It is the need of the hour for Pakistan to revisit and reverse its overall Kashmir policy.
LAHORE: One can only pity a man who is desirous of improving the blood circulation within his body at the cost of damaging his jugular vein. Extrapolating this example to the nation-state level: getting petty benefits while compromising over core issues is neither advisable nor desirable. If we analyse the Kashmir issue from its beginning to what it has come to today, then we can draw some clear conclusions. The position and stance of both important parties to the issue, i.e., Pakistan and India, vis-a-vis Kashmir, have undergone some crucial metamorphoses. First, there was the international forum of the United Nations (UN) and then, afterwards, we saw several unilateral approaches towards resolving the conflict.
There is no doubt that we have committed some grave diplomatic and tactical blunders with respect to the Kashmir issue. Repudiating multilateralism by ignoring and undermining UN resolutions over the issue of recognising the right of self-determination of the Kashmiri people and calling for the plebiscite to determine its ultimate future, we opted for bilateralism in 1966 via the Tashkent Declaration. Through that, we decided to resolve this issue with India through dialogue and negotiations. In this way, we washed our hands over the Kashmir issue and buried it in the coffin of bilateralism. Since then, we have been hammering nails on the coffin by committing successive and constant follies.
After the 9/11 incident, the Kashmir issue experienced another change in terms of unilateral moves from both sides. India consolidated its position over Kashmir by equating the Kashmir freedom movement with terrorism and blaming Pakistan for sponsoring it, especially after the Mumbai attacks in 2008. On Pakistan’s side, unilateral concessions were granted and a so-called “out of the box” solution was proposed by another paradigm shift in this regard. Pakistan insisted on confidence-building measures and proposed giving India Most-Favoured Nation status. But now, India is not even willing to consider Kashmir a dispute at all and seems reluctant to include the conflict as a variable in the bilateral dialogue process. All these policies and moves have proved very harmful and disastrous for the Kashmir cause.
It is the need of the hour for Pakistan to revisit and reverse its overall Kashmir policy. Effective and proactive diplomacy in the Kashmir dispute should be adopted by drawing from past UN resolutions to resolve this long-standing issue. Besides this, the Kashmiri people should be given unqualified moral support for getting their right to self-determination.
Mohsin Raza Malik
Published in The Express Tribune, March 31st, 2014.
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