Why is Modi Sponsoring Terror in Pakistan?

[Riaz Haq]

There is substantial direct and indirect evidence now emerging that shows India is a state sponsor of terrorism in Pakistan.

On the one hand, the Modi government is funding the Teheek--e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), various Baloch insurgent groups, MQM militants and other groups to terrorize Pakistanis. On the other hand, it is accusing Pakistani government of sponsoring terror in Kashmir and demanding action against Kashmiri support groups headed by Hafiz Saeed and Masood Azhar. It appears that the "Doval Doctrine", named after India's hawkish national security advisor Ajit Doval,  is designed to stretch Pakistan Army so thin that it finally collapses and paves the way for India to dominate Pakistan.

Indian Prime Minister Modi with NSA Ajit Doval

Evidence of Indian Sponsorship of Terror: 

Here are some of the pieces of the evidence of India's support for terror in Pakistan:

1. A 2015 London police document  revealed as follows:

“Large amounts of cash have been seized from premises associated with the MQM and a significant amount of assets have been identified in the United Kingdom. All of the cash and assets are believed to represent funds provided to MQM by the Indian government or other unlawful activity."
 The document said that "both Mr. (Tariq) Mir and Mr. (Mohammad) Anwar (close aides of MQM leader Altaf Hussain) stated that MQM was receiving funding from Indian government".

MQM leader Altaf Hussain has been using militants in Karachi, the economic hub of Pakistan, to launch attacks and destabilize the country.

2. Kulbhushan Yadav, a serving Indian Navy Commander, was arrested in Pakistan's Balochistan province in 2016. Yadav said his purpose was to remain in direct contact with Baloch insurgents and carry out "activities with their collaboration".

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is now openly supporting Baloch insurgency in Pakistan. The Indian support for Baloch insurgents' terrorism in Pakistan is no longer a secret.

3. Ex US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has confirmed based on US intelligence reports that "India has always used Afghanistan as a second front against Pakistan. India has over the years been financing problems in Pakistan".   

4. Since 2013, India's current National Security Advisor Ajit Doval has been talking about "Pakistan's vulnerabilities" to terrorism and India's ability to ta....  Here are excerpts of his speech at Sastra University:


"How do you tackle Pakistan?.....We start working on Pakistan's vulnerabilities-- economic, internal security, political, isolating them internationally, it can be anything..... it can be defeating Pakistan's policies in Afghanistan...... You stop the terrorists by denying them weapons, funds and manpower. Deny them funds by countering with one-and-a-half times more funding. If they have 1200 crores give them 1800 crores and they are on our side...who are the Taliban fighting for? It's because they haven't got jobs or someone has misled them. The Taliban are mercenaries. So go for more of the covert thing (against Pakistan)..." Ajit Doval, India's National Security Advisor

5. India's intelligence agency RAW has a long history of sponsoring terror in Pakistan. Ex Indian spy R.K. Yadav has documented some of RAW's past successes in Pakistan stretching back to 1960s.

India's Pakistan Obsession:

Why is India's Hindu leadership so paranoid about Pakistan and Pakistanis?   Let us examine the source of India's Pakistan phobia by looking at various statements made by analysts, strategists and Hindu leaders across the political spectrum.

Hindu RSS leader M.S. Golwalkar described as "worthy of worship" by current Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi: 

"Ever since that evil day, when Moslems first landed in Hindustan, right up to the present moment, the Hindu Nation has been gallantly fighting on to take on these despoilers. The Race Spirit has been awakening.”

Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's Defense Minister Krishna Menon:

"In Pakistan's view the Partition is only the beginning. Her idea is to get a jumping-off ground to take the whole of India.....it was from the Mughals that the British took over (India). Now the British having gone, they (Muslims) must come back (to rule all of India)"

India's ex National Security Advisor and Foreign Secretary J.N. Dixit:

"The reason Britain partitioned India was to fragment Hindu areas into political entities and ensure Pakistan's emergence as the largest and most cohesive political power in the subcontinent. Pakistan's ultimate aim is to fragment India. Pakistani invasion of Kashmir in 1948 and subsequent wars are part of this continuous exercise. The Kargil war and the proxy war in Jammu and Kashmir are the latest example of this pressure. India has not been decisive and surgical in resisting Pakistani subversion. India has voluntarily given concessions to Pakistan despite defeating it in all major conflicts. Pakistan's long term objective is to ensure that India does not emerge as the most influential power in the South Asian region. The Pakistani power structure has a powerful antagonism toward Hindu-majority civil society in India. Pakistan has sought the support of a large number of Muslim countries and Asian and Western powers (China and the US) to keep India on the defensive. Pakistan's continued questioning of Indian secularism, democracy and constitutional institutions is a deliberate attempt to generate friction within India. Pakistani support of the secessionist and insurgent forces in Jammu and Kashmir, in Punjab and in the north-eastern states of India confirms this impression."


Modi's Objectives:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government is attempting to achieve the following:

1. Deflect world attention from Indian Army atrocities in Kashmir.

2.  Cover up India's proxy war of terror in Pakistan.

3. Isolate Pakistan internationally.

4. Sabotage China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

5. Bleed Pakistan by a thousand cuts to weaken it to the point where India can easily dominate the entire region.

Summary:

Indian Prime Minister Modi and his national security advisor and right-hand man Ajit Doval are sposoring terrorism in Pakistan while blaming Pakistan of terror to cover their tracks.  It's important for Pakistanis to not only understand what India is doing but also make a serious effort to make the world aware of it.

Here's a short 3-minute video capturing the essence of the post:

https://youtu.be/Yb6aNq11zhc

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Can Modi Isolate Pakistan?

MQM-RAW Link

India's Pakistan Obsession

China-Pakistan Economic Corridor

RK Yadav's Mission RAW

Planted Stories in Indian Media

Doval Doctrine

India's Israel Envy

[Riaz Haq]

Has #Pakistan’s #ISI funded insurgents in North-East #India? #RAW #Assam #Bangladesh #Kashmir http://scroll.in/article/819694/this-book-says-pakistans-isi-has-be... … via @scroll_in

Faith Unity Discipline: The ISI of Pakistan by Hein Kiessling


In 1990, via the Pakistan embassy in Dhaka, the NSCN and ULFA developed contacts with the ISI. As far back as the 1960s, undivided Pakistan had supplied weapons for the Naga fighters. However, the turbulent developments in East Pakistan and the birth of Bangladesh in 1971 led to a temporary halt in this weapons pipeline. Relations were never completely broken off, however, and in the 1980s they were revitalised.

In January 1991, with the help of the ISI, several high-ranking ULFA leaders travelled to Pakistan to sign a training agreement for ULFA cadres. In the same year, two six-member ULFA groups arrived in Islamabad for training; a third 10-member group followed in 1993. The ISI’s auxiliary support for operations of this kind covered more than just the training courses in Pakistan. Well in advance, new identities and fake passports had to be procured, travel routes determined and the financing of the whole operation had to be secured. In this way, the Pakistan embassy in Dhaka became an important ISI station, the hub of its operations in North-East India.

In the ISI directorate in Islamabad, they must have been content with the results of the first training courses for ULFA fighters, since they continued through the 1990s and were extended to include other underground groups. The Indian security forces at one point arrested and interrogated a member of the NLFT, who revealed that between 1997 and 1998 some of their top brass had gone for training with the ISI in Pakistan. The detainee mentioned the names of NLFT leaders, thereby uncovering the whole structure of task distribution and kinship within the top echelons of the group.

Parallel to the Muslim resistance in Kashmir, other Islamist organisations in North-East India were also increasingly active in the 1990s. The main militant Islamist resistance groups in North-East India were: Muslim United Liberation Front of Assam, Muslim United Liberation Tigers of Assam, Islamic Liberation Army of Assam, United Muslim Liberation Front of Assam, United Reformation Protest of Assam, People’s United Liberation Front, Muslim Volunteer Force, Adam Sena Islamic Sevak Sangh, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and Harkat-ul Jihad.

