investigator — a senior police officer — had started a probe on a drug peddlers’ link with people inside the base, which might have led to the incident. Then, new information was provided that India had known about the attack beforehand and that information had been passed on from NSA Doval to NSA Janjua on December 31, but was not attended purposefully.
Political and security analysts have already pointed out that the whole Pathankot affair smells of an in-house action taken in order to prevent negotiations with Pakistan by putting the blame for it on us. They botched their own plan when, instead of the four planned terrorists, six were involved, which resulted in the delayed clearing of two full days of the Pathankot Airbase. Are Sartaj Aziz and the prime minister trying to fool us?
Ali Ashraf Khan
Published in The Express Tribune, February 27th, 2016.
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