A recent report in Sri Lankan media has exposed Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence’s (ISI’s) use of the island nation for promoting its terror activities worldwide.
As per the report in Ceylon Today –
“Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI, has for many years now, been attempting to radicalize Sri Lankan Muslims, with a view to using them for its activities in various parts of the world, primarily India.
Towards this objective, it has used its proxy, the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and its charitable wing, the Idara Khidmat-e-Khalq (IKK), which were first noticed operating in Sri Lanka in 2004, after the devastating tsunami. The LeT-IKK contingent, which visited the Maldives and Sri Lanka at that time, included trained cadres under the cover of humanitarian charitable workers, looking for Jihadi recruits in these areas.
Soon thereafter, many of the youth from these areas headed to Pakistan and were found located in LeT training camps in Pak Punjab and the tribal areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. According to Maldivian security agencies, at least 50 Maldivian youth were trained in LeT camps.
The ISI’s primary objective is to encircle India from all sides. Using Sri Lanka as a staging post is important, as it enables access into South India, both in terms of funding terror networks as well as for recruitment of cadres.
In June 2009, the activities of Maulana Umar Madani were uncovered, who prior to his arrest in India, was a frequent traveller to Sri Lanka. During his visits, he was developing a network in Eastern Sri Lanka’s Muslim areas. Madani was a close confidant of JuD Chief Hafiz Saeed and Abdul Rahman Makki.
Subsequently, in April 2014, following the arrest of Shakir Hussain, the ISIS’s plans to target the US Consulate in Chennai and the Israeli Consulate in Bengaluru were uncovered. This led to the unceremonious recall of Pakistani Visa Counsellor in Sri Lanka, Amir Zubair Siddiqui, who was Shakir Hussain’s handler.
Colombo was also used as a transit for terror funding by smuggling fake Indian currency, manufactured in Pakistan. More recently, a report in the Colombo Gazette dated August 28, 2016, highlighted continued attempts of groups like the Al Qaida, to recruit cadres from Sri Lanka, for the Jihad in Syria.
However, such activities have also led to greater cooperation between the intelligence agencies of the world’s major powers. The most recent evidence of this intelligence sharing has been the arrest in Guangzhou (China) of a Pakistani National Faiz Muhammad, carrying fake Indian currency notes of Rs 2.5 million from Pakistan. This individual, who was a regular smuggler of fake Indian currency notes, was also a frequent traveller to Guangzhou, and on this occasion, had arrived from Colombo on August 19, 2016.
Faiz Muhammad’s arrest was the result of a tip off by Indian intelligence agencies to their counterparts in Colombo and Beijing.
The continued use of Sri Lanka by such individuals engaged in funding of terror activities, as well as recruitment of cadres for Islamic Jihad in various parts of the world, is a cause of concern, and should serve as a wakeup call to the Sri Lankan Government.”
Pakistan Use of Nepal & Bangaldesh For Jihad Against Bharat
Before Sri Lanka became the latest terror outsourcing destination for Pakistan, Nepal & Bangladesh were already being used by Pakistan’s notorious spy agency ISI to spread terror against Bharat.
A 1997 US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks in 2011 showed how ISI used Nepal as a hub for terror inside Bharat. The US cable signed off by none other than the then US Ambassador to Bharat, Frank Wisner, said “In the run up to the hijacking of the Indian Airlines Flight IC-814 by Pakistan-based terrorist outfits, the ISI had made Nepal a hub of anti-India terror activities from where it pushed huge quantities of RDX into the country.”
In these cables, US officials conceded that it is the ISI which created various terrorist fronts to carry out terrorist activities in India, including the bomb blasts in the busy areas of Connaught Place, Lajpat Nagar in New Delhi and several cities across the country. One such organisation created by ISI was Jammu and Kashmir Islamic Front (JKIF), with its main base in Kathmandu.
A 2006 rediff article ‘ISI now outsources terror to Bangladesh‘ revealed the depth of ISI operations in Bangladesh in order to foment terror strikes on Bharat. The article says –
“According to sources in the Delhi police, around nine months back, during the investigation of some militancy related cases, it came to be known that the ISI and various militant organisations based in Pakistan are using Bangladesh as a transit point for pushing terrorists into India. It also came to be known that Bangladeshi nationals, who are part of the terrorist organisation, have been asked to illegally enter India and set up base in different parts of the country. They then provide safe hideouts to terrorists, act as couriers of explosives and transact in hawala activities for them.”
Pakistani Citizens Overwhelming Support for Army and ISI
The liberals and ‘Aman ki Asha’ brigade in Bharat who mislead our public into thinking there is a huge constituency for peace within Pakistan, are quite simply lying. The indoctrination against Hindus & Bharat that a Pakistani is fed from birth, cannot be overcome by superficial cultural exchanges of movies, song and dance shows etc.
A Pew Research Center opinion poll conducted in 2011, just after Osama Bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, showed that Pakistani military remains overwhelmingly popular, with 79% Pakistani citizens saying it is having a good influence on the country. 63% of people disapproved of the US operation to kill Bin Laden! 57% considered Bharat to be the biggest threat to Pakistan – with only 19% considering Taliban, against which Pakistan Army claims to be fighting in the global war on terror, as the biggest threat.