The ISI was always ready to help their friends in North-East India procure weapons. In Thailand, after the collapse of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia from the 1980s onwards, light weapons and light machine guns awaited prospective buyers, so new supply opportunities opened up. Thus in 1991 the ISI provided weapons from Thailand to a group of 240 NSCN members.

Small boats brought the cargo to Cox’s Bazaar, a port in Bangladesh, which became the hub for weapon supplies in the region. Consequently, two more deliveries were made. In week-long treks the NSCN and ULFA fighters themselves fetched weapons from Bangladesh and brought them back to their bases. On the land route there was the ever-present danger of interception by the Indian Border Security Force, the police in the individual states and by Army units. In fact the fourth delivery was ambushed and the group involved was mostly wiped out. They then switched to longer and more difficult routes, in an attempt to make their delivery paths more secure.

In the initial years of the new arms supply channel, the ISI was obliged to procure and finance the weapons. According to a prominent Naga fighter imprisoned by the Indians, in the 1990s he received three instalments totalling $1.7 million from the ISI for weapon purchases. Later on, the rebels often funded the purchase themselves. Bank robberies, tax extortions, black- mail and the drug trade supplied the means; thus terror began to be self-financing. Such weapons supply routes were running throughout the 1990s and into the new millennium, with Bangladesh as the main trans-shipment point.

[Riaz Haq]

#Quetta college carnage: It’s nothing else but tit for tat. #India #Afghanistan #Pakistan #TTP #QuettaTerrorAttack
http://tribune.com.pk/story/1209570/nothing-else-tit-tat/

By Imtiaz Gul

Regardless of how you look at it, central to terrorism in Pakistan and Afghanistan are known instruments of destabilisation and instability i.e. TTP, IS/Daesh, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi al-Alami and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. They are the handy pawns in the proxy war that is currently underway in the region.

The only plausible explanation for such termination missions is a tit for tat strategy born out of the perception that Pakistan needs to do more to neutralise and uproot the Haqqani Network.

Until Pakistan is seen doing so, its security apparatus is likely to remain under attack – both by the international players as well as by their instruments of terror and instability.

Army chief arrives in Quetta following deadly attack

The deadly terrorist raid on the New Sariab Police Training College near Quetta, the capital of Pakistan’s Balochsitan province, does not come as a surprise. The attack has so far claimed the lives of 61 security personnel, by far the largest in terms of fatalities among those carried out against Pakistan’s security apparatus.

It has been in the offing in view of the excessive bleeding of the number of unusual fatalities among the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) since early this year.

The Quetta attack is reminiscent of two attacks within six months (March /October 2009) at the Police Academy at Manawan outside Lahore; typical fidayeen (suicide) termination missions with the objective of inflicting as much damage as possible.

The latest blood-spilling can be interpreted in two ways; it’s a strike either by the Pakistani or Uzbek proponents of Daesh i.e. Lashkare Jhangvi or different splinters of the TTP. Or it is a tit for tat, reprisal attack by all those who see Pakistan’s security establishment as the patron and harbourer of the Haqqani Network, which is seen as the major source of unusual attrition within the ANSF; a staggering 3,500 losses until August this year, including nearly 2,000 in July and August alone. Sine early this month, the ANSF losses in Helmand alone have been over 150 with fighting raging in a number of districts and provinces around Helmand.

In pictures: Militants storm police training centre in Quetta

The top US commander in Afghanistan John Nicholson, however, places the blame on both sides.

“It’s still a very pours border region and we do see insurgents moving both ways across the border, some from Afghanistan to Pakistan and then of course the Haqqanis and the Taliban moving from Pakistan into Afghanistan,” said Nicholson, when asked about Pakistan’s border.

When asked whether the Afghan government had any plan to secure the border, Nicholson offered this explanation:

“The Afghan border police are present along the border but the numbers of border posts probably need to increase, the coordination procedures between the Afghans and the Pakistanis (need to improve). We are working on a bilateral basis and we are going to continue to work improve this over the next year.”

