But discerning Pakistanis have been candid in their assessment of what the K commitment has cost their nation. In an objective editorial, the Daily Times, Lahore, February 6, noted: “Early lineaments of Pakistani nationalism were created by the ‘unfinished business’ of Kashmir, forcing it to become a revisionist state in the Cold War era... Pakistan became a national security state dominated by the army which overthrew elected governments, protesting breach of national security. Military rulers rode the crest of Pakistan’s textbook nationalism to arm-twist politicians and divide them against one another. Military budgets were kept away from the scrutiny of parliament in order to boost ‘the national effort’ to keep the Kashmir cause alive.”

On the covert support to militancy and terrorism, it says: “Pakistan’s revisionism of the weaker state inclined it from the beginning to use private warriors in Kashmir. Its rulers decided to rely on a low intensity cross-border conflict inside Kashmir while developing a nuclear deterrent to keep India from choosing to fight a conventional war across the national boundary. This began a new trend in Pakistan’s nation-building process which has brought it to the crisis of today simply because the strategic elite in Islamabad did not think through the sociological and political impact of such an option. Religion was used to buttress private jihad, unleashing an internal debate over the nature of the Islamic state in Pakistan. As hard Islam was adopted through laws in Pakistan, it was also projected into Indian Kashmir through the mujahideen, creating an environment of intimidation the same way as it is being spread in Pakistan today.”

... contd.