SRI NAGAR: Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah on Saturday said Pakistan alone can’t be blamed for the unrest in the Valley, which he alleged was the “result of our mistakes”, even though the country “might have taken advantage of the situation”.
Omar said it would be a grave mistake to always blame Pakistan. “Distorting the current unrest in the Valley as a simple manifestation of terrorism or external interference would be a grave mistake,” he said at a National Conference conclave. “We found that some people at the Centre willingly or unwillingly wanted to keep themselves ignorant about the situation in Kashmir. It was easy for them to blame Pakistan. But we kept trying to make them understand that the unrest in Kashmir has not been created by Pakistan. It is the result of our mistakes,” he added.
Omar claimed the political issue was related to the historic blunders made and promises broken by successive dispensations in New Delhi. “The situation today stands compounded because of the present government’s refusal to even acknowledge that a problem exists in Kashmir,” he said.
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif raised Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani’s killing — which triggered the unrest — at the UN in September and described him as a “young leader” who was “murdered” by Indian forces and who has emerged as a symbol of “the freedom movement”.
Omar said the people of the state had espoused political sentiments even when there was no external interference and this sentiment formed the basis of the state’s special status that “has since been eroded by extraconstitutional machinations”. Taking a dig at PDP-BJP government in the state, he said the alienation had been compounded by the “opportunistic alliance, whose inherent contradictions had translated into never-ending U-turns on crucial issues”.