India and Pakistan issued a joint statement on the sidelines of recently concluded Non Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt . Pakistan has succeeded in mentioning the controversial issue of Balochistan in the statement. Pakistan has, since long time, accused India of "encouraging militancy and separatism" in Balochistan, while India has always refuted the charge. Even though, as propaganda or as an attempt to malign the international image of India, Pakistan has been accusing India, but the fact is that till today it hasn't provided any proof in support of its charge. The special envoy of the US to AfPak region, Richard Holbrooke has also said that though the Pak officials have mentioned the Balochistan issue to him several times, but they haven't shown him any proof of India's alleged involvement.
Besides questioning the mention of Balochistan in the statement, the opposition is also accusing the Manmohan Singh government of hurriedly moving towards the bilateral dialogue despite the "inaction" of Pakistan to bring the perpetrators of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks to book. After the return of the Prime Minister from Egypt, the Indian Parliament debated on this issue for the next three days. Consequently, the unsatisfied opposition party, led by the leader of the opposition, Lal Krishna Advani, walked out of the House, notwithstanding the repeated assurances by the PM Singh, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Minister of External Affairs SM. Krishna that there would be no dialogue with Pakistan until & unless it takes action against the accused of the 26/11 attacks. The government also clarified that India has its hands clean on the issue of Balochistan and that we stand by our principle of non-interference in one's internal matters. But the PM, as the leader of the world's largest democracy and a rising global power, said that India would follow the policy of "Trust but Verify" vis-à-vis Pakistan .
Regarding this entire issue, some things seem to be self contradictory. For instance, last month the Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, in a statement, acknowledged that Pakistan faces no threat from India . And this is the truth. If this was not the case, then Pakistan army wouldn't have shifted the forces deployed on the Indian borders to the Pak-Afghan border to fight the Taliban. This trust towards India enabled Pakistan to do so. On one hand, Pakistan is trying to show this much trust in India, and on the other, the Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani is mud-slinging India on the issue of Balochistan.
Tanveer Jafri
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Tuesday, February 09, 2010
