Pakistani Foreign Secretary Syrus Qazi has revealed that over a dozen people have been assassinated by Pakistan by Indian agents over the last two years, all linked to the Kashmir cause. This is like the recent bombshells dropped by Canada and the USA, which revealed that India had assassinated, or was attempting to assasssinate, citizens who were Sikhs and supporters of the Khalistan movement. The big difference is that the North American killing involved the Sikh diaspora and the Khalistan movement, with Khalistan not being recognised as a disputed territory, while those in Pakistan involved were either Kashmiris or linked to a cause which is still, despite the best Indian efforts, still on the UN Security Council agenda as a disputed territory.
Some of the assassinations in Pakistan took place in September and October last year, after the killing of Hardeep Sindh Nijjar in Canada in June and before the uncovering by US authorities of the plot to assassinate Gurpatwant Singh Pannun. That indicates a rash of murderous activity that indicates a new strategy by Indian intelligence, aimed at both Kashmiri nationalists and Sikh separatists, It also indicates that the Indian government has reached new heights of irresponsibility. While intelligence agencies around the world would probably like nothing better than to go around the world killing people they don’t like, their governments always prevent them.Unfortunately, now, it seems that the Indian government has not. India has always been aggressive about its operations, as can be seen from the example of RAW agent Kulbhushan Yaadav, whose mission was to destabilize Balochistan, not assassinate any individuals. However, the politics of assassination is a new addition to its quiver.
The main reason for India’s bad behaviour has been its impunity so far. It had got way both with usurping the Kashmiri people’s right of self-determination, and decades later, the brutal massacre of Sikhs following the desecration of the Golden Temple and then the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. It has been coddled by the West as the ‘world’s largest democracy’ and ‘a market of a billion people’. However, with the BJP set to continue its reign, the world powers should realize that India cannot be trusted to behave even as a less-than-upstanding global citizen. Intelligence agents can go rogue, entire agencies can; but here an entire government has. When does the world stop tolerating this? When India starts assassinating heads of government it doesn’t like?
