Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has roped in his country’s notorious spy agency accused of colluding with terrorist organization – Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) – in his elaborate 18-point plan to commemorate the August 5 anniversary of India scrapping Article 370, sources said.
Under the 18-point programme, Imran Khan is scheduled to visit Pakistan occupied Kashmir where he is supposed to address the assembly, a speech that is going to be beamed live. Then, before Khan reaches Muzaffarabad, Pakistan government intends a field trip for foreign journalists to the occupied territory, with the exception of terror training camps funded by the ISI – a behaviour observed in the past.
On August 5 last year, India had tabled the law in Rajya Sabha to strip the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir of its special status under the constitution and turn the state into two union territories – Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh. It was passed by the Rajya Sabha the same day, the Lok Sabha the next and received the presidential assent on August 9.
Pakistan, taken by surprise by New Delhi’s move, soon launched an international campaign against the nullification of Article 370. Imran Khan was the face of this pitch on and off Twitter. Khan even focused his speech at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), last September on Kashmir, and warned a “blood bath” in the valley when the curfew is lifted, prophesied a genocide on the streets of Kashmir and frequently referred to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons to blackmail the world to intervene.
Only two other countries spoke of Kashmir at the UNGA: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey and Malaysia, then led by Mahathir Mohamad.
China also issued two statements on the scrapping of Article 370. One statement asked India and Pakistan to work together on the Kashmir issue. But its primary concern was over the change of Ladakh’s status to a federally-administered territory.
“China is always opposed to India’s inclusion of the Chinese territory in the western sector of the China-India boundary into its administrative jurisdiction,” China’s foreign ministry had said.
India responded by saying that changing the status of an Indian territory was an “internal matter”.
For Imran Khan’s plan for August 5, Islamabad has reached out to Kuala Lumpur, Ankara and Beijing to issue statements to commemorate the first anniversary of Jammu and Kashmir’s new status.
Turkey’s Erdoğan is expected to oblige but New Delhi is watching how Malaysia plays. Kuala Lumpur has a new prime minister in Muhyiddin Yassin who took over on 1 March.
Officials say that China’s statement didn’t matter given how it had attempted to expand its territory that led to the standoff and the bloody Galwan clash in east Ladakh.
The foreign ministry has been told to work closely with spy agency ISI on its diplomatic outreach to Organization of Islamic Cooperation member countries and international human rights groups, organizing commemorative events at missions abroad and drafting a fresh memorandum to be handed over to the UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan headquartered in Islamabad.
Counter terror officials in New Delhi have said that the campaign had been drawn up by the military for Imran Khan, “right from documentaries, pamphlets and newspaper supplements that would be put out to the tweets that would be put out. But Imran Khan will front the campaign”.
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