Ever since India’s airstrike deep inside Pakistan territory in Balakot, the international pressure for Pakistan to crack down on terror emanating from its soil has gone up. Pakistan has always pretended that the civilian government and the military don’t officially know of terrorists on Pakistan soil, but the world knows that to be hogwash. Furthering that propaganda, Major General Asif Ghafoor of Pakistan Army claimed that terrorist organisation Jaish-e-Mohammad which claimed the responsibility of Pulwama terrorist attack does not exist in Pakistan.
Ghafoor made the claim during his appearance on CNN. Ghafoor also called India’s act of destroying the Jaish-e-Mohammad training camps located in Balakot in response to Pulwama terrorist attack as “Indian aggression”.
Interestingly, Ghafoor’s statement about Jaish-e-Mohammad not being in Pakistan comes only days after Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi had admitted that Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar was in Pakistan and was unwell to the extent that he could not move out of his house. In another statement given during an interview to BBC, Qureshi accidentally admitted that the Pakistani government is in touch with the Jaish-e-Mohammad leadership.
Ghafoor’s claims that not a single brick or a single dead body was found at the site of air strikes again contradicts the claims of Pakistan’s Rail Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed. Ahmed had acknowledged in Pakistan’s Parliament that the Indian Air Force had struck Masood Azhar’s madrassa in the air bombings in Balakot.
It would seem like the military is trying to ‘undo’ the truth that has invariably been admitted by the FM of Pakistan. With Qureshi accepting that the government and the Army by extension are in touch with Masood Azhar, Pakistan has essentially admitted to using JeM as a policy tool.
In fact, earlier former President of Pakistan Parvez Musharraf today admitted that Pakistan intelligence agencies, ISI, were hands in gloves with Jaish-e-Mohammad in carrying out bomb blasts in India.
Ever since the Pulwama terrorist attack and the following retaliatory action by India on Jaish-e-Mohammad camps in Balakot, instead of condemning the terrorist attack and cooperating with India, Pakistan has been lying profusely unsuccessfully trying to save its face before the international community.