Bigoted views towards Hindus and Bharat are common in all sections of Pakistani society – cricketers, TV actors, singers, politicians, academics, military, diplomats etc. An article by Asif Nawaz, a Pakistani doctor from Abbottabad, titled ‘Dear India, Pakistani actors don’t need Bollywood to become stars‘ shows the prevailing mindsets in the English speaking, urban, elite Pakistani. Nawaz says –
“Our civil society, our community, our media, our children and lately, even our establishment, is trying extremely hard to get rid of the scourge of terrorism.”
Really? And still your citizens support your Army & its spy agency ISI, the fountainheads of terror in our part of the world? This sense of entitlement among Pakistani elites that Bharat and the rest of the world should somehow applaud Pakistan for it’s ‘sacrifices’ in the war of terror is astounding – if you play with fire to hurt others, you are bound to burn yourself.
“Isn’t your all-time leading superstar associated with a party that orchestrated the Gujarat riots?”
Here, Nawaz is referring to Amitabh Bacchan’s role in the Gujarat tourism ad campaign, an evil act in his eyes given BJP’s alleged role in ‘orchestrating’ the Gujarat riots. This is the level of propaganda in Pakistani society about events in Bharat – it is widely believed in Pakistan that Muslims in Bharat are routinely murdered, oppressed and discriminated by Hindu ‘fascists’. The fact that an excruciating Supreme Court monitored SIT investigation exonerated then Gujarat CM Narendra Modi and by extension the BJP party hierarchy of all charges in the 2002 riots case, that the riots broke out after the gruesome Sabarmati train burning by Muslim fanatics, that Muslim demography in Bharat has grown from 10% at the time of Independence to almost 15% today (likely even higher considering illegal Bangaldeshi immigration), that while Hindu religious institutions are open to Government interference in Bharat, Muslims are free to manage their own affairs – all these facts are either not known or ignored by Pakistan’s ‘educated’ middle class.
But on the Bharatiya side, there is gross ignorance about the plight of minorities within Pakistan. (the ignorance about the ground reality in Bharat itself is another matter altogether!) How many upper middle class Bharatiyas from the same strata of society as Asif Nawaz know that abduction, rape, forced conversion & marriage of Hindu, Sikh and Christian girls is a regular occurrence in Pakistani society? That Ahmadis (a sect of Islam) are legally forbidden to call themselves Muslim or to “pose as Muslims” in Pakistan. That Hindu temples are routinely attacked, encroached and vandalized in Pakistan?
Why Boycott of ‘Ae Dil Hai Mushkil’ matters
The boycott call against film ‘Ae Dil Hai Mushkil’ is not about one Fawad Khan, who might very well be a nice human being in person. The citizen driven boycott movement has been predictably hijacked & turned into a narrative pitting ‘liberal, rational Bollywood against the reactionary, intolerant, uncouth Hindutvawadis’ – but this is not the usual ‘Song and Dance Against Terrorism‘ as Sadanand Dhume contemptuously titled his latest article in WSJ ridiculing the call to boycott Pakistani actors.
Post-Uri, Bharat is a changed nation – an increasing band of well-informed, cogent citizens from different walks of life is coming to the realization that we need to freeze all ties with Pakistan for a considerable length of time, in order to force that rogue nation to change it’s policy of waging jihad against Bharat. Pakistanis have been fans of Bollywood movies for decades – but has this cultural export from Bharat changed Pakistani public attitudes towards Bharat? How many Pakistani middle-class Muslims have spoken out against the exploitation and persecution of poor Hindu Dalits in Pakistan? On the contrary, even non-resident Pakistanis living in Western nations like TV actor Marc Anwar continue to harbor stereotypes like calling Bharatiyas “bastards” and “piss-drinking cunts”; or the Muslim shop owner in US who installed signs comparing Hindus to monkeys.
Pakistanis like Cyril Almedia and Hassan Nissar who understand the dangerous road of religious fanaticism that Pakistan has embarked upon are rare – they are anyway dismissed as fringe elements in Pakistan’s mainstream discourse. Bharat and USA are the two Satanic enemies in the popular imagination of Pakistan and will remain so for the forseeable future.
Bollywood celebrities like Salman Khan are right when they retort to calls for not employing Pakistani actors with a dismissive “Government of Bharat grants them visas, so we work with them.” But if our Government won’t act, citizens have to show collective will to deal with the menace of Pakistan-sponsored terror. If we citizens start boycotting Pakistani artists and products and put pressure on the Government to downgrade ties with Pakistan, then Government will be forced to follow. We should also support the private member bill recently introduced in RS to declare Pakistan a terrorist state.
Boycott of movies like ‘Ae Dil Hai Mushkil’ & singers like Shafqat Amanat Ali is also important to sideline the ‘Aman ki Asha’ constituency in Bharat who have dominated our public discourse thus far, and have effectively sapped our will to take the long-term steps needed to fight an enemy state like Pakistan.
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