Senior journalist Hamid Mir in an interview made bombshell revelations regarding Former Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa.
Anchorperson Nasim Zehra hosted interview where senior journalist Hamid Mir made revelations about Gen Bajwa. During Interview Hamid Mir alleged that Gen (retd) Bajwa made a “compromise” on the Kashmir dispute with India.
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Hamid Mir revealed that, a sauda or ‘deal’ made by Gen (retd) Bajwa on Kashmir issue with India, which has yet to see the light of day. Hamid Mir says that after Gen (retd) Bajwa arranged the February 2021 ceasefire with India in Kashmir after which Indian prime minister Narendra Modi was to make an official visit to Pakistan.
Senior Journalist revealed that Modi had agreed to visit Pakistan on 9th April 2021 to perform the annual four-day pilgrimage to the Hinglaj Mata Mandir in Lasbela, Balochistan. However the Foreign Office (FO), including the foreign minister at the time, was unaware of this visit. When then-foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi found out, he immediately went to then-prime minister Imran Khan to ask if he knew anything.
According to Hamid Mir, premier Khan told foreign minister Qureshi that Gen (retd) Bajwa and then-DG ISI Lt Gen (retd) Faiz Hameed “had said that they were talking to Ajit Doval”, but did not inform him that PM Modi would be coming to Pakistan. Hamid Mir asserts that the civilian leadership, including the prime minister and foreign minister, were unaware of this move planned by the-then army chief.
PM Imran Khan nevertheless told his spymaster Lt Gen (retd) Faiz Hameed to take the FO “on board” the initiative, after which Gen (retd) Bajwa arrived at the FO “with all his forces” to give Pakistan’s diplomatic corps a “lecture”.
Hamid Mir said this was the same “lecture” that the-then army chief Gen (retd) Bajwa had given to some 25 journalists, including him and Nasim Zehra, at the army’s general headquarters (GHQ) in Rawalpindi. He clarified that he was not referring to a seminar at the National Defence University (NDU), but to a meeting with the army chief at GHQ. Mir said that in this “lecture”, Gen (retd) Bajwa used to Claims that Pakistan did not have enough diesel for the tanks or enough fuel for troop logistics.
Hamid Mir revealed that former army chief Gen (retired) Qamar Javed Bajwa said on multiple occasions that Pakistan’s tanks and jet fighters “did not work”
Nasim Zehra confirmed what Mir said, and added that, “normally such an army chief [who makes statements like these] should be court martialed”. She also said that “telling 25 journalists means you are telling the world”, and that she could no longer restrain herself from publicly asking for accountability of the former military commander.
Hamid Mir recalled that at the time the Army chief made this statement, Mir knew Gen (retd) Bajwa was wrong. He also saw that Zehra was angered at Gen (retd) Bajwa’s remarks and she confronted him in the GHQ auditorium “when the army chief was telling us this story” where the corps commanders are usually assembled.
Hamid Mir said that former premier Khan is routinely blamed the former Army chief Gen Bajwa for ousting his government, but has said nothing about this betrayal of Kashmir by that same army chief. Hamid Mir says that he asked former foreign minister Qureshi about this, who confirmed it to him privately, but would not go on the record without approval from Khan, who is also his party chairman.
Nasim Zehra said any military chief who tells the world that his forces are incapable of fighting “should be court martialed”
Anchor Person Nasim Zehra interjects that a military chief “giving a public statement” that their tanks and planes don’t work, is “absolutely unacceptable”. Both Mir and Zehra contrasted this expression of weakness to the Pakistan air force’s (PAF) Operation ‘Swift Retort’ of 27th February 2019 where the PAF not only defended Pakistani airspace against a night-time Indian air force raid, but also responded by bombing Indian military targets in Kashmir, and shooting down an Indian fighter jet MiG -21 whose pilot Wing Commander Abhinandan was captured. Both journalists agreed the former army chief for saying that his tanks and planes don’t work is totally unacceptable and should be taken notice by Army Courts, when his soldiers were getting martyred on the border and in terror attacks
Hamid says that what Gen (retd) Bajwa has done to the Kashmir cause, and to Pakistan’s principled stance on the issue, has destabilized Kashmiris so much that they still have not been able to come to terms with it.
Nasim Zehra said that the people of Pakistan, by and large, also stood with the people of Kashmir, no matter what compromises the country’s leaders – elected and otherwise – made on issues of national interest. Mir says that the Kashmiri struggle continued despite the betrayals of Gen (retd) Ayub Khan and Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf.
Remember that These bombshell revelations come as incumbent Pakistani foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is invited to visit India for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) moot in Goa next month (May 2023). Both South Asian neighbours who have fought wars with each other and also have nuclear weapons have a tense bilateral relationship that has shut down since August 2019, and late last year (in December 2022) as Indian foreign minister S. Jaishankar demanded Pakistan first “clean up its act and try to be a good neighbour”.
