Rattled and frustrated with Indian Army’s devastating surgical strikes along the Line of Control last month, the chief of terror outfit Jaish-e-Muhammad, Masood Azhar, has now urged the Pakistani establishment to allow jihadist groups to escalate attacks on India.
Azhar has argued that a lack of decisiveness in this regard could rob Pakistan of a ‘historic opportunity to seize Kashmir’.
Azhar’s appeal has been published in JeM’s weekly magazine Al-Qalam and comes amidst reports of disagreement between the civilian and military bosses in Pakistan over continued support to militants carrying out attacks against India.
“If the government of Pakistan shows a little courage the problem of Kashmir, as well as the dispute over water, can be resolved once and for all right now. If nothing else, the government simply has to open the path for the mujahideen. Then, god willing, all the bitter memories of 1971 will be dissolved into the triumphant emotions of 2016,” Azhar wrote in the article.
Through his hard-hitting article, Azhar also directly questioned Pakistan government’s policy establishment, arguing that the jihadist policies it backed in the 1990s had brought strategic benefits to the country.
Azhar argues in the piece that the jihadist policies Pakistan backed in the 1990s were beneficial to the country.
India had sought to build ‘Akhand Bharat’, Azhar claims, but its hopes were destroyed in the course of the jihad which left “every one of its limbs badly injured”.
Azhar then mocks India’s military prowess, saying the attacks in Pathankot and Uri had exposed it.
Saying that India is putting pressure on Pakistan all the time, Azhar asserts that it should have been Pakistan which cancelled the SAARC summit instead of India. He says that the jihadist insurgency in Kashmir has reduced India’s military strength considerably and Pakistan should take advantage of this.
The JeM chief then hails the transformation of jihad into a global phenomenon, saying that after Kashmir, Afghanistan and Palestine, there was ‘lightning’ now in Syria and Iraq, and jihad had turned ‘from a small spring to a river into a great ocean.’
“India is putting pressure on Pakistan at this time. Looking at the situation in Kashmir, though, Pakistan should have been doing all this. Given that Kashmir is our jugular vein, we should have cancelled the SAARC conference ourselves, and cancelled the ceasefire on the Line of Control. In the last ninety days, how many Muslims have been martyred, and how many more injured?”
