We are officially ending our partnership with Turkish Airlines due to their unsupportive stance towards India. Going forward, we will no longer include their flights in our international travel packages. Jai Hind
Due to Turkey's non-cooperative stance in the current global scenario involving India and Pakistan, we’ve decided not to offer any accommodation services to Turkish citizens in Goa. We stand firmly with our nation.
Jai Hind 🇮🇳
“Bahawalpur.”
I still have chills in my heart from when I first heard that town’s name in late January 2002. For the 23 years since, I have reported on how Pakistani intelligence and military leaders have used that city — Bahawalpur — in the southern province of Punjab as a base for its homegrown domestic terrorists.
When I heard India bombed training camps in Pakistan this week in Operation Sindoor, in response to a Pakistani terrorist rampage in India’s Kashmir state, I had one city’s name on my lips: Bahawalpur.
Did India bomb Bahawalpur?
It did. I knew then India was striking actual hubs for Pakistan’s homegrown domestic terrorism.
Why do I know?
My friend, WSJ reporter Danny Pearl, went to Bahawalpur in December 2001 with a notebook and a pen. Gen. Pervez Musharraf had just promised he was shutting down Pakistan’s militant groups after a strike by Pakistan’s terrorists against the Parliament in India, and Danny reported on the militant offices in Bahawalpur.
He literally knocked on their doors. Dear Dr. @yudapearl, this story is a window into Danny’s reporting enterprise. And because people will wonder: Danny was no cowboy. This was a calculated low-risk reporting trip because no journalist had been targeted for kidnapping in Pakistan. Around that time, Danny sent me an email: “I’m anxious to go to Afghanistan, but I’m not anxious to die.”
What did Danny learn?
The militant training camps were open for business in Bahawalpur.
On Jan. 23, 2002, Danny left a home I had rented in Karachi, Pakistan, for an interview.
I learned Danny’s fixer, Asif Farooqi, had arranged an interview for Danny through a man named “Arif.” Danny didn’t know it but Arif was the PR man for a militant group, Harkutul Mujahadeen. What was Arif’s hometown? Bahawalpur.
The police launched a manhunt to find Arif in Bahawalpur. We learned Arif’s family faked a funeral for Arif. Police found him trying to board a bus in Muzaffarabad, across the country by Pakistan’s border with Kashmir.
It is another town India said it bombed terrorist training facilities.
Arif had handed Danny off to Omar Sheikh,a British-Pakistani dropout from the London School of Economics, radicalized in the 1990s in London mosques. He went to Pakistan to train in these militant training camps. Then he kidnapped tourists in India. He was caught and jailed but on Dec. 31, 1999, he was traded for hostages in the hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight 814.
Omar Sheikh was freed with Pakistani terrorist leader Masood Azhar, whose family was allegedly killed this week by India’s air strike in Bahawalpur.
Did Pakistan jail Omar Sheikh and Masood Azhar when they returned to Pakistan with a third terrorist, freed from India’s jails?
No. Pakistan’s military and intelligence gave them safe passage. They used them as weapons against India. But in fact these domestic terrorists have waged war against innocents in Pakistan, like civil society activists, Benazir Bhutto, Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, schoolchildren and countless others.
Their extremism has ruined Pakistan, and Pakistanis can’t blame America for creating the mujahideen to fight the Soviets in the 1980s.
Pakistan has had a duty to dismantle those terrorist bases — for even the safety of its own people. What India is doing is a strategic attack on terrorist bases Pakistani military and intelligence should have eliminated but never did in their obsession to take over Kashmir.
You will see parallels in the propaganda messages against India and Israel. Like Hamas, Pakistani terrorists crossed a border to kill. Now, Pakistani propagandists call themselves victims of their “fascist” “colonizer” neighbor.
It’s the Reverse Uno strategy of moral inversion, just like @stoolpresidente got from the Temple student who won’t take responsibility for promoting the “HATE THE JEWS” sign. Don’t fall for it. Nations, communities and people must own up to their extremism, from Bahawalpur to beyond.
Terrorists launched an attack that killed dozens of Indian citizens. India had every right to retaliate and defend itself.
Pakistan does not get to play the victim. No country gets a pass for supporting terrorist activity.
No nation should have to accept terrorist attacks being launched against it from land controlled by another country.
India is justified in striking terrorist infrastructure. There can be no impunity for terrorists.
We stand in solidarity with India in the wake of the horrific Islamist terrorist attack, targeting and killing 26 Hindus in Pahalgam. My prayers and deepest sympathies are with those who lost a loved one, PM @narendramodi, and with all the people of India. We are with you and support you as you hunt down those responsible for this heinous attack.
We have been doing the dirty work of the United States for three decades”.
Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif spoke to me last night in a remarkable and wide ranging interview about the escalating situation in Kashmir. India is blaming Pakistan who says there is no evidence for this.
He also told me that Pakistan is “already prepared” for strikes from India.
#India #Pakistan #PahalgamTerroristAttack #Kashmir
⚠️Horrifying. Over 27 Hindu tourists were murdered in an Islamist terror attack in Kashmir by Pakistani terrorists who checked IDs and forced male victims to pull their pants down before shooting them to ensure they were killing Hindus.
Where is the outrage? Where is the world?