General Nicholson resonates a largely realistic ground situation, with both Kabul and Islamabad apparently helpless in preempting and preventing attacks of this kind.

61 killed, at least 165 injured as militants storm police training centre in Quetta

What is clear though is that the Haqqani Network remains central to the Afghan-American narrative as much as the Indian narrative on the Lashkare Taiba/Jamaatud Dawa. Islamabad has given the Haqqanis, similar to the Afghan Taliban, shelter in Pakistan’s western tribal region. As a result, many American soldiers have been killed by the network.

In 2011, the Haqqanis attacked the US Embassy in Kabul. The network was also blamed for the 2008 bombing of the Indian mission in Kabul that killed 58 people – and since it hit India, it was “perfectly alright” with Pakistani intelligence, the Forbes Magazine wrote in August this year.

[Riaz Haq]

Militants return to #Pakistan, hitting #China’s economic plans #CPEC #QuettaAttack

http://gulfnews.com/news/asia/pakistan/militants-return-to-pakistan...

Quetta: A militant attack in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province has shattered government claims it has been successful in its fight against terrorism.
Striking along the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) in Quetta, three armed men wearing suicide vests broke into a police academy late on Monday in a deadly assault that has since been claimed by the Daesh via a statement published on its Amaq news agency.
“These attacks are aimed at destabilising Balochistan and to create problems for CPEC, which certain countries don’t want to see as a success story,” said retired Brigadier Asad Munir, a defence analyst who served in Pakistan’s tribal regions.
Pakistan claims to have largely defeated militants who had wrecked the nation’s economy by violent strikes in past two years and killed thousands of people since the South Asian nuclear power joined the US war on terror in 2002.
But such brazen strikes indicate the battle is not over.


“The numbers and the way they were martyred, it has made all efforts of yours and security agencies futile,” Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan told newly graduated police officers in Islamabad hours after the attack.
China’s reaction to the attack was low-key, suggesting its economic projects were not the target of the militant attack.
“It’s unrealistic to expect Pakistan’s domestic security situation to undergo fundamental changes in the near future,” said Zhao Gancheng, director of the Centre for South Asia Studies at the state-backed Shanghai Institutes for International Studies. “The attack on the police training academy last night was a reflection of Pakistan’s internal security risk; it happened in the province that the CPEC passes, but didn’t target the CPEC.”
China will cautiously push ahead with its projects and provide a boost in support for Pakistan’s military, he said.
The attack on the academy is the second worst in Pakistan this year, since a suicide bomber killed 70 people in Quetta’s government-run hospital in August.
Security authorities blamed Al Qaida-linked Lashkar-e-Jhangvi Al Alami for the attack, state-run radio reported citing Balochistan’s paramilitary force chief. By Tuesday afternoon, Daesh claimed responsibility.
The former security chief of Pakistan’s tribal regions, Mahmood Shah, cast doubt on the Daesh claims, saying Lashkar-e-Jhangvi Al Alami has a history of attacks in Balochistan and were trained by Al Qaida for urban fighting.
“The government has got to chalk out a new security plan for Quetta, Balochistan as militants keep coming and attacking it,” he said. “You want to have CPEC there and raising just a force isn’t enough.”
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who aims to boost country’s economy to 7 per cent before his terms ends in 2018, condemned the attack and expressed concern over the safety of cadets.
Pakistan is banking on China’s $46 billion investment into the corridor that runs from China’s western part to Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan to boost and develop the country’s economy.

[Riaz Haq]

Gen (R) David H. Petraeus' remarks on security challenges facing the new US administration at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a British security think tank in London:

"There's no question there's communication between the ISI and various militant groups in FATA and Balochistan  (Haqqanis, Taliban, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, etc) but some of it you'd do anyway as an intelligence service.....there may be some  degree of accommodation that is forced on them (Pakistanis) because of the limits of their (Pakistan's) forces.... I looked very very hard then (as US commander in Afghanistan) and again CIA director at the nature of the relationship between the  various (militant) groups in FATA and Baluchistan and the Pakistan Army and the ISI and I was never convinced of what certain journalists have alleged (about ISI support of militant groups in FATA).... I have talked to them (journalists) asked them what their sources are and I have not been able to come to grips with that based on what I know from these different positions". 

