Enter — belatedly — the UN

India argues that the role of UNMOGIP has been overtaken by the 1972 Simla Agreement

It has taken far longer than it should but the United Nations has finally woken up to at least some of the difficulties associated with the Kashmir issue created by India. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has expressed his ‘regret’ on September 30 that the UN military observer mission in Pakistan and India has not been allowed to fully function in Occupied Kashmir because of Indian intransigence and non-cooperation. For its part Islamabad has been manoeuvering for a more active role for the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) — a move stoutly resisted by India as it would represent an internationalising of the issue. India argues that the role of UNMOGIP has anyway been overtaken by the 1972 Simla Agreement. One of our more capable diplomats, Dr Maleeha Lodhi, is Pakistan’s Permanent Representative and she it is that has effectively lobbied Ban Ki-moon in this matter, seeking to have factual reporting of events within Kashmir on the table without the Indian spin; and for the UN Security council to be duly apprised in particular of the dangers associated with the current tensions. The main focus of Dr Lodhi’s argument is that India has stirred the pot on the Line of Control (LoC) in order to divert the eyes of the world from the manifest human rights abuses it perpetrates almost daily in Occupied Kashmir — which is at the very least a distinct possibility.

With the Saarc summit now officially cancelled one of the few opportunities for bilateral dialogue is gone. The UN has again offered its ‘good offices’ which has been accepted by Pakistan and rejected by India, as has every call for the right of the Kashmiris for self-determination. In very large part India is the architect of the current crisis which is as yet showing no sign of abatement. The call by Dr Lodhi for the UN to intervene ‘boldly and unequivocally’ is unlikely to get much further than Ban Ki-moon’s ‘pending’ tray and the Indian dog-in-manger gambit continues to dominate. Meanwhile Kashmiris bleed mostly unnoticed by the rest of the world.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 2^nd, 2016.

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