Asra Nomani, co-founder of the Daniel Pearl Project, has been reporting for years on the terrorist networks that flourished in this area. She has described India's 'Operation Sindoor' as a 'very necessary action', which was an attack on a city from where terrorism was being spread for decades.
Asra Nomani said that in this operation, Abdul Rauf Asghar, brother of Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar, is reported to have been killed. This is the person who kidnapped and murdered her fellow journalist Daniel Pearl in Bahawalpur.
'India targeted real targets'
Posting on X (earlier Twitter), Nomani wrote that when he got the news of attack on nine terrorist bases in Pakistan including Bahawalpur under Operation Sindoor, he understood that India has attacked the real bases of terror.
He told that his friend and Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl had gone to Bahawalpur in December 2001. At that time General Pervez Musharraf had promised action against terrorists after the attack on Parliament in India. Pearl had collected information about the terrorist offices and training camps running openly there.
Nomani told that Daniel Pearl was called for an interview in Bahawalpur through a person Arif, who was the PR of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. The police had raided Bahawalpur to catch Arif, but his family got his fake funeral done. Later, the police caught him in Muzaffarabad, which is near the Kashmir border. India has bombed terrorist hideouts there too.
He said that Arif handed over Daniel to Omar Sheikh, who was a dropout of the London School of Economics and had become a radical. He used to kidnap tourists in India after receiving terror training in Pakistan. He was released after the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC-814 in 1999. Masood Azhar was also released along with him, many members of whose family were killed in India's action in Bahawalpur this week.
Serious allegations against Pakistan's intelligence agencies
Nomani wrote that the Pakistan Army and ISI gave shelter to terrorists like Omar Sheikh and Masood Azhar and used them as a weapon against India. He said that this policy of Pakistan is now proving to be costly for its own citizens.
He reminded that these terrorists caused bloodshed in Pakistan too. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the assassination of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer and the 2014 Peshawar school attack are examples of this.
'India's action a strategic move'
Nomani said Pakistan cannot defend itself by saying that the US had prepared the Mujahideen in the 1980s. She wrote, "It was Pakistan's responsibility to eliminate the terrorist bases inside its country, but it never did so, because its entire policy remained stuck in the stubbornness of occupying Kashmir."
She warned that the propaganda against India and Israel is the same. She says, "Just as Hamas attacked Israel by crossing the border, Pakistan-backed terrorists also infiltrate into India. After this, they mislead the world by calling themselves victims.
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