Stranger than fiction

In an eerie déjà vu of Pathankot, India’s fabricated fairytale that heavily armed militants stormed an Indian Army battalion headquarters in northern Kashmir’s Uri, is a faux-flag deviously diverting the world’s attention from Delhi’s genocide of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in Kashmir.

New Delhi brazenly baselessly blaming Pakistan for Uri is a sinister scapegoat tactic. Such RSS-BJP Hindutva posturing and politicking imperils Pakistani-Indian bilateral relations, the South Asian region as a whole and the world at large, due to searing tensions between the two nuclear rivals. Uri shows us how Delhi’s detrimental Doval doctrine is a repressive Indian regime’s export of state-sponsored terrorism.

The insidious irony is that the Uri false-flag operation is stage-managed right before the 71st United Nations General Assembly session in New York to scuttle Islamabad’s diplomatic offensive on Kashmir. India’s unwillingness to grant Kashmiris even a referendum remains a blatant violation of UNGA Resolution 2649 which reinforces all people’s right to self-determination.

Mounting evidence suggests that Uri was premeditated. India has set up a highly secure fence along the Line of Control (LoC) at Uri with state-of-the-art drones, lasers, acoustic and magnetic sensor technology to detect any cross LoC movement, rendering infiltration practically impossible. Uri also has a Hindu majority population and hasn’t experienced any scorching Kashmiri freedom struggle. Why then are militants targeting such a prohibitively well-guarded military installation?

India’s retired generals and senior diplomats started pointing at Pakistan while the ‘alleged’ attack was still underway. Director General Military Operations (DGMO) Lt Gen Ranbir Singh, shortly after the Uri attacks, oddly declared that the terrorists were ‘all’ foreign nationals and from Jaish-e-Mohammed.

Such a prompt statement is logically and logistically stranger than fiction, implying that the militants were so well-trained that they impeccably breached a heavily-guarded Indian army base yet blatantly left traces of identity and Pakistani markings? Even for the dim-witted, this is a ludicrous stretch of the vivid imagination.

Many riddles remain unsolved. DGMO Lieutenant General Ranbir Singh hot-lined Pakistan’s Major General Sahir Shamshad Mirza yet could not provide any ‘actionable intelligence’ to his Pakistani counterpart. Also, how is it that rescue helicopters made rounds to take the injured 300 meters away for medical attention without being shot at with a single labelled rocket?

The exact location of where the Uri incident took place isn’t HQ 12 Indian Brigade as being broadcast by India’s media but near HQ 10 Dogra battalion which has a majority of Sikh soldiers who are in the midst of incendiary infighting with Hindu troops.

Such rationale is not far-fetched when India’s own intelligence operatives such as Satish Verma admit, under oath, that the Indian parliament attack of December 13, 2001 and the November 26 2008 Mumbai attacks were “inside jobs” to bolster counterterrorism and defence budgets.

The impact and implications of the staged Uri operation may be far-ranging. It is false flags like these which agitate Hurriyat members into retaliation and raise communal tensions, igniting anti-Muslim hate peddled by extreme Far-Right Hindutva fascists like the RSS, ‘Abhinav Bharat’, ‘Sangh Parivar’ and other forms of saffron terror.

Uri will be used by hawks in Delhi to legitimise surgical strikes and start skirmishes against Pakistan, especially shelling along the LoC which India is already guilty of. More securitisation and militarisation are likely in Occupied Kashmir where the current Indian Army officer to civilian ratio is three is to one.

India is not ready for peace with Pakistan, and it can ill afford a full-blown war, therefore it will keep waging indirect proxy wars against Pakistan by cultivating agents’ and funding RAW operatives. RAW will use Uri to buttress an already bloated budget and stir instability, especially in Balochistan given Delhi’s insecurity over the CPEC and Pakistan’s relations with China.

Regardless, Islamabad must carry on pursuing a stealthy diplomatic and media offensive to counter the Modi-Doval doctrine. India is cognizant of the law of unintended consequences. It is because of false flags they themselves engineer that the agitated citizens of Kashmir grow ever-more alienated. For India to terminate this quagmire of armed conflict with Kashmiris, it must allow political breathing space for Kashmiris.

An oblivious international community selectively yet naïvely ignores the Kashmir debacle at its own peril given the nuclear spectre in South Asia. India’s refusal to allow the UN to probe human rights violations is a sign of inherent guilt and complicity.

India must revoke draconian laws like the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act and the Public Safety Act and severely sanction soldiers engaged in human rights violations. India must work with Kashmiris and Pakistan alike to access a mutually beneficial solution for peace to prevail. Until India realises the damage it is doing, the streets, the people, and the hearts of Kashmir will resonate with infinite support for its immortal martyrs.

The writer is a freelance contributor.

Email: ozerkhalid@yahoo.com

Twitter: @ozerkhalid