Question for the ISI: Which fronts of the jihad haven’t you helped? From Rediff: “Pak admits having helped insurgency in J&K”
Pakistan has admitted that it might have helped insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir at “some time” but claimed it is now “trying our best” to prevent infiltration of militants into India.
“Jihad, insurgency or whatever you want to call it in Kashmir…Yes, Pakistan may have helped the jihad at some time but it was not started by us and now we are trying our best to stop people from crossing,” Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States Mahmud
Ali Durrani said.
He was delivering a lecture at the South Asia Programme of the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University. When asked what Pakistan was doing to stop terrorist outfits like the Lashkar-e-Taiyba from crossing into Kashmir, he
said, “To the best of my knowledge Lakshar-e-Taiba [sic] is a banned organisation. They are no more in Pakistan,” Durrani said.
However, even two years ago, the LeT had money collection boxes in the markets of Rawalpindi, he said. “There were these hundreds and thousands of these boxes. That is finished and Lashkar-e-Taiba does not have the luxury of those funds… and the organisation
has been banned,” the Pakistani envoy claimed.
“We are trying our best. We have put military as well as intelligence assets in areas from where people went. There is no serious cross border movement today in Kashmir,” Durrani claimed.
He said there were “vast areas” in which both India and Pakistan had responsibilities. “Both parties have responsibilities. If we can’t hypothetically stop every guy from crossing over, the other side has responsibility too. So it is a joint issue. It
has been addressed,” he said.