Pakistan has damaged itself by promoting jehadi groups under the 'tutelage' of Islamic parties to wage a separatist war in Kashmir, which ended up inflicting far bigger wounds on the country than it had on India, a leading daily in Islamabad said on Tuesday.
In a scathing editorial, the Daily Times also criticised Hizbul Mujahideen Chief Syed Salahuddin for his remarks that Pakistan had caused 'irreparable damage' to the Kashmiri militancy by pursuing peace with India, saying his group 'can no longer claim the support of the entire Kashmiri leadership in the All Parties Hurriyat Conference.'
Pakistan's 'official' line has always been to deny its involvement in the Kashmir militancy, which was not believed by anyone. "The fact is that it has indirectly intervened in Indian-held Kashmir through the so-called mujahideen who trained on territory under Pakistani control," the daily said.
"And many objective observers actually say that Pakistan has damaged the Kashmir cause by not controlling the men and that it became ideologically subservient to the groups created mostly under the tutelage of the religious parties in Pakistan," the daily said.
"The conclusion in many studies is that a mishandling of the Kashmir cause has damaged Pakistan instead of the other way around," it said.
"Pakistan put everything at stake in 1990 when the insurgency in Kashmir started. It diverted a stream of mujahideen volunteers from a successful Afghan war to Kashmir and by the mid-1990s had created a situation in Kashmir that made the world wake up and take note of the Kashmir issue," the daily said.
"But the irony is that the Pakistani 'support' that Salahuddin thinks is now gone was sabotaged by the evolving nature of the 'struggle' itself and what the international community came to think of it," the Daily Times pointed out.
"The real damage Pakistan suffered was in the social consequences of the Kashmir jihad... The militias deployed by Pakistan in this privatised war penetrated Pakistani society and clashed with state sovereignty.
"Their pockets full of money and their armouries full of the latest weapons, the jihadi organisations took over entire cities in Pakistan and literally ran the administration there, killing at will people who opposed them," it said.
"Religion has been so exploited at the behest of the Kashmir cause that even the state has lost the ability to see right from wrong; and the entire strategic underpinning of jihad has fallen apart after it turned sectarian, and faith started eating its own children," the daily said.
"Now finally as Pakistan self-corrects, in coordination with the Kashmiri leadership, Syed Salahuddin should ponder whether his call for more jihad rather than less will not end up hurting both Pakistan and the Kashmir cause," it said.
Noting that Pakistan predicated its foreign policy on the 'peaceful resolution of the Kashmir dispute with India with international support,' the daily said the last time it tried to push India towards a solution was at Kargil in 1999, when Pakistan's survival itself came into question and an elected prime minister had to beg the US to stop India from inflicting another defeat on the country. What Pakistan lost was the most important prop, that of international support in its Kashmir strategy, it added.
"Now that Pakistan's Kashmir policy has undergone a much-needed change, it may not be to the liking of Syed Salahuddin and the religious parties in Pakistan, but it has met with approval from the APHC leadership," Daily Times said.
Stating that Salahuddin lost support among APHC members, the daily pointed out that the hard-line separatist leader from Kashmir Ali Gilani has been refusing to come to Pakistan because he did not want to appear to be the only Kashmiri leader who opposed Pakistan's new Kashmir policy.
"Therefore Syed Salahuddin should first come to terms with the reasons behind the loss of support for its jihad among the APHC leadership," it said.
"What has come to the fore in recent days is the real antipathy of this leadership towards the hard-line religious militias, which have sought to change Kashmiri society coercively and have resultantly diverted international support to India," it added.