Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government tried to change the narrative around Pakistan’s support for terrorism last weekend, but the effort to build a case against India has continued for more than a year. The release of the heap of documents Islamabad has described as a dossier came after its repeated attempts to implicate indigenous people in terrorism were unsuccessful. The latest was in September when the United Nations Security Council rejected a proposal by Imran Khan, backed by President Xi Jinping’s China, to designate two Indians as terrorists under the 1267 sanctions committee process. A few months earlier , the UNSC had already blocked proposals to designate four more Indians.
It is in this context that Moeed W Yusuf, Imran Khan’s special assistant in the Division of National Security and Strategic Policy Planning, changed course and began laying the groundwork for a public campaign in October when he accused India of perpetrating terrorism in Pakistan. An academic believed to have had ties to the Pakistani military while still in the United States, Moeed Yusuf has been a great narrative builder after joining the government. Yusuf complained not long ago that Pakistan had failed to establish the narrative on Kashmir, a comment that was later seen as an indictment of the Foreign Ministry led by Shah Mahmood Qureshi. Last month, he told a press conference that the media should play a role in changing the country’s narrative. “Pakistan’s narrative is one of economic security and the world has not seen that,” he lamented, stating that Islamabad represents regional peace. In the same briefing, Yusuf complained about India’s “one-sided narrative” against Pakistan and hinted that Islamabad would launch a counter-narrative.
The ‘dossier’ presented at a press conference by Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and the military spokesman, Major General Babar Iftikhar in Islamabad, was Moeed Yusuf’s first step in making an attempt to change the narrative.
By all indications, a Pakistani observer in New Delhi said that the “fictitious dossier”, which regurgitated old accusations, was a rush job. He was misspelled by Indian intelligence chiefs accused of fomenting trouble in Pakistan. Also some basics.
“The whole file is full of those howlers,” he said. “From estimates of the economic costs of terrorism ($ 126 billion) to reports from terrorist training camps in India and Afghanistan, from complaints from a special cell to sabotage the China Pakistan Economic Corridor to embassies (high commission ) and the Indian consulates along the Pakistani border that serve as the center of operations, the record is littered with half-assed, fatuous and stupid claims that the Imran Khan government believes constitute ‘irrefutable evidence,’ “he said. .
It also repeats Moeed Yusuf’s recent accusation that he attempts to link India to the 2014 terrorist assault on an army school in Peshawar, an attack for which the Taliban claimed responsibility. The Pakistani military claimed to have arrested the main executors of the infamous attack that killed 141 people, including 131 children. In August 2015, then-Pakistani Army Chief Raheel Sharif confirmed the death sentence handed down by military courts to seven members of the Tehrik-e-Taliban and Tawhid-wal-Jihad group for supporting and raising funds for the attack. to school.
This is certainly not Pakistan’s first effort to tarnish India’s reputation and acquire some sort of parity with New Delhi by bringing charges of sponsorship of terrorism. Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations in 2017, made the effort when she called India the mother of terrorism in South India and accused New Delhi of “participating in an orgy of slander against Pakistan.” But that campaign collapsed without a trace.
Indian counterterrorism officials said there were four possible explanations why the Imran Khan government decided to broaden its anti-India speech at this time.
An anti-terrorist official said the attempt to put the spotlight on India comes at a time when Imran Khan is under tremendous pressure from resurgent opposition and economic woes, continued governance drift and an economy drowning in debt. Desperate to get the opposition to cancel its anti-regime program, the government has turned to the time-tested ghost of India. Moeed Yusuf tacitly admitted that the government wants the opposition to understand the sensitivity of the matter and not politicize things to an extent that India can take advantage of.
Second, officials said, it was a ploy to divert attention from the manipulation that was planned in Pakistan-occupied Gilgit Baltistan. The threat from India could help both shift focus and be used as a ghost to contain the fallout of the rig. The Chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party, Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, has already accused Imran Khan’s party of carrying out “naked and open manipulation” in the Gilgit-Baltistan elections.
Third, the record coincides with the election of Joe Biden’s government in the United States. One official said that Pakistan programmed the dossier to persuade the incoming administration that it should play a more equitable role in the region and force India to desist from taking any aggressive action against Pakistani adventurism and the export of terrorism.
Fourth, it would help target and cloud opposition leaders like Nawaz Sharif, who have been accused of being soft on India and wanting to normalize relations with India.
The dossier is aimed at both Pakistan’s ruling Tehreek-e-Insaf constituency in his country and the international community, said a national security planner in New Delhi. It’s a gamble, but it could backfire for Imran Khan if the campaign collapses like the previous one. Because then you will have to explain why you couldn’t sell your narrative to the people and the world.
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