Resolution of Kashmir Dispute Won’t Satisfy LeT: Experts Tell US Congress
A leading expert has said that terror groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) will not be satisfied by a resolution on Kashmir between India and Pakistan and will likely look for a bigger goal and a greater share of power in Pakistan, said media reports.
“There is no doubt in my mind that we have to find ways to resolve the issues relating to Kashmir. But I think resolving Kashmir is not going to solve the problems relating to LeT,” Ashley J Tellis, senior associate at the prestigious Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was quoted as saying while addressing US lawmakers at a Congressional hearing on Thursday.
“Resolving the Kashmir problem by itself is not going to remove this threat because the aim of these groups is to leverage themselves into a position of power inside Pakistan and to take control,” eminent Pakistani scholar, Shuza Nawaz, Director, South Asia Centre, the Atlantic Council of the United States, was quoted as saying.
Both Nawaz and Tellis made the remarks while answering the concerns of the US Congressmen at the hearing whether LeT would give up terrorism if Kashmir dispute was resolved; given that it was initially backed by the ISI of Pakistan for the specific purpose of targeting Kashmir and India in particular.
“I always find it interesting that the people conducting the murder and mayhem (in the Valley) today are not Kashmiri. The people who actually are deprived of all their political rights, they are not conducting the murder and mayhem,” Tellis was quoted as saying.
“The murder and mayhem is being conducted by groups that have absolutely no connections to Kashmir. To my mind that is story, the fact that this is a group that has operations in 21 countries, that has an ideology that is completely anti-western, that is opposed to modernity and secularism and all the kinds of values that we take for granted. This group is not going to be satisfied by dealing with the issue of Kashmir,” Tellis was quoted as saying.
Lisa Curtis of the Heritage Foundation, testifying before the same committee, mentioned former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf’s formula for resolution of Kashmir dispute, reports said.
“He (Musharraf) made a very important statement in December of 2006, where he said Pakistan would be willing to give up its claim on Kashmir if four things happen. He said, if the Line of Control that divides Kashmir was made irrelevant, which means people could freely pass back and forth could pass back and forth,” Curtis, who is known as an American authority on South Asia, was quoted as saying.
“Two, (Musharraf said) if Kashmir was given greater autonomy. Three, if both sides could figure out a joint mechanism to interact, to have the two sides of Kashmir, Pakistani Kashmir and Indian Kashmir interact. So he made a very forward looking proposal. And as we know by Steve Coll, who wrote about this in the New Yorker Magazine not too long ago, they were very close to coming to some kind of agreement or understanding on Kashmir,” Curtis was quoted as saying.
(Based on internet reprots)
