United Nations, Oct 8 — Islamabad has lost control of the Frankenstein's monster of terrorism it created, which has returned to stalk Pakistan, and it is acknowledged by its leaders, India has said, calling for international action against sponsors of terrorism.
"Pakistan has presented itself as a frontline state in combating terrorism and as a victim, while masking the fact that the Frankenstein's (monster) the Pakistani state has created and lost control over have moved from wreaking havoc in neighbouring countries to doing the same in Pakistan," Raghoo Puri, a first secretary in India's UN mission, said on Wednesday (local time).
"This was exposed recently by a provincial chief minister of Pakistan, and may I jog the memory of colleagues to an interview in 2018 by her father and former prime minister of Pakistan, exposing this dark secret," he said.
"You cannot run with the hares and hunt with the hounds," Puri warned. "Reality never works like that".
Puri was responding to an attack on India by Pakistan's Deputy Permanent Representative Usman Jadoon at the General Assembly's Sixth Committee, which deals with legal matters.
Maryam Nawaz, the chief minister of Pakistan's Punjab Province, said last month in Lahore, "Unfortunately, the threat Punjab, a province of 130 million, faces comes less from my neighbouring countries and more from my neighbouring provinces."
Earlier this month, she undercut Pakistan's claims about "freedom fighters", saying terrorism has no classification, and anyone involved in terrorism is a terrorist regardless of their cause.
In an interview to Dawn newspaper in 2018, her father Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister of Pakistan, acknowledged his country's role in the 26/11 terrorist attack on Mumbai.
"Militant organisations are active. Call them non-state actors; should we allow them to cross the border and kill 150 people in Mumbai?" he had said.
Puri did not name the two Nawazes.
He lampooned Pakistan's claims about victory against India during Operation Sindoor launched by New Delhi in retaliation for the Pahalgam terror attack as delusional.
"If bombed-out airfields and cratered runways look like victory to Pakistan, they are, of course, welcome to enjoy it," he said.
"Pakistani representative's desperation to falsely tout the Pakistani military's narrative on the outcome of Operation Sindoor" was in keeping with its campaign of disinformation and misinformation, he said.
Puri, who gave the response, is a biotechnology graduate of Panjab University with an MBA from Management Development Institute, Gurgaon.
He belongs to the 2014 batch of the Indian Foreign Service and has served in India's Berlin Embassy.
When Pakistan came back with a second response to his exercise of the right of reply and regurgitated its usual arguments, Puri dismissed it curtly: "Pakistan believes in the circular economy of words and narratives".
"If this much effort had actually been made in countering terrorism rather than narrative building, misinformation, and disinformation, the world would have been a better place," he said.
"But nothing more can be expected from a Form 47 government," he said, referring to the military's control of Pakistan's government exercised by manipulating that election document to install Shehbaz Sharif as its frontman prime minister.
In his first response, Puri dismissed Pakistan's claims about the treatment of minorities in India, and said it was ironic the terrorists it supports target Indians based on their religion.
"The victims in Pahalgam were not asked about their political orientation; they were asked about their religion," he said.
"It is therefore deeply ironic that Pakistan speaks of combating religious hatred while allowing the conditions that enable it to persist and thrive, especially by fomenting cross-border terrorism," he said.
In last year's Pahalgam attack by Lashkar-e-Taiba proxy, The Resistance Front, the terrorists identified Hindu and Christian tourists by questioning them before killing them.
Puri drew attention to Pakistan's diversionary tactics to draw attention away from its support of terrorists, citing the case of Pakistan raising the reward for the "capture" of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Masood Azhar from Pakistani Rs 50 lakh to Rs 70 lakh.
"Pakistan glosses over its state support for terrorism by announcing enhanced rewards for apprehending UN-listed head of Jaish-e-Mohammed, terrorist and mastermind of several attacks against my country," he said.
"When the media can reach Masood Azhar and get confirmation from him about the success of Operation Sindoor, surely the Pakistani state knows his whereabouts," he said.
Azhar had lamented in a viral video that his family had been "torn to pieces" during the Operation Sindoor attack on one of his camps in Bahawalpur.
"Just a few months ago, Pakistani representatives used this forum to call the Jaish-e-Mohammed a defunct organisation," Puri said. "The world has seen the script play earlier, and we are clear-eyed that this time also it is going to be no different."
Puri said, "When terrorist groups are allowed to operate under state political power, international commitments become meaningless, and when perpetrators are provided safe havens, the victims of terrorism are denied justice."
"The world has not forgotten 9/11, and where its perpetrators, including Osama bin Laden, were caught,/; he said.
Bin Laden, whose al-Qaeda carried out the 9/11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon 25 years ago, was found by US Navy SEALs in a house near the Pakistan Military Academy in Abbottabad.
"The world has not forgotten 26/11," when Pakistani terrorists killed 166 people in 2008 in Mumbai, he said. "The world has not forgotten Pahalgam."
"The world is aware of Pakistan's financial support to terrorism, as also, the FATF plenary meeting coming up soon," Puri said.
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which monitors terrorism funding and sanctions countries for it, is to hold its plenary meeting in Paris from October 26 to 30.