Some people say Pakistan is a frenemy...it is just very very difficult to pin down (blame on Pakistan) and it's even more difficult to figure out how to exert leverage that in a meaningful way resolves the issue  There was a period when we cut off all assistance (to Pakistan) and ties and held up F-16s that we were supposed to deliver for a while and that did not help our influence there (in Pakistan). It's a very very tough situation and it may be among the top two or three challenges for the new administration right up there with Syria". 

https://youtu.be/XcqJt6hHXQc

[Riaz Haq]

#Pakistan Ambassador Makes Case to Stop #India-Sponsored #Terrorism to #UN.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2017/01/06/world/asia/ap-as-pakista...

Pakistan's foreign ministry says Islamabad has handed over a dossier to the United Nations over the alleged involvement of India in acts of terrorism in the Islamic nation.

In a statement, it said Pakistani ambassador Maleeha Lodhi on Friday delivered a set of documents regarding India's alleged role in fomenting terrorism in Pakistan to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

The announcement comes months after Pakistan captured an Indian spy, Kulbhushan Jadhav, saying he was behind acts of terrorism in the country. So far, Islamabad has not granted consular access to Jadhav following India's request.

Pakistan and India have a history of bitter relations. In recent months they have repeatedly exchanged fire in Kashmir, the border territory divided between them and claimed by both.

[Riaz Haq]

Ex-Indian Army chief admits sponsoring terrorism in Balochistan

https://www.thenews.com.pk/archive/amp/461946-ex-indian-army-chief-...

Recently retired Indian Army chief General Vijay Kumar Singh has admitted that India sponsored bomb blasts in Pakistan and doled out money to the separatist elements in Balochistan, a disclosure downplayed by the Indian media so far.
Buying silence of Kashmiri leaders in Indian held Kashmir and phone tapping inside India were also part of the sensitive report.The ex-army chief reveals this in an inquiry report prepared by India’s DG military operations shining light on activities of an army unit raised after the Mumbai attacks.
VK Singh last month announced a political alliance with BJP leader Narendra Modi who was responsible for the massacre of the Muslims in Indian Gujarat.A portion of the explosive report indicting the former army chief of terrorist activities inside Pakistan was downplayed by the Indian media that largely used ‘neighboring country’ as a reference and instead highlighted its parts relating to his activities of phone-tapping inside India and buying silence of politicians in Indian-held Kashmir through loads of cash.
The dirty tricks sanctioned by the top Indian general were carried out by Tactical Support Division (TSD), an Indian army unit raised after Mumbai attacks on the directives of the Defence Minister and National Security Adviser Shev Shankar Menon in order to “perform a particular task to secure borders and internal situation in the country.”
TSD consisted of six officers, five JCOs and 30 men and operated out of an unmarked two-storeyed building within the Delhi Cantonment dubbed the ‘Butchery’, that was a refurbished slaughterhouse of colonial times, The India Today reported.
“The division was headed by Colonel Munishwar Nath Bakshi, a tall, flamboyant intelligence officer in his early 40s, better known by an unusual nickname, ‘Hunny’,” it said.As the inquiry body was set up to investigate, Col Bakshi, a confidante of Gen Singh, got himself admitted in a mental hospital pretending that he was under serious mental stress.
Former Army Chief VK Singh allegedly used TSD, a clandestine collective of handpicked military intelligence personnel, to settle scores on both sides of the contentious Line of Control (LOC) between Pakistan and India, reported The India Today, in its October 7 edition.
Between October and November 2011, India Today reported this month, TSD had claimed money “to try enrolling the secessionist chief in the province of a neighbouring country” and “Rs1.27 crore (Indian currency) to prevent transportation of weapons between neighbouring countries”. In early 2011, TSD claimed an unspecified amount for carrying out “eight low-intensity bomb blasts in a neighboring country”, according to this weekly Indian magazine.
The Hindustan Times earlier reported about the covert operation inside Pakistan by TSD and quoted its former official stating it was assigned to nab Hafiz Saeed of Jamaatud Dawah but didn’t mention TSD’s involvement in terrorist activities in Pakistan as has been revealed through inquiry board.
Since there was no explicit mention of Pakistan, it didn’t emerge on the radar of Pakistani media. The News spoke to different journalistic sources in India privy to details who confirmed that it was about Pakistan.
India’s Director General of Military Operations (DGMO) Lt Gen Vinod Bhatia, who headed a Board of Officers’ inquiry under the direct orders of Gen Bikram Singh, current army chief, to review the functioning of the TSD submitted the report in March this year to the Indian government. While report is not being publicised, however, TSD was closed in December 2012.

