Pakistan & Kashmir

By Brig. General Asif H. Raja  Asif Haroon Raja Indo-Pakistan unabated antagonism Kashmir is the unfinished agenda of the Partition in 1947 which was left behind by the British and it has bedeviled Indo-Pakistan relations. The two arch rivals went to war thrice over Kashmir and reached the brink of war several times even when both acquired nuclear capabilities. Armed Kashmiri uprising erupted in Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK) in summer of 1989. It rose in strength in 1990s and peaked in the early 2000s. Thereon, the intensity of the movement began to subside. The reason was that India under Vajpayee gave hope for a peaceful settlement of the Kashmir issue. Gen Musharraf signed the peace treaty in January 2004 hoping that resumption of composite dialogue would lead to settle...

By Brig. General Asif H. Raja  Asif Haroon Raja Plethora of problems loaded by India India reluctantly accepted the Partition plan as a stopgap arrangement under the fond hope that it will not survive beyond six months. To make it happen, Bengal and Punjab were bifurcated, Pakistan’s share of finances and other assets withheld, nine million destitute refugees forced to migrate from East Punjab and Central India. Soon after the creation of Pakistan in August 1947, while Pakistan’s leaders grappled with umpteen problems to build Pakistan from a scratch, India forcibly annexed Jammu & Kashmir (J&K), which resulted in a war in Kashmir. In 1948, India stopped water in the rivers flowing into Pakistan from Kashmir. In 1950 and 1951, India mobilized its forces and d...

By Brig. General Asif H. Raja  The Anti-Terrorist Court (ATC) in Lahore under Judge Arshad Hussain Bhutta convicted Hafiz Saeed on February 12 and jailed him for 11 years. His colleague Zafar Iqbal was also given 11 years of jail term. 23 prosecution witnesses testified but none could provide any concrete evidence. The prosecutor maintained that Lashkar-e-Taeba (LeT) and Jamaatud Dawa (JuD) were two sides of the same coin and since LeT had been declared a proscribed organization vide UN resolution 1267 and put under sanctions, Pakistan being a member of the UN must take action. Despite the fact that the prosecution couldn’t prove the charge of terrorism, the two accused were declared guilty on account of being a member of a banned outfit, supporting and arranging meetings of ...