It was due to the selfless unity among the Muslims under the leadership of Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah that Pakistan became a tangible reality on 14 August 1947. But, that unity started declining after passing through various crises, and the result was separation of East Pakistan in 1971, as India manipulated differences between East Pakistan and West Pakistan.
Although August 14 is celebrated every year as the Independence Day, this year, it has come at a time when Pakistan is facing multiple threats of grave nature externally and internally, which are worrying all the citizens.
In fact, Pakistan is facing a hybrid war which needs special attention.
According to a definition, hybrid war is a military strategy in which conventional warfare is integrated with tactics such as covert operations and cyber-attacks— the use of a range of different methods to attack an enemy.
In April 2018 the then COAS, Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa, had said that hybrid war had been “imposed on Pakistan to internally weaken it.”
Besides, some US-led western countries, including Israel and particularly India, are waging a hybrid war against Pakistan— owing to its being the only nuclear country in the Islamic world.
However, during the partition of the Sub-continent, the people of the state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) which comprised a Muslim majority, decided to join Pakistan. But, Dogra Raja, Sir Hari Singh, a Hindu who was ruling over the J&K in collusion with the Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Governor General Lord Mountbatten, joined India.
The Radcliffe Boundary Award gave the Gurdaspur District— a majority Muslim area— to India to provide a land route to the Indian forces to move into Kashmir.
Indian forces invaded Srinagar on 27 October 1947 and forcibly occupied Kashmir in utter violation of the partition plan.
When Pakistan responded militarily, on 31 December 1947, India made an appeal to the UN Security Council to intervene and a ceasefire ultimately came into effect on 1 January 1949, following UN resolutions calling for a plebiscite in Kashmir.
At this critical moment, the former government of the PDM, the PTI, civil society bodies and media owners, the Army, and all other segments of society must show selfless national unity practically, which is very essential to pull the country out of the ongoing serious crises and to successfully cope with the hybrid war, and to meet the Indian war-mongering designs.
On 5 February 1964, India backed out of its commitment of holding a plebiscite. Instead, the Indian Parliament declared Kashmir-an integral part of the Indian union.
It is notable that this year, August 5 was the fourth anniversary of India’s revocation of the special status of the disputed territory of the Indian Occupied Kashmir.
On 5 August 2019, prejudiced Indian Prime Minister and leader of the BJP-led extremist government Narendra Modi abrogated articles 35A and 370 of the Indian Constitution, which gave a special status to the disputed territory of Indian Occupied Kashmir. The Indian government bifurcated Jammu and Kashmir into two union territories— Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh, to be ruled by the federal government. On the same day, strict military lockdown was imposed in the Indian Occupied Kashmir which continues unabated.
New Delhi also issued an infamous map on 31 October 2019, which displayed this split and identifies the Pakistani side of Azad Kashmir as well as certain areas of Gilgit-Baltistan as Indian territory.
Apart from Pakistan, China also rejected the Indian malicious acts as “unlawful and void”, saying that India’s decision to “include” some of China’s territory into its administrative jurisdiction “challenged” Beijing’s sovereignty. The border dispute between India and China, which remains unsettled, has increased tension between the two countries.
And the deployment of more than 900,000 military troops in the Indian Occupied Kashmir, who have martyred tens of thousands of the Kashmiris, including women and children through brutal tactics and fake encounters, while closure of mosques, shortage of foods, medicines for the patients have further increased the suffering of the Kashmiris.
In order to hide human rights violations, communication services have been cut off from the world and foreign journalists are not allowed to enter the Kashmir region.
Under a well-planned hidden agenda, the Modi-led regime has intensified, bringing ethno- demographic changes in Indian Occupied Kashmir. In this context, various Indian moves such as introduction of new laws, amendment of the laws to facilitate non-Kashmiris and outsiders in order to usurp the rights of the Muslim Kashmiris— issuance of domicile certificates to more than 800,000 non-Kashmiris, registration of almost 2.5 million new non-local voters in Indian Occupied Kashmir— the failure of fake drama to host G-20 summit on May 22-24 there, from time to time, violations of the Line of Control by shelling inside the Pakistani side of Kashmir, in violation of the ceasefire agreement of 2003, might be cited as instances.
