Kashmir and an indifferent world

Pakistan has once again condemned Indian violence in India-Occupied Kashmir (IOK) that has reached appalling proportions in the last 10 days. Both the civil and military leadership have spoken in the strongest possible terms about the deaths of at least 20 people and the injury of hundreds more in clashes with Indian forces. A diplomatic offensive is to be launched to raise global awareness of Indian atrocities — the use of pellet guns is a particularly dreadful form of crowd control — and all this against a background of silence from the Indian authorities and, it has to be said, from most of the global community of nations as well.

The dispute is as old as Pakistan and dates from the same era as that of the people of Palestine. Neither has ever come close to resolution and the climate in which resolution might be triggered does not exist in the modern world. In recent years Pakistan has made some earnest efforts to rekindle the embers of the peace process and all to no avail. The arrival of the Modi government with its populist/nationalist agenda has created a culture of impunity. India has discovered that it can do precisely what it likes in Kashmir and attract no more than some ritualised condemnation in places like the United Nations General Assembly. There will be a spate of hand-wringing quickly passed and then business as usual — and for the rest of the world the Kashmir issue has long been on the back burner, indeed at the back of the back burner.

Pakistan has few friends that are going to come out in support of its claims regarding Kashmir, and resolutions by the United Nations have long gathered dust. It is difficult to determine what leverage it may deploy in the upcoming diplomatic offensive if only because Pakistan does not enjoy most-favoured-nation status with many of those whose support it would need were there to be any movement on IOK. There is blood on Indian hands today and there will be more blood tomorrow. And the rest of the world mostly looks the other way.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 6^th, 2018.

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