[Riaz Haq]

Dirty Tricks: A politically ambitious general and a bungling govt put national security at risk

Former army chief Vijay Kumar Singh allegedly used the Technical Support Division (TSD), a clandestine collective of handpicked military intelligence personnel, to settle scores on both sides of the contentious Line of Control (LOC) between Pakistan and India.

Organising eight bomb attacks in a neighbouring country. Subsidising secession on enemy territory. Sponsoring 'friendly' ministers to destabilise an indigenous state government. Eavesdropping on senior government functionaries including India's defence minister. Former army chief Vijay Kumar Singh allegedly used the Technical Support Division (TSD), a clandestine collective of handpicked military intelligence personnel, to settle scores on both sides of the contentious Line of Control (LOC) between Pakistan and India. It was a secret war conceived by a reckless general between 2010 and 2012. And even 16 months after his unceremonious retirement, the general has not stopped fighting. Now the target is the Government, which is matching the general's tricks with its own. The collateral damage of the dirty war between the two is national security.

Barely 24 hours after his I-know-it-all proclamation on national television on September 23, that the Army had "transferred funds to all ministers in Jammu and Kashmir since 1947", Singh scurried for cover. His comments triggered a firestorm of indignant counter-allegations all the way from Delhi to Srinagar. The payouts, he insisted, were not "bribes" or for "political purpose", but part of the larger initiative to promote stability in the insurgency-ridden state. On September 27, just hours before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was to meet his counterpart Nawaz Sharif in New York, the tenuous peace was shattered yet again when terrorists struck with twin attacks on a police station and an army post in Jammu killing 12 persons including four soldiers and two policemen. The attack underscored ground realities in India's most sensitive state. The general's clarifications, an almost surreptitious monologue delivered to select reporters on the lawns of his Sector 30 home in Gurgaon, are however only a brief pause in his long shoot-and-scoot war that has simmered since the Government refused to amend his date of birth in 2011. This would not only have given him 10 more months in office but also changed the expected line of succession for the Army's top job.

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/general-vk-singh-bungling-govern...

[Riaz Haq]

#karachiterrorattack : #Pakistan Government accuses foreign powers. UN Security Council condemns deadly attack on Pakistan’s financial hub and urges all states involved to bring perpetrators to justice. #Afghanistan #India #Iran #BLA #Balochistan @AJENews https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/07/pakistan-deadly-attacks-arme...

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has condemned Monday's deadly attack on Pakistan’s financial hub.

A banned separatist organisation called the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) claimed responsibility for the assault on the Karachi Stock Exchange.

Baloch leaders accuse the federal government of neglect and depriving the resource-rich province for decades.

[Riaz Haq]

#Pakistan says it has evidence of #India sponsoring #terror attacks. FM Qureshi: "We have irrefutable facts that we will present before the nation and international community" #CPEC #Balochistan #Karachi #Peshawar #Modi #Terrorism https://aje.io/xsjzn via @AJEnglish

Pakistan says India is sponsoring “terrorism” aimed at destabilising the country and targeting its economic partnership with China, accusations top Pakistani officials delivered at a news conference.

Pakistan and India routinely accuse each other of targeting the other, but this was a rare time Pakistani officials said they prepared a mountain of evidence to back up the allegations against their South Asian rival.

