India, Pakistan take aim at each other over terrorism

By Anadolu Agency staff

ANKARA (AA) - The South Asian neighbors and nuclear-armed rivals Pakistan and India are continuing to criticize each other over terrorism, with Islamabad branding the government in New Delhi as being made up of "Saffron terrorists," and India claiming that Pakistan is a state that sponsors and harbors terrorists.

Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry on Saturday backed its top diplomat Bilawal Bhutto-Zaradri's remarks, the latest in a string of statements in which he referred to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the "butcher of Gujarat."

The riots in Gujarat took place in 2002, during Modi's tenure as chief minister of the Western coastal state. He was accused of starting the communal violence that spread through the western coastal state, specifically targeting the minority Muslim community. More than 1,000 people were killed.

Relations between the nuclear neighbors deteriorated further on Aug. 5, 2019, when New Delhi revoked Article 370 of its Constitution, ending the special status of Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, prompting Islamabad to downgrade its diplomatic mission in New Delhi and asking India to follow suit.

In a statement released on Saturday, the Pakistani Foreign Ministry said: “With its statement, the Indian Government has tried to hide behind subterfuge and canard to conceal the realities of the 2002 Gujarat massacre. It is a shameful story of mass killings, lynching, rape and plunder. The fact of the matter is that the masterminds of the Gujarat massacre have escaped justice and now hold key government positions in India.”

No verbosity can hide the crimes of the “Saffron terrorists” in India, the statement alleged, adding that Hindutva, the political ideology of the ruling party, has given rise to a climate of hate, divisiveness, and impunity.

“The culture of impunity is now deeply embedded in Hindutva-driven polity in India. The acquittal of the mastermind and perpetrators of the heinous attack on Delhi-Lahore Samjhota Express that killed 40 Pakistani nationals on Indian soil demonstrates the massacre of justice under the RSS-BJP dispensation,” the statement claimed, referring to the right-wing Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its political wing, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is currently in power.

“Intimidation and demonization of religious minorities receive official patronage in states across India. Hindutva supremacists have been unleashed to exercise cow vigilantism, ransack places of worship, and attack religious congregations,” according to the statement.

- Dueling statements

The latest round of allegations began earlier this week, when Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar accused Pakistan at the United Nations of supporting terrorism and harboring Osama bin Laden.

"I would like to remind Mr. Jaishankar that Osama bin Laden is dead, but the 'butcher of Gujarat' lives, and he is the prime minister (of India)," Bilawal told a news conference in New York on Thursday in response to his Indian counterpart's statement.

In reaction to Bilawal’s remarks, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement on Friday: “The ‘uncivilised’ outburst seems to be a result of Pakistan’s increasing inability to use terrorists and their proxies.”

The statement said: “These comments are a new low, even for Pakistan. The Foreign Minister of Pakistan has obviously forgotten this day in 1971, which was a direct result of the genocide unleashed by Pakistani rulers against ethnic Bengalis and Hindus.”

“Pakistan is a country that glorifies Osama bin Laden as a martyr, and shelters terrorists like Lakhvi, Hafiz Saeed, Masood Azhar, Sajid Mir and Dawood Ibrahim. No other country can boast having 126 UN-designated terrorists and 27 UN-designated terrorist entities!” it said.

The frustration of Pakistan's foreign minister would be better directed at the masterminds of terrorist enterprises in his own country, who have made terrorism a part of their state policy, the statement alleged, adding that Pakistan must reform its own mindset or stay a pariah state.

- How it all began

The fresh flare-up followed separate statements from Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh and Lt. Gen. Upendra Dwivedi, the general officer-commanding-in-chief Northern Command of the Indian Army, on the status of the disputed Kashmir valley and Pakistan’s Gilgit-Baltistan region near the China border.

Singh, in October, said he hoped to have the Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) region soon to complete the mission that the BJP government began by annexing Indian-administered Kashmir in August 2019, inviting ire from the international community, in particular Islamabad's longtime ally, China.

Endorsing Singh's statement, Dwivedi said earlier this month that the army was fully ready to implement the government's decision.

In a sharp reaction to the Indian officials' statements, Pakistan's newly appointed Army Chief Gen. Asim Munir said his country would respond to any "misadventure" with full might.

"We have noticed highly irresponsible statements from Indian leadership on GB and AJK (Azad Jammu and Kashmir) recently. Let me make it categorically clear, Pakistan's armed forces are ever ready, not only to defend every inch of our motherland but to take the fight back to the enemy, if ever, war is imposed on us," the military said in a statement, quoting Munir, who has also served as the head of the country's premier intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).