General Qamar Javed Bajwa
Photographer: Farooq Naeem / AFP / Getty Images
Photographer: Farooq Naeem / AFP / Getty Images
The powerful head of the Pakistani Army, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, asked India “to bury the past and move on”, in rare comments made the day after Prime Minister Imran Khan asked New Delhi to move towards the resolving issues in the Kashmir region.
Nuclear weapon nations fought three wars since its independence from Britain in 1947, two of them in the Himalayan region. The area is divided between the two and claimed in its entirety by both. Their relationship hit its worst hurdle in years, after a suicide attack in Indian Kashmir in February 2019 killed 40 soldiers. India retaliated with air strikes on alleged terror camps within Pakistan, which it says operates with Islamabad’s unspoken blessings. Pakistan has always denied that it supports terrorist groups.
Both nations withdrew their envoys later that year, after India revoked the constitutional autonomy of its state of Jammu-Kashmir.
Pakistani Prime Minister Khan urges India to make a move towards peace
“We are ready to improve our environment by solving all of our outstanding problems with our neighbors through dialogue,” said the army chief. “But for the peace process to resume or a meaningful dialogue, our neighbor will have to create an enabling environment,” particularly in the Indian portion of Kashmir.
Bajwa’s comments on the Islamabad Security Dialogue are significant, as the army, which directly governed Pakistan for about half its history, has an outsized role in the Khan government with contributions in foreign policy and security issues.
Peace openings follow an unusual joint statement by military commanders from India and Pakistan last month renewing vows to join a 2003 agreement ceasefire in Kashmir.
“We have learned from the past to evolve and we are willing to move on to a new future,” said Bajwa. “However, it all depends on reciprocity.”