Sweden is falling into the trap of Pakistani lobbyists’ propaganda
Last month, Pakistan’s Embassy in Sweden and Finland Third Secretary and Intelligence Envoy Abdul Razaque Theba had issued a notice to the embassy officials referring the country’s Foreign Ministry notice dated July 9, 2022 regarding “Action Plan for You”. e-Istehsal (Article 370 Repeal Day) on August 5, 2022.
Pakistan’s embassy uses its influence to invite speakers from Sweden’s Riksdag and organizes the event against India. Women and children must be used as a front to win over the sympathy of the Swedish parliamentarians. Falsifications, propaganda and lobbying are Pakistan’s strength, as the country has managed to produce sealed cases and move motions in the Swedish Riksdag on the Kashmir issue.
As a result of continued Pakistani propaganda and lobbying, political figures from the OIC, Sweden, UK and many other EU countries have belatedly indulged in pontificating on India’s internal affairs and raising the Kashmir issue. Their anti-India tirades are the result of relentless Pakistani collusion.
On 5 August 2019, the Indian Parliament repealed the Apartheid Act – Article 370 – paving the way for equal rights for all citizens of J&K. The articles of Indian law which fueled separatism, Wahhabism, Islamic extremism, functioned more like Sharia laws and were against the right to equality, played a role in ethnic cleansing of half a million Kashmiri Pandits, find pseudo support from a country that still bows to monarchy. It is unfortunate that all the genocide unleashed by the Pakistani authoritarian regime on the people of Gilgit, Skardu, Balochistan and Pakistan Occupied Kashmir continues to be ignored. This encouraged Pakistan to continue these programs with impunity.
Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström tweeted on August 10, 2019 – “The people of Kashmir must be included in decisions about its future.” Margot’s next tweet on Kashmir was on August 21, 2019, where she wrote about a “phone conversation with Pakistan’s FM Shah Mahmood Qureshi. On November 28, 2019, just before the Swedish royals’ visit to India, the country’s foreign minister Anne Linde spoke in the Swedish Riksdag and called the situation in Kashmir “disturbing”.
These utterances of insanity showed the ignorance of the Scandinavians and also revealed Pakistan’s lobbying. A monarchy suddenly decided to give sermons on internal issues to the world’s largest democratic republic! The Swedish leaders’ statements about Indian Kashmir were aimed at providing moral support to secessionists working for Pakistan. Has Sweden forgotten its human rights abuses against the Sami?
Sweden is a country that is quickly falling into the trap of Islamists. Uncontrolled migration and the left’s whims of multiculturalism doctrines have plagued Swedish cities into a culvert of Islamist violence. The most influential Muslim organization in Sweden is the Muslim Council of Sweden (SMR). There is information that the Swedish government party “Sveriges religiosa social democrats” (STS) and SMR had entered into a written agreement to help the latter gain political influence in Sweden. As the Muslim population has increased in the country, political coercion has led politicians to support Islamists.
The SMR has a history of lobbying for Islamist causes worldwide. They had even written a letter to the Swedish Foreign Ministry demanding that they intervene to free a Swedish citizen, Abdallah Al-Qasir, who was arrested in Prague, Czech Republic, on charges of dealing with al-Qaeda. There are several letters in the archives of the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in which SMR and the union’s leaders sent appeals to the Swedish Immigration Ministry demanding the right to stay in Sweden for Muslim migrants. There have been several reports of SMR members’ ties to Islamists, including anti-Semitic and homophobic Islamic preachers and the Gray Wolves, a declared terrorist organization operating out of Turkey.
The anti-Indian political milieu in the Scandinavian nation finds its roots in the much-maligned Bofors gun scandal. In 2012, Swedish arms exports to India were 1.4 billion and Pakistan 615 million. Since Sweden is one of the main arms exporters to Pakistan, Sweden seems to have reserved a special place for the country. In 2021, Sweden exported weapons worth USD 80 million to Pakistan.
In 2022, India will not be anywhere in the Swedish arms export list. India’s cold shoulder to the all-powerful Swedish arms manufacturers and Pakistan’s emergence as one of the main arms importers may also be a reason why some Swedish politicians side with Pakistani propaganda. Sweden has claimed that it limits the export of military equipment to “non-democratic” states and calls attention to human rights violations in the receiving country. But it still exports military equipment to a non-democratic state like Pakistan.
India had registered a diplomatic protest against the sale of the Swedish early warning aircraft Erieye AWACS to Pakistan. The PAF had used the systems against India during the air battle against India on February 27, 2019. SAAB, the Swedish aerospace giant has deployed its Gripen fighter jets to New Delhi, but the company’s deep and secretive ties and dealings with India’s arch-rival Pakistan have left India with different contacts with the company.
Pakistan, an economically downtrodden country on the brink of being blacklisted by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and carrying losses of $10 billion even as it remains on the terror finance watchdog’s gray list, has hired 12 firms to step up lobbying for Kashmir in the US. According to a 2011 affidavit by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai, head of the Kashmiri American Council and Zaheer Ahmad; two illegal lobbyists of Pakistani origin were charged with illegal lobbying in the United States for the Pakistani government and the ISI over Kashmir and with receiving at least $4 million from Pakistan for the lobbying efforts.
The FBI affidavit mentioned that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) sponsored and controlled the anti-India organization for the past 25 years and ensured the cash flow meant for lobbying. There is ample evidence that Pakistan has spent so much effort and money to influence the world’s position on Kashmir. It is time that the Islamic Republic’s illegal and relentless lobbying for Kashmir at multilateral platforms like the EU and UN should be called out for institutional sanctity and justice.
Pakistan’s long-time friend Turkey had initially vetoed Sweden’s bid to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), accusing Stockholm of supporting the terrorist organization PKK. Turkey suddenly took a U-turn and supported Sweden’s NATO membership. A SMR-Turkey-Pakistan axis is developing quickly, but Sweden will have to bear the cost.
Stockholm syndrome, is it real?
READ | Could a Sri Lanka, Pakistan-style economic crisis hit India? Raghuram Rajan answers
Disclaimer: The author is a veteran of the Indian Navy. Views are his own.