MUZAFFARABAD, March 22: The Muttahida Jihad Council (MJC) on Friday accused National Kashmir Committee Chairman Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan of creating “misgivings” between the freedom fighters and the people of the valley, and asked him to avoid making “controversial statements”.
“India has been trying in vain since long to create misgivings between the Mujahideen and the freedom seeking Kashmiris, but it seems that this task has now been taken up by the NKC chairman,” a spokesman for the alliance said in a statement.
He alleged that Sardar Qayyum seemed busy in supplementing India’s attempts to bracket the freedom struggle with terrorism by resorting to “mudslinging against the freedom fighters.”
Sardar Qayyum was appointed chairman of the committee in January and he has been opposing the operations of Pakistan-based militant groups in Kashmir and India.
The MJC spokesman did not specify what had forced the alliance to issue such a strong statement, but it was assumed that Sardar Qayyum’s recent interview to a newspaper was its cause.
The NKC chairman had maintained that the activities and loyalties of the (outlawed) Jaish-i-Mohammad had always been dubious. Regarding another banned group, Lashkar-i-Taiba, he had told the paper that though it’s top leadership mostly comprised sincere people, roguish elements had made their way into it.
“According the status of hero to Masood Azhar was a mistake, like the Jamaat-i-Islami had done in case of Mast Gull (in 1995). Today Gull might be pushing drugs somewhere,” Sardar Qayyum was quoted by the paper as commenting.
Mast Gull was associated with Hizbul Mujahideen and shot to fame in 1995 when the shrine of Charar-i-Sharief in held Valley, where he and some other fighters had been holed up, was burnt to ashes by the Indian forces. The JI had accorded him a rousing welcome after he returned from across the Line of Control. Later, he quit Hizbul Mujahideen and joined some other group.
The MJC spokesman said that the council was at a loss to understand what goal Sardar Qayyum wanted to achieve from character assassination of the freedom fighters.
“His vague and controversial statements are putting a question mark on the Kashmir policy of the government of Pakistan,” the spokesman said and added that the people of Kashmir could not make their movement subservient to the agenda of any individual.
The Kashmir committee, he said, was set up to evolve a solid policy regarding the freedom movement but the “ground realities suggest that what India has failed to do is being done by the chairman of this committee.”
The spokesman admitted that there might had been mistakes and shortcomings on the part of the Mujahideen over the last 13 years of the armed struggle, “but making them a topic of discussion at every forum was not fair. Rather it indicates some other agenda.”
Stating that the MJC did not want to get involved in a debate as it could benefit the enemy, the spokesman requested the NKC chairman to avoid issuing “controversial statements” regarding the freedom movement because “those were creating a gap and misunderstanding between the people of Kashmir and the Mujahideen.”
“We also call upon the government of Pakistan and other respectable members of the committee to ponder over the statements of Khan Sahib and its consequences for the freedom movement,” he added.