Accompanying Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on a three day visit to Saudi Arabia, Tharoor spouted his new-found wisdom that Riyadh could be a “valuable interlocutor” between India and Pakistan. He was later made to clarify that this did not mean that Riyadh should be a mediator.

So then what did he mean? For he said: “We feel that Saudi Arabia of course has a long and close relationship with Pakistan, but that makes Saudi Arabia even a more valuable interlocutor for you.”

 
“When we tell them about our experience, Saudi Arabia listens as somebody who is not in anyway an enemy of Pakistan, but rather is a friend of Pakistan, and therefore, I am sure, will listen with sympathy and concern to a matter of this nature.”

Only Tharoor knows what kind of cooperation and facilitation he was expecting from Riyadh, considering its close relations with Islamabad, not to mention the fact that it is famously the ‘purse’ that funds Wahabi Islamic fundamentalism all over the world. Terror organisations have also been the recipients of Saudi bounty.

Perhaps Tharoor does not think at all – he simply tweets at the directives of his western friends.

For the Saudis founded the Muslim World League, also called World Muslim League in 1962, as a parent body of various Islamist Organizations for the Wahabi-sation of the Muslim world. It was completely funded by the Saudi Arabian Government, and it later spread as a gradual strategy into a large network of non-governmental charities like the International Islamic Relief Organisation (IIRO), World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), SAAR Foundation, Rabita Foundation, among others, having branches and offices in various cities and countries of the world.

Working as Wahabi fronts, these organizations have played a key role in instilling Jihadi sentiments and have launched an undeclared war against infidels. Apart from MWL, the Saudi Kingdom, in order to balance the role of Islamic educated Wahabi clerics in government, has provided sanctuary to the widely travelled and modern educated Muslim Brotherhood (MB) fugitives from Egypt, and placed them in important positions in Wahabi-controlled educational institutions.

Muslim Brotherhood activist Abdullah Azzam was deputed as head of the Muslim World League in Peshawar, Pakistan, to serve in the war against Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Paul Cochrane reported in Independent, 30 Sept 2007, “In the decade up to 2002, according to a report to the UN Security Council, al- Qa’ida and other Islamist bodies collected between £150m and £250m, mostly from Saudi charities and private donors.”

Saudi charities became the chosen instrument for Riyadh’s support to the continuing global jihad. An IIRO employee from Bangladesh, Sayed Abu Nasir, led a cell that intended to strike at the US consulates in Chennai and Calcutta. Busted by the police in India, Abu Nasir revealed that his superiors told him that 40% to 50% of IIRO funds were diverted to finance terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and Kashmir.

It may be interesting to understand how this Friend of Pakistan was instrumental in helping Jihadi terror grow in the Kashmir Valley. Saudi Arabian emissaries visited Kashmir to work out an understanding between Sheikh Abdullah and the Jamait-ei-Islami; the Saudi king’s sister spent two years in Kashmir from 1980-1982 in the Rajbagh area of Srinagar.

The emissaries prevailed upon the Jamait-e-Islami not to challenge the supremacy of Sheikh Abdullah, and in turn the National Conference was asked not to create any hindrance in the Jamait’s campaign for Islamisation and secessionism. In this period, several cases were withdrawn against Al-Fateh and a bureaucratic structure with communal overtones was patronized.

So is Tharoor’s loose tongue well timed to suit the interests of the enemies of the country or is it casual speaking-for-the-sake-of-speaking? Why are the protectors of the Constitution delivering verbal blow after blow and hammering away at basic national interests?

Public policy and national policy are entwined together for the interests of the citizenry, and geo-political and civilisational interests of a country go hand in hand. Do we have a policy on international affairs and security concerns, and if yes, who or what governs it?

Home Minister P. Chidambaram nodded agreement at J&K Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s request to allow youth who crossed over to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir for arms training and spread death and terror in J&K for over two decades, to come back into the State with no penalty or penitence. Shri Chidambaram said PoK was actually a part of India, so the misguided youth were welcome.

In the context of the Instrument of Accession and later the Parliamentary Resolution of 1994, Pak-Occupied Kashmir and the areas gifted to China are certainly part of India. Yet the Union Home Minister turned a Nelson’s eye to the illegal occupation of Pakistan of vital Indian territory, and showed willingness to take back likely subversives from the same terrain!!! The 1994 Resolution talked of getting the occupied territories back, not provide a half-clever lawyer an argument to import terrorists into the State and nation!

How can a Minister responsible for internal security take such a casual approach to the influx of terrorists? Certainly Minister, PoK is part of India, but everything over there is controlled by Pakistan and the ubiquitous ISI: especially the terror machinery devoted to bleeding India through a thousand cuts.

Even as Jihadi rallies were spitting anti-India venom from Feb 4-6, our custodians paid no heed to their terror threats. Terrorist after terrorist lambasted India, including the Kashmiri terrorist and Chief of Hizbul Mujahedeen, Syed Salahuddin. Yet New Delhi wants to welcome terrorists from Jammu & Kashmir! On the insistence of a Chief Minister who has till date failed to prove his administrative mettle, the Centre seems set to allow terrorists a safe passage and amnesty.

Who will guarantee if the terrorists are from Jammu & Kashmir or another part of the country or Pakistan? How can they be granted a rehabilitation package without surrender, on the lines of the Madhya Pradesh dacoits who served prison terms to pay their debts to society?

Is this an attempt to glorify them and grant them respect for taking up arms and unleashing terror? Has the Union Home Minister taken a cue from a sitting MLA who wants Syed Salahuddin to be the dictation master?

On Feb. 20, 2010, MLA Handwara, Abdul Rashid, at a public rally in Langate during the inauguration of a new treasury by J&K Finance Minister Abdul Rahim Rather, said the government should rename the surrender policy as reconciliation policy as “surrender” was a stigma and disgrace for the Kashmiri people. “More than one lakh people have given sacrifices during the last 20 years, and now using word surrender is a disgrace for us. Government should rename the surrender policy as reconciliation policy,”

Rashid said Kashmiris who went to the other side did nothing wrong and urged New Delhi to invite United Jihad Council supremo and Hizb-ul-Mujahideen commander-in-chief to Kashmir. “He should be invited to Kashmir not for surrender but for holding dialogue. I believe it’s not the mainstream leadership or Hurriyat, but the militant leadership which can resolve the Kashmir issue,” he added.

There seems to be a total stranglehold of Kashmiri Muslim hegemony, otherwise the government’s priority should have been rehabilitation packages for the lakhs of refugees in Jammu who came during the Partition and till date have been denied basic political and economic rights that citizens of J&K State enjoy. Another area of top priority should have been the Kashmiri Hindus and Hindus of Doda, Udhampur, and those Muslim majority areas of Rajouri and Poonch of Jammu who have been forced out of their homes and hearths due to Islamic terrorism in the State.

Yet there is a total negation of truth and the consequences of such unbridled appeasement, whether it is the Congress or the BJP.

The much hyped Foreign Secretary level talks in New Delhi led the Pakistani Foreign Secretary to term the Indian dossier on terrorists as “literature and not evidence.” India was thus left red faced with the hurt of the Pune blasts still throbbing.

The attack on Indians in Kabul, killing of two Indian Army Majors, ITBP personnel among others came three days after an Army Captain and four others were killed in Sopur in J&K, and the common thread was Islamic terrorism aided and abetted by Pakistan and the perpetrators. If India hopes to succeed against terror, this appeasement and spineless attitude of self destruction needs to stop at all levels.

There are no runners up in war!

The author is convener, Daughters of Vitasta