Heed fifth columnists

NATIONS have suffered most when their own citizens, especially those occupying important positions in the power structure of the government, start advocating the cause of the enemy, without bothering about the fact that they are distorting reality and historical evidence. They play the role, ideally suited to a fifth columnist i.e. sabotaging from within. ANP MNA Pervaiz Khan’s treacherous remarks on Kashmir are a case in point. The twisted facts he presented must have disillusioned all those who had come to believe that the ANP had shed the pro-Indian philosophy of its parent organisation Khudai Khidmatgar led by Bacha Khan, and that it is committed to work for national i.e. Pakistan’s interests. It needs to be acknowledged, however, that students of history and seasoned political observers of NAP and ANP, offspring of Khudai Khidmatgar, have always sensed an anti-Pakistan stance in their thinking. Commonly called Sarhadi Gandhi for his dedicated commitment to the policies of Indian National Congress and its leader Gandhi, Bacha Khan never accepted the reality of Pakistan, even after it had come into being as a result of an overwhelming endorsement by voters in the then NWFP province. He lies buried in Afghanistan (Jalalabad), in compliance with his wishes, to demonstrate his dissociation with Pakistan even for the generations to come.
The observations of MNA Pervaiz Khan, the standard line of New Delhi, are so outlandishly incorrect that they cannot stand scrutiny. As Kashmir constitutes the source of most of the water flowing into Pakistan, any diversion would amount to asphyxiating it. It is, therefore, its jugular vein, as Quaid-i-Azam had remarked. Mr Pervaiz seems blind to how India has been making life difficult for Pakistan in this regard. Thus, Kashmir is not an issue of any particular segment of the population but the entire country. The problem was created, not by Muslim League as he maintains, but by India when Pundit Nehru, in connivance with Governor-General Mountbatten, ordered the invasion of Kashmir; took the issue to the UN; accepted the UN Security Council resolutions; gave solemn pledges to Kashmiris and the International community to let the UN organise a free and fair plebiscite for Kashmiris to decide whether they wanted to join Pakistan or India; and finally reneged on it all and pronounced the state as atoot ang. – nation