Escalating tension in Kashmir

The body count is rising in the Kashmir Valley and diplomacy, never an intervention notable for its success in matters Kashmir, stumbles in the wake of events that move faster than it does. Pakistan has protested formally to India after another 30 deaths and injuries to 300 others, 50 of them serious, mainly caused by the Indian army firing live rounds at unarmed protesters that were attempting to storm an airbase. The Indian High Commissioner was summoned in order that a formal protest be lodged. New Delhi responded by saying that Pakistan was ‘interfering in its internal affairs.’

It is rare for casualties to reach these kinds of levels even in Indian-Occupied Kashmir, and no matter what the circumstances, live firing into massed groups of civilians is a blatant violation of every human and civil right that can have a name put to it. Calls for an inquiry into the killings are going to go unheeded, and eventually the protests will begin to taper off and the valley will revert to its default position of bubbling anger. And when relative calm is restored and the dust settled and the bodies buried it will, as ever before, be revealed that nothing has changed.



International interventions have consistently failed, India has not the slightest intention of giving an inch, Pakistan is currently the political equivalent of a paraplegic and most of the rest of the world is prepared to go through the motions of hand-wringing and expressions of mild disapproval of the actions of all sides — and not take the risk of lifting a finger in the cause of resolving this most intractable of conflicts. Both India and Pakistan continue to support groups that the other side sees as terrorists or sponsors of terrorism; and the current escalations are going to feed through to the other areas of tension and unresolved conflict that exist between India and Pakistan — the Siachen Glacier, Sir Creek and the Line of Control (LoC) along much of its length. The Kashmir flashpoint has an ominous capacity to infect other areas, and diplomatic antibiotics are of declining efficacy given the build-up of resistance to them. We watch with deep concern.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 13^th, 2016.

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