21July 2011
Srinagar : The arrest of Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai, the Kashmir-born American citizen who was allegedly using Pakistani funds to lobby with the United States on Kashmir, has shaken separatist leaders whose cause he had been championing on international platforms for decades.
Fai is close to almost every separatist group with a nuanced stance that includes calls for a peaceful settlement. Virtually their ambassador overseas, he has been the main host for separatist leaders whenever they have visited the United States.
The moderates, including those Fai had hosted, preferred to stay silent on the arrest. The hardliners such as the Hurriyat's Syed Ali Shah Geelani called for protests on Friday. “The arrest has been made on the insistence and conspiracy of India. Its aim is to weaken Kashmir’s freedom movement,” Geelani said.
Dr Mirza Ashraf Beig, who has attended several conferences convened by Fai in the United States, said, “He never pleaded the case of either India or Pakistan. I believe he always pleaded for better relations between India and Pakistan.”
According to the FBI, Fai's Kashmiri American Council donated Pakistani funds, including the ISI's, to political campaigns in the United States, hoping to tilt American policy on Kashmir against India. State DGP Kuldeep Khoda said Fai's name “has been figuring in lots of things... especially the diversion of ISI funds for anti-national activities in India and particularly in J&K.”
Groomed in the Jamat-e-Islami’s student wing, Fai was close to its founder Maulana Saad-ud-din, pro-Pakistan hardliners and separatists such as Mirwaiz Umar Farooq. Last May, he was in Muzaffarabad (PoK) for a Kashmir conference that was addressed by the Pakistan PM.
In the US, Fai would conduct an annual Kashmir conference with not only separatist leaders but also members of Kashmir’s civil society, journalists, lawyers and human rights activists from India.
In recent releases, he has talked about “sacrifices of the July 13, 1931 martyrs”, endorsed “the call given by Hurriyat Conference for a peaceful protest towards the Martyrs Graveyard that will include Kashmiri men, women and children of all cultural persuasions’’, and asked US President Obama to “listen to Richard Holbrook’s advice” that “a crucial step to reducing radicalism in Pakistan was to ease the Kashmir dispute with India, and he (Holbrook) favoured more pressure on India to achieve that”.
(www.indianexpress.com)
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