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Pak plays terror victim card on ‘attack' on terrorist Hafiz Saeed

Post Uri surgical strikes and Balakot air strikes, such is the fear of Indian retaliation that terror leaders like Hafiz Saeed and Masood Azhar no longer spew venom against India in public and are living under level 7 security accorded to head of state.

Updated on: Dec 15, 2022, 11:15:49 IST
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On the day External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar reminded the world about ever present terror factory in Pakistan at the UNSC, Islamabad blamed India for attack on global terror king pin Hafiz Saeed, head of proscribed Lahore based Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), in 2021.

Lashkar-e-Toiba chief Hafiz Saeed and Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar.
Lashkar-e-Toiba chief Hafiz Saeed and Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar.

Saeed’s jihadist outfit along with Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) joined hands on November 26, 2008, to conduct massacre in Mumbai in which along with innocent Indians, US and Israeli nationals were also gunned down. While Pakistan’s foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto railed against India on usual Kashmir issue, his junior minister ranted against the Modi government from Islamabad and blamed Delhi for 2021 bomb blast near Johar Town home of the global Sunni jihadist.

The December 13, 2001, attack on Parliament along with Pathankot air base attack, Uri Brigade attack and Pulwama attack were conducted by Bahawalpur, Punjab based globally proscribed Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist group headed by Masood Azhar, the chairman of the Alvi family run terror factory.

While the intelligence world knows that Masood Azhar and Indian terror fugitive Dawood Ibrahim are under Pak security of the head of state level, Bilawal Bhutto wants the world to believe that the Deobandi jihadist is in Afghanistan and wants the Taliban to hand him over to Pakistan. Even as junior minister Hina Khar accused India for getting UN terror designation for some four Indians blocked using its clout in the 1267 Committee, fact is that Pakistan’s iron brother China tried to block global terrorist designation for Masood Azhar four times before caving in, and has been openly batting for Islamabad in the Al Qaida sanctions committee. China using its veto power in 1267 Committee has blocked global terror kingpins like Saeed’s brother-in-law Abdul Rehman Makki, who carries a million-dollar bounty on his head, 26/11 killer Sajid Mir and JeM’s operational chief Rauf Azhar Alvi.

While Khar called India a “rogue state” on Wednesday, no one in the global community except iron brother China is buying this nomenclature as virtually every terror attack in the past two decades in the world has had organic links in Pakistan. However, Islamabad’s problems have become more complicated since the Modi government assumed power in 2014 and after the Taliban took over reins in Kabul on August 15, 2021. Just as Pakistan fears instant retaliation from India on account of any jihadi terror attack, it is now fearing the worst on its western border as the Taliban regime is totally at odds with Shahbaz regime. Extremists groups Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan as well as Baloch insurgents groups are up in arms against Rawalpindi. The Pakistan card in Kashmir no longer is working as the Jammu and Kashmir police with security forces has managed to take out Pak based terror group leaders and their local proxies in the Valley. Today, there are only terror modules of three to four jihadis with limited shelf life are operating in the UT of Jammu and Kashmir, whose sole target are the Kashmiri Pandits and other minority communities of Kashmir. Even the Pakistan friendly ecosystem in Kashmiri media and beyond has turned against their handlers as a result of which journalists are being threatened by ISI proxies.

With the Modi government refusing to have any truck with either the military or the civilian establishment in Pakistan till terror is removed from the bilateral equation, Islamabad has no options but to rave and rant. No one is listening.

 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta

Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.

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