UNITED NATIONS: Pakistan has handed over a dossier on India’s terror campaign to United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres, urging him to prevail on Delhi to desist from its illegal and aggressive activities.

The UN secretary general promised to “study the dossier and take appropriate action”, said Pakistan’s envoy to the UN Munir Akram who presented the dossier to the UN chief on Tuesday.

Pakistan reserved the right to “act in self-defence” against India’s unending aggressions, Ambassador Akram warned.

Pakistan also plans to draw the attention of relevant UN bodies, including the Security Council, to India’s sponsorship of terrorism.

While addressing a press conference later at Pakistan Mission, Mr Akram explained how India’s irresponsible behaviour could jeopardise the entire region.

Guterres promises Pakistan’s envoy ‘appropriate action’

Asked why major world powers were underplaying the consequences of a simmering conflict in a nuclearised region, the Pakistani envoy to the UN said: “There is complacency because there has been a deterrence between India and Pakistan since the 1988 nuclear tests.

“But the situation may not remain as stable as people assume because of India’s involvement in terrorist activities against Pakistan,” he warned. “That’s why Pakistan wants the international community not to ignore the threat of a potential conflict between two nuclear-armed states.”

In his meeting with Mr Guterres, Ambassador Akram explained to the UN chief how India was violating international law, the UN Charter and UNSC resolutions by stoking terrorism inside Pakistan. “We have urged the secretary general to play his role in persuading India to halt its terror and subversive campaign against Pakistan,” he said.

As the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the secretary general had witnessed Pakistan’s operations against terrorist outfits and appreciated the sacrifices Pakistan had made in successfully defeating terrorism, he explained.

Since 2014, Pakistan has lost 83,000 civilians and soldiers in the fight against terrorism, which also caused a massive setback to the country’s economic and social development — to the tune of $126 billion.

While Pakistan has successfully eradicated terrorist outfits from its soil, cross-border terrorist attacks from ungoverned spaces in Afghanistan have escalated over the past few months. He said: “We knew of India’s hand in such attacks. We now have gathered irrefutable evidence that India is engaged in a systematic campaign to destabilise Pakistan through terrorist attacks, promotion of secession and subversion in what is called Hybrid/5th generation war.”

Quoting from the dossier, Ambassador Akram explained that the Indian campaign against Pakistan includes promotion/ sponsorship of listed terrorist organisations, Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA), which had been uprooted from Pakistan, to conduct cross-border attacks; sponsorship of Baloch insurgents inter alia to disrupt the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC); merging TTP splinter groups and creating a coalition between the TTP and the Baloch secessionists; providing weapons, ammunition and IEDs to these groups; raising a special force of 700 to sabotage CPEC; training anti-Pakistan terrorists in 66 identified camps in Afghanistan and 21 in India; tasking terrorists with conducting targeted killings of important Pakistani personalities; setting up a dedicated cell to subvert CPEC projects with Rs500 million to subvert Pakistan’s progress and economic strength and organising a new militia in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province called “Daesh-Pakistan” by India’s spy agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).

Ambassador Akram said the dossier also contains evidence of Indian subversive actions in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Gilgit Baltistan and in Karachi.

India, he said, was seeking to utilise UNSC mechanisms to defame Pakistan by portraying itself as a victim of terrorism. “It is abusing the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to damage Pakistan’s economy.”

India’s hybrid war was accompanied by threats of aggression against Pakistan, and daily violations of the ceasefire along the Line of Controls (LoC) in disputed Jammu and Kashmir, he added. “India’s terrorist and subversion campaigns are being directed from the highest levels of the Indian leadership,” he said.

Published in Dawn, November 26th, 2020