I CONDEMN in the strongest possible words the timidity and cowardice shown by our government in facilitating the meeting of an Indian terrorist with his mother and wife on Pakistani soil.

What kind of goodwill is this when India has been shelling the Line of Control on a daily basis, martyring our civilians and military personnel. Our casualties are piling up without any let-up. It is ironic that being an atomic power, our demonstrated posture vis-à-vis India is disgraceful to say the least.

Does a terrorist deserve any sympathy? He conspired to carry out bomb blasts in Sindh and Balochistan in which hundreds if not thousands of Pakistanis lost their lives.

Kulbhushan Jadhav himself has confessed that he was tasked by RAW to destabilise Pakistan and carry out terrorist attacks wherever it was possible. Jadhav should have been hanged a long ago but we are giving him a VVIP treatment. Did India spare Ajmal Kasab? Or were Kasab’s parents taken to India for a meeting with the convict?

The foreign ministry claimed that “we have fulfilled our promise with India to ensure that Jadhav met his family” and the spokesman further said “this was not the last meeting.”

During the Sino-India conflict of 1962 too, Ayub Khan showed a goodwill gesture to Nehru and refrained from attacking Kashmir. Stated another way, Pakistan did not stab India in the back. Look how India repaid us.

In 1971, India fished in the troubled waters of East Pakistan, committed naked aggression and severed our eastern wing. The wound inflicted was not by a dagger but by a poison-tipped sword.

Ahmad Siddiqui
Karachi

Published in Dawn, January 1st, 2018