Tension escalated rapidly between India and Pakistan in the aftermath of the false flag Pulwama terror attack in Indian Occupied Kashmir when on 27 February 2018, in response to the Indian so-called pre-emptive air strike near the town of Balakot, close to the border with Pakistan’s sector of Kashmir, which resulted into no casualties, Pakistan Air Force shot down two Indian Air Force fighter jets and launched aerial strikes at six targets in Indian Occupied Kashmir.
Pakistan also captured Indian pilot Wg Cdr Abhinandan Varthaman who was released as a gesture of peace and handed over to the Indian authorities. It resulted in the diplomatic victory of Islamabad over New Delhi.
Notably, Indian Prime Minister Modi’s party BJP won by a landslide in the 2014 ND 2019 elections. During the campaign, the Hindu majority was mobilized on ‘hate-Muslim’ and ‘anti-Pakistan’ slogans. Hence, Modi continues anti-Muslim policies.
In this context, Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh’s recent threat to cross the LoC, Indian cross-border terrorism in Pakistan and backing of militant outfits to destabilize this country show the Indian unfinished agenda of partition.
Under Modi’s fanatic regime led by biased Hindu parties, India has become a fascist country. In this respect, The New York Times wrote on 9 August: “In Manipur, Christians are bearing the brunt as the state’s B.J.P. government stokes the insecurities of the majority ethnic Meitei, who are predominantly Hindu. State leaders have blamed the Kuki tribes who are mostly Christian, for poppy cultivation intended for the drug trade and evicted some of them from their forest habitats. The specific trigger for the current violence was a court ruling in the state in favor of granting the Meitei affirmative action provisions and other benefits that have long been enjoyed by the Kuki and other tribes, which sparked a protest by tribal communities opposed to the ruling. Emboldened by the state government’s rhetoric, Meitei militias in Manipur have gone on a rampage of raping, pillaging, looting police armories and burning villages. More than 250 churches have been burned down”.
Indian authorities imposed a curfew in various parts of northern Haryana state after the violence began on July 31. Nevertheless, a Manipur-like bloody game is being played by the biased Hindus against the Muslims.
Regrettably, under the cover of so-called democracy, some irresponsible leaders of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and recently-ruling alliance of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) have changed their political differences into political enmity. These rival entities also blamed each other regarding this year’s May 9 events—attacks on the military and civil installations, which have been condemned by every segment of society.
Now, instead of decreasing, political unrest in Pakistan is rapidly increasing, taking the country towards lawlessness.
At this critical juncture, Pakistan is facing multi-faceted crises and challenges like corruption, inflation, soaring prices of commodities, energy-shortage, lack of investment, upsurge of the US dollar, increase in oil prices, load shedding, inability of the importers to open letters of credit due to lack of dollars etc., and continued dependence upon the US-led developed countries, IMF and World Bank for financial aid— and decline in the foreign exchange reserves of the State Bank of Pakistan.
As regards the Independence Day, 23 March 1940 was a watershed in the history of the Subcontinent, when the All India Muslim League passed the Resolution in Lahore for the creation of an independent state. Earlier, in his address to the Muslim League at Allahabad in 1930, the idea of a homeland for Muslims in their majority areas had been envisioned by the poet Allama Sir Muhammad Iqbal, and had become the aspiration of Indian Muslims.
Prior to the Lahore session of Muslim League, Muhammad Ali Jinnah had specified to this historical congregation of the Muslims, the watchwords of ‘Faith, Unity and Discipline’ which were not only necessary for waging the battle for an independent homeland, but also for present Pakistan. The essence of these watchwords is unity.
Therefore, at this critical moment, the former government of the PDM, the PTI, civil society bodies and media owners, the Army, and all other segments of society must show selfless national unity practically, which is very essential to pull the country out of the ongoing serious crises and to successfully cope with the hybrid war, and to meet the Indian war-mongering designs.
Undoubtedly, the country’s security agencies, especially the Pakistan Army, have been successfully coping with hybrid war or fifth-generation warfare. But the rest of the country must join in.
