Pak wants Russian, Chinese involvement in Pahalgam terror attack probe

Pakistan wants involvement of Russia and China in investigating the Pahalgam terror attack, according to a media report.

Terrorists opened fire in Jammu and Kashmir's Pahalgam on Tuesday, killing 26 people, mostly tourists, in the deadliest attack in the Valley since the Pulwama strike in 2019. The Resistance Front (TRF), a proxy of the banned Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), claimed responsibility for the attack.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the "perpetrators and conspirators" of the Pahalgam attack will be "served with the harshest response".

In a recent interview to Russian government-run RIA Novosti news agency, Pakistani Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said, "I think Russia or China or even Western countries can play a very, very positive role in this crisis and they can even set up an investigation team that should be assigned this job to investigate whether India or Modi is lying or he is telling the truth. Let an international team find out."  He said Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also proposed conducting an international investigation.

"Let's find out who is the culprit and the perpetrator of this incident in India, in Kashmir, talk or empty statements have no effect. There must be some evidence that Pakistan is involved or that these people were supported by Pakistan. These are just statements, empty statements and nothing more," Khawaja was quoted as saying by the news agency. 

Meanwhile, a Moscow-based independent US analyst Andrew Korybko noted that not only has Pakistan denied India's accusation, which was to be expected, but top officials surprisingly made two self-discrediting claims.

Ishaq Dar, who doubles as Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, remarked that those who carried out attacks in Jammu and Kashmir's Pahalgam district on April 22 might be freedom fighters, he said.

Whatever one's views might be about the Kashmir conflict, it's an indisputable act of terrorism to massacre tourists, not to mention on the basis of their religion. Speculating that the perpetrators 'might be freedom fighters' discredits bonafide freedom fighters across the world and tacitly justifies terrorism, Korybko wrote in his newsletter on Substack, an online platform.

The second self-discrediting claim to be made by a top Pakistani official about the Pahalgam terrorist attack came from Defence Minister Khawaja Asif, who told Al Jazeera media outlet that what happened on that dark day might be a false flag operation, he said.

Upon reflecting more on what Dar and Asif said, observers will notice a glaring contradiction in that the first strongly insinuated approval of the Pahalgam attack by speculating that the perpetrators 'might be freedom fighters', while the second strongly disapproves of the attack and blames it all on India.

"These scenarios are mutually exclusive and intellectually insulting, and the fact that top Pakistani officials can't get their story straight suggests that they're clumsily trying to cover up their side's complicity, Korybko wrote.