In a joint news conference on Saturday in the capital Islamabad, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, along with military spokesman Major-General Babar Iftikhar, said Indian intelligence agents were operating out of neighbouring Afghanistan to plan attacks within Pakistani borders.

“India was allowing its land to be used against Pakistan for terrorism,” said Qureshi, adding that New Delhi was also planning attacks from “neighbouring countries”.

Qureshi said Pakistan is sending its evidence to the United Nations demanding India be censured, warning “without international intervention it is difficult to guarantee peace in nuclear South Asia”, a region where both India and Pakistan possess nuclear weapons.

“We have irrefutable facts that we will present before the nation and international community through this dossier,” the minister claimed.

The news conference comes a day after Pakistan’s military said five civilians and an army soldier were killed by shelling from Indian troops across the highly militarised border that separates the Pakistani and Indian sides of Kashmir.

The disputed border in the Himalayan region is a source of long-standing conflict between the two powers.

Iftikhar, who heads the media and public relations office for Pakistan’s armed forces, presented some of the dossier’s evidence purporting to show India’s involvement in attacks within Pakistan, including bank receipts showing funding and photos showing alleged perpetrators of attacks inside the Indian consulate in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.

He also played an audio clip purporting to record a conversation between an Indian intelligence official and Allah Nazar, who is the top leader of Baloch separatist fighters in southwest Pakistan.

Iftikhar added Indian intelligence agents were especially targeting Chinese development projects that have come with the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

He alleged the attackers who led a deadly assault on a luxury hotel in the southwestern city of Gwadar in October 2016 were in telephone contact with Indian intelligence handlers before and during the assault.


Chinese companies operate the Pakistani city’s key port facilities and it is considered a keystone of major Pakistani-Chinese trade projects.

The military spokesman also accused India of sponsoring banned organisations including UN-designated “terrorist” groups Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, and Allah Nazar’s Baloch Liberation Army.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s foreign ministry, Gran Hewad, said on Saturday Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan is planning to visit Afghanistan next week.

The foreign ministry said this will be Khan’s first visit to Kabul as Pakistan’s prime minister. It was not mentioned whether he would raise Pakistan’s allegations of Indian interference.

[Riaz Haq]

#Pakistan says India was behind June bomb blast in #JoharTown #Lahore. It killed 3, hurt 24. #Probe finds that the man who carried out the attack is an Indian citizen living in #India and works for that country’s #RAW intelligence agency. #terrorism
https://apnews.com/article/india-pakistan-lahore-0628c7d26e00e7d8a4...

KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistan’s national security advisor has accused India of orchestrating last month’s deadly car bombing in the eastern city of Lahore, saying Sunday that an investigation has shown it was organized by an Indian intelligence operative.

In a news conference in Islamabad, Moeed Yousuf said the probe showed that the man was an Indian citizen living in India who works for that country’s RAW intelligence agency. He did not name the alleged mastermind.

“Through the forensic analysis, electronic equipment, which has been recovered from these terrorists, we have identified the main mastermind and the handlers of this terrorist attack. And we have no doubt in informing you that the main mastermind belongs to RAW, lives in India and is an Indian citizen.” He said Pakistan will continue its efforts to expose India’s sponsorship of such attacks internationally.

The explosion took place outside the residence of anti-India militant leader Hafiz Saeed, who himself has been designated a terrorist by the U.S. Justice Department and has a $10 million bounty on his head. India accuses Saeed of helping mastermind the deadly 2008 attacks in Mumbai that killed nearly 170 people at several occasions including the luxury Taj Hotel. He was unharmed in the powerful explosion in Lahore’s Johar Town neighborhood that killed three and wounded 24.

India and Pakistan routinely accuse the other of carrying out clandestine attacks on the other’s territory. Saeed is a highly wanted suspect in India, and Pakistan has been criticized by India and the United States for not taking stronger actions against him.

Punjab police chief Inam Ghani said all those involved in the bombing have been arrested, including an Afghan who lived in Pakistan and actually parked the explosives-laden car at the site of blast.

Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesman Arindam Bagchi couldn’t be reached for comment.

___ Ashok Sharma in New Delhi contributed.