By Salar Tarar.
(The views expressed in this article are entirely those of the author and are not necessarily reflective of PLUMS)
Prime Minister Imran Khan, on his tour to the US, marked Kashmir as having the only road to lasting peace in South Asia. Perhaps it is then no coincidence that the BJP juggernaut has hurriedly looked to align Mr. Khan’s road sense – backed by thousands of soldiers and a revoked constitutional provision. Peace will now need a whole lot of infrastructure.
The Indian Government has explicitly chosen destruction and despair over lasting peace.
Banaris Hussain, a cook working in Muzaffarabad, looks increasingly worried as tensions flare up around the Line of Control. His family lives in the small town of Jora right next to the border. The constant shelling from the Indian side has led his family, consisting of three daughters and two small sons, to spend the night outside in an open area far away from home. “There is no way to contact them at the moment,” he says. This sheer anxiety and fear is confronted on a daily basis by many families living on the Pakistani side of the conflict. The recent use of cluster bombs, in direct violation of 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions, adds further to the lengthy list of atrocities carried out by the Indian side.
What exactly is fueling this new wave of unprecedented violence and infringement of rights against the Kashmiris? Yashwin Sinha, the former finance minister and previously a senior leader of the BJP, has a simple answer: “What the government of India has done with Article 370, and Article 35A, is nothing more than pure politics.” Mr. Sinha believes that the upcoming state elections of Haryana and Mahastra in September/October are playing heavily on Mr. Modi’s mind. There is, however, an alternative answer.
In 1953, Syama Prasad Mookerjee, president of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, died in a jail in Srinagar where he was detained by the Sheikh Abdullah government for protesting against Kashmir being an “autonomous republic within India.” The Bharatiya Jana Sangh is the predecessor of the present day Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Observers argue that Mr. Modi is simply adhering to the underlying ideology of the party that has seen a landslide win in the recent polls. Modi’s campaign speeches were full of several stern warnings hinting firmly about such a radical course of action. While Mr. Modi looks to have enshrined his legacy after completing the BJP’s prophetic mission; he may have, however, permanently stained India’s biggest one liner: The biggest democracy in the world.
Pakistan now faces the throes of a potentially huge political crisis. The demography of the LOC, little known to common outsider, makes the task even harder. As the Indians have strategically fenced the whole border and massively reduced the population levels across the areas directly facing the enemy side; Pakistan has had little space to maneuver. Confined to a single viable main route that crosses directly in-front of many Indian controlled mountains, invaluable human loss is inevitable when confronted with attack. India knows that it can cause persistent loss by carrying a series of surprise attacks every once in a while. Maybe victory can then be attained on another battlefront – one that has to do with diplomacy.
The opposition has quickly rallied behind the government, asking it to immediately take the matter to the UN Security Council. The Pakistani government has started with a robust statement clearly saying that it will “exercise all possible options to counter the illegal steps”. The government must bring its heavyweight allies up to speed with proceedings and use as much diplomatic leverage as possible to squeeze India into a corner of isolation. This might prove to be futile exercise. India’s supreme market outreach and global weight has turned this into a gross mismatch. However, Pakistan buoyed by its recent cordial dealings with the United States, Turkey and Malaysia can certainly transform into a Goliath. In order to achieve such a feat, it must be prepared to answer some tough questions in this quest. What will now happen with Azad Kashmir and Gilgit/Baltistan as India’s new decree comes into practice? Is there a real prospect of war? What really can Pakistan do? One thing is certain though. From now on, Pakistan can only look to construct its own road to peace. As a certain neighbour is determined not to give way.