India, Pakistan used terrorist groups to attack each other, says Pakistan ex-president

The government of Pakistan employed terrorist groups to attack India, according to Pakistan’s former president, Pervez Musharraf, who also accused India of doing the same. Musharraf, 75, took power in Pakistan in 1999 through a coup d’état supported by the country’s military leadership. The four-star Army general ruled as Pakistan’s 10^th president until 2008, when he resigned from power to avoid being impeached. He currently lives in exile in the United Arab Emirates and is wanted in Pakistan for alleged crimes, including high treason. His critics accuse him of arresting several judges in 2007 and suspending the country’s constitution.

On Tuesday, Musharraf spoke on the flagship news program of Hum News, a 24-hour news channel headquartered in the Pakistani capital Islamabad. Speaking in Urdu on a phone line from Dubai, Musharraf praised the current Pakistani government of President Imran Khan for launching a crackdown on Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) the militant group that is believed to be responsible for killing more than 40 Indian soldiers in Indian-administered Kashmir. The attack sparked a tense standoff between India and Pakistan, as the two countries engaged in aggressive military maneuvers against each other. “This constitutes a step forward”, said Musharraf, referring to the JeM crackdown. “It is a terrorist organization and they tried to assassinate me with a suicide attack”, he added, referring to an attack on his presidential convoy in 2003, which has been blamed on JeM.

In early 2002, Musharraf officially banned the JeM and arrested some of its leaders, after the group participated in two high-profile attacks in Indian Kashmir. But all JeM leaders were eventually freed, after the courts decided that the government had failed to provide sufficient evidence of their participation in terrorism. Musharraf told Hum News that he eventually lost interest in cracking down on JeM. When asked by the reporter why his government did not take further action against the group, Musharraf said that “those were different times”. Instead of stopping groups like JeM, both Pakistan and India used them to carry out a “clandestine struggle” against each other, said Musharraf. Groups like JeM “carried out bombings in each other’s territory”, said the former president, adding that Pakistan’s “intelligence agencies were involved in it”. Both India and Pakistan thus used militant groups, including JeM to carry out “tit-for-tat” operations targeting each other, he concluded. The former Pakistani leader went on to say that he was “very pleased to see the [Pakistani] government adopting a strict policy” against JeM.

► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 08 March 2019 | Permalink