ISLAMABAD: The wannabe prime minister of Pakistan, PTI’s Imran Khan, will never utter these words: “occupied Kashmir”, “Jamaatud Dawaa” and “Falah-e-Insaniyat”. His explanation is quite simple when he says that he deliberately does not use the words “occupied Kashmir” because his whole thinking is about human beings and not territory. “I think that any country, any area that is under army rule, where there is an army operating is always going to be in a mess. And so, I am really anti-military operation. And I have from day one opposed all military operations, which is why I was called pro-Taliban. And, in Kashmir, I know what is happening to the people of Kashmir, you cannot have hundreds of thousands of troops in an area and think that there will be no violations of human rights. Remember army’s job is never successful in civilian areas.” He says he deliberately does not use the prefix “Occupied Indian Kashmir”, “Because I think it’s about the rights of Kashmiri people. It’s not about liberating or anything. It’s about whatever the people of Kashmir decide. That should be it now. I do not, any longer, consider it to be some sort of a territorial dispute. I think it’s more of a human rights issue now.” Khan was being interviewed by Karan Thapar in CNN IBN’s programme, Devil’s Advocate. Aware of ground realities, the great Khan said when in power he would ban and disarm all militant groups but despite being asked to name the JUD and FeI, Khan refused to do so replying, “Look, I am living in Pakistan. Pakistan at the moment is the most polarised country in the world. A governor gets shot, his assassin becomes a hero. There’s no point in becoming a hero right now in this country where there’s no rule of law. Life is very cheap here. So, just let me put it as a policy statement. Don’t just go into details. As a policy statement, it should answer your question. No militant groups are operating from within Pakistan.” He said that if Tehreek-e-Insaaf government comes to power, as a policy it will insist on there being no militant groups operating within Pakistan because the world has changed. “So, the groups that were created during the Afghan jihad, now this is now an outdated concept of having them as assets. The time has come to not only remove all militant groups, disarm them but also a de-weaponisation in Pakistan because it is causing massive problems within the country. So, therefore, once that issue disappears, once there are no militant groups within Pakistan, I think that issue will disappear. There would not be any militant groups operating within Pakistan. How can I be more specific than that?” he asked. Khan says that relations between Pakistan and India should be based on mutual trust. “At the moment Pakistan doesn’t trust India, India doesn’t trust Pakistan. Here there’s a big perception that our water is being stolen; in Balochistan the Indian secret service is active with the BLA (Balochistan Liberation Army). In India the perception is that any terrorist act is financed by Pakistan’s ISI. You can never ever have a relationship based on mistrust. I think the time has come to have a new relationship. And, I believe that you know if you can eliminate the roles of intelligence agencies, where two civilian governments can sit together and say we’ll resolve all our issues through dialogue - I think it’s a way forward because the benefits of peace are enormous,” he explained. He also pointed out that the Indians should also guarantee us that there should be no problems, either in Balochistan or the areas where Indian agencies are blamed. Kashmir, Khan said was a core issue because without Kashmir, you will always have a possibility of going back to square one. “No matter how much confidence building measures you have, if something happens in Kashmir or because of Kashmir, we don’t know, maybe some sort of terror attacks happens from within Kashmir on India, I’m scared, like Mumbai; whatever happens comes back to square one,” he added.
