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Pak hoping that an Indian bullet will take care of Amanullah Khan

By deciding not to stop the proposed breach of the Line of Control by the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front led by Amanullah Khan on October 4 Pakistan is trying to wash off the odium of using foreign mercenaries to try and grab Kashmir, says Asia Defence News International.

It is hoping to present the march across the LoC as an ''indigenous uprising.'' It is nursing a secret wish that Amanullah Khan will be put paid to by an Indian bullet because he prefers an ''independent Kashmir'' rather than union with Pakistan. It's pronouncement, ''let the Indian Army take care of them'' is a Freudian slip. By letting the marchers cross the LoC Pakistan is going to use the JKLF like cannon fodder as it did with the Northern Light Infantry in Kargil, says ADNI.

At a seminar on Kargil organised in August in Islamabad Amanullah Khan was highly critical of the handling of the Kashmir question. He decried its transposition as an ''India-Pakistan question'' and remarked, ''these days, people are entering Kashmir from Chakwal or Mainwali or some other place and you claim that they are Kashmiri mujahideen. And in Kargil, I know who has done what. I am from Gilgit and I know what you have done to the Gilgit people in Kargil in the guise of the so-called jehad. Let me not go too far as it will not be in the 'national interest' of Pakistan.''

He urged that the Kashmir issue be given the shape of a ''national liberation movement'' for independence ''because only indigenous movements succeed.''

With the UN General Assembly in session the civilian leadership of Pakistan and the military top brass at their recent meeting have apparently decided that the JKLF threat to cross the Line of Control on October 4 should be showcased as an ''indigenous'' Kashmiri event.

This will not be the first time that Pakistan has tried to make political capital of attempts to ''cross the Line of Control.'' Some years ago a much-publicised attempt to invade the Indian portion of Jammu and Kashmir led to shooting by the Indian Army in which several of those who ran across the LoC were killed.

This time too the Indian Army has made it plain that it has been entrusted with the task of ensuring the inviolability of the LoC and that it will make sure that nobody tries to cross it. It is prepared to do everything necessary to see that it does not happen and will take robust action as it did to push out the intruders in Kargil.

Speakers at the same seminar in which Amanullah Khan vent his spleen speculated on the impact of heavily armed foreign mercenaries --- who feel frustrated and humiliated by the action of the Pakistan government for asking them to withdraw from the Kargil heights -- on Pakistan's body politic. They warned of civil war conditions in Chitral where the mujahideen have unleashed a reign of terror necessitating the induction of paramilitary forces to ''localise'' the problem.

UNI

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