by Nilesh Kunwar
Mother of All Distractors
With Pakistan reeling under widespread internal unrest ranging from home grown terrorism in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), an armed secessionist movement in Balochistan, unprecedented public discontent in Pakistan occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK) including Gilgit Baltistan, one would have expected that Islamabad would focus on setting its own house in order. That’s why the news that Pakistan would be launching a diplomatic campaign to internationalise the Kashmir issue in the UK and Europe must have come as a surprise to the uninitiated.
However, Pakistan watchers had anticipated this because Kashmir was, is and will remain to be, the country’s infallible and greatest ‘distractor’. Having been brought up believing that it is their country’s shah rag (jugular vein) and the “unfinished agenda of partition,” mere mention of Kashmir is enough to whip up such mass hysteria in Pakistan that immediately diverts public attention from other pressing domestic issues- no matter how grave they are.
Sound And Fury
The last time Islamabad undertook a massive and concerted international diplomatic offensive on Kashmir was in 2019 after New Delhi abrogated Article 370 of the Indian constitution. Despite knowing that nothing would come out as being India’s internal affair, no country or international organisation could do anything about it.
It took the Article 370 abrogation issue to the UNSC through an official letter but when queried during a pressing briefing the then UNSC President Joanna Wronecka diplomatically conveyed the message that no action was being taken on Islamabad’s letter with a “No comments” reply.
Things didn’t end here and Islamabad had to face further embarrassment when spokesperson of UN Secretary General Stephane Dujarric said, "The Secretary-General also recalls the 1972 Agreement on bilateral relations between India and Pakistan, also known as the Simla Agreement, which states that the final status of Jammu and Kashmir is to be settled by peaceful means, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations."
The fact that instead of referring to UNSC resolutions on Kashmir, the UN General Secretary’s spokesperson invoked the 1972 Shimla Agreement to resolve the Kashmir issue must definitely have come as a severe blow to Islamabad. Beijing saved Pakistan from further embarrassment by recommending a UNSC cold-door consultation. However, the fact that discussions on Kashmir were generic in nature and not related to Article 370 abrogation, no record of discussions were made and no official post-meeting statements issued, Pakistan’s failure to internationalise the Kashmir issue at UNSC is clearly evident.
Embarrassment Galore
Some feel that Islamabad did have a case on the Article 370 issue and as such UNSC should have listened to it. However, the fact of the matter is that Pakistani leaders themselves knew very well that they were just ‘crying wolf’.
Readers would recall that even before taking the Article 370 abrogation issue to UNSC, Pakistan’s then Foreign Minister had advised the people “not to live in the fool's paradise,” adding that “They (UNSC permanent members) are not waiting for you with garlands in their hands.”
Even after the UNSC snub, Qureshi remained defiant. In a TV talk show he pompously declared that “An in-principle decision has been taken to take the issue of Kashmir to the International Court of Justice,” adding that “The decision was taken after considering all legal aspects.”
However, this never came about and Pakistan’s lawyer at International Court of Justice (IJC) Khawar Qureshi subsequently admitted that Islamabad had no credible proof to support its genocide in Kashmir allegation and "In absence of these evidences, it is extremely difficult for Pakistan to take this case to the ICJ."
The list of instances when Islamabad had to eat the humble pie on the Kashmir issue is endless. A few examples:
• In 2019, while attending a South Asian countries meet on “Sustainable Development Goals,” in Maldives, the Pakistani delegation raised the completely unrelated issue of Kashmir. As there was no mention of this in the joint statement issued after the conference, it’s evident that no one took any notice of the same.
• A few days later a Pakistani delegation attending a UNICEF event in Sri Lanka raised the Kashmir issue and while it once again found no takers, it did precipitate a far more embarrassing response just two days later.
• In 2021, just days before Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Sri Lanka visit, Colombo cancelled his address to the Sri Lankan parliament. Though no reasons were assigned, it’s obvious that this was done to prevent him from raising the Kashmir issue in his speech.
In 2023, Pakistan’s then Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari also admitted that “we face a particularly uphill task to try and get Kashmir into the centre of the agenda at the United Nations.” And while trying to blame India for creating hurdles, he unwittingly accepted India’s stand on Kashmir by saying that this is because “they (Indians) try to claim that this is not a dispute for the United Nations, that this is not a disputed territory recognised for the international community.”
Islamabad’s Compulsion
So the obvious question that arises is that knowing that it would end up eating crow, why does Pakistan still keep raking up the Kashmir issue? The answer is simple. Having precipitated a crisis of gargantuan domestic proportions and started a war with Afghanistan, Field Marshal Munir needs to divert public attention and so he has fallen back on his favourite stratagem- raising the Kashmir bogey.
Last year he had boasted that "Three wars have already been fought for Kashmir, and if ten more are needed, we will fight them" but failed to deliver on his promise as is his wont. This year he’s trying his luck by re-launching the diplomatic Kashmir offensive despite its uninterrupted record of failure.
Pakistan knows that its Kashmir narrative is feeble and that’s why it has tried every trick in the book to overcome its monumental shortcomings.
It waxes eloquent on peaceful resolution of the Kashmir issue but has waged two wars to seize it and continues to sponsor proxy war even today. It seeks to garner support on Kashmir through lobbying in foreign countries (remember Ghulam Nabi Fai who was convicted in the US for not disclosing receipt of USD 3.5 million from the Pakistan army’s spy agency Inter Services Intelligence for lobbying activities to influence the US Government?)
It also organises fully-paid PoJK trips for influential foreign dignitaries and uses their personal views and observations as an endorsement of Pakistan’s Kashmir policy. US lawmaker Ilhan Omar’s April 2022 visit to PoJK is just one such example.
Prognosis
Since no one in Pakistan dares to question the country’s ‘failed’ field marshal, he probably thinks that silence is an endorsement of his astute thinking. Perhaps this is why he indulges in immature rhetoric so often and his irresponsible utterance that “What India labels as terrorism is, in fact, a legitimate and lawful struggle for freedom, recognised by international law,” exposes his skewed mindset.
It would however be naïve to believe that a cunning fox like Field Marshal Munir genuinely expects that the proposed diplomatic outreach would yield positive results for Pakistan. And his talk of fighting ten more wars for Kashmir unambiguously indicates that just like all his predecessors, the field marshal knows very well that his much touted diplomatic offensive on Kashmir will, like all the previous attempts, end with a whimper, not a bang but it will enthral the masses.
Tailpiece: Many times, something completely unrelated serves as an ideal solution for another situation. So, just like the flight attendant cautioning passengers to put on their own oxygen mask before helping others, shouldn’t Field Marshal Munir first put his own house in order before coveting his neighbour’s land?
Nilesh Kunwar is a retired Indian Army Officer who has served in Jammu & Kashmir, Assam, Nagaland and Manipur. He is a keen ‘Kashmir-Watcher,’ and after retirement is pursuing his favourite hobby of writing for newspapers, journals and think-tanks. Views expressed above are the author's own
