Pakistan has fought three wars on Kashmir. The first was fought between 1947 and 1948; the second started in the name of Operation Gibraltar in 1965 and turned into full scale war resulting in a stalemate at best; and the last war was Kargil in May 1999. None of these wars have benefited Pakistan in terms of territory, and India continues to rule over two thirds of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir.
Pakistan has also tried diplomatic means to settle the dispute. It agreed to the UN Security Council resolution of 1948 that ended the war hostilities under Chapter 6. Under this chapter, the conclusions only serve as moral recommendations without any binding force.
The first condition of the peaceful resolution of the dispute through a plebiscite clearly said that Pakistan had to pull out its citizens and armed groups from the area it had occupied and that India was supposed to retain some of its security deployment to maintain peace before a plebiscite could take place. Pakistan has never implemented nor publicly spoke of implementing that condition before the plebiscite could take place.
Besides sending tribal fighters and irregulars in Kashmir in 1947-48 – a move that irked Kashmiri nationalists and Maharaja Hari Singh who rushed to sign the Instrument of Accession in late October 1948 – Pakistan has supported militancy in the region, especially after the rigged 1987 election in the valley. Many prominent Pakistanis, including former heads of intelligence agencies, military and the government, have admitted to using, training and arming militant groups for jihad in Kashmir.
In between, there have several terror incidents – including the hijacking of an Indian airliner in December 1999 which ended in release of militants like Masood Azhar, the attack on the parliament in Delhi in December 2001, the Pathankot attack in January 2016 and Uri terror attack in September 2016. Earlier in 2008, the terror attack in Mumbai left more than 150 people dead. All these incidents were somehow or the other related to Kashmir.
Pakistan signed the Simla Agreement in July 1972 and the Lahore Declaration in February 1999, besides ceasefire agreements in 1949 and 2003.
As we look at the chronology of events, we see that Pakistan has tried wars (symmetrical and asymmetric) as well as multi-lateral and bilateral agreements with India to settle its disputes, but without any results.
With India’s developed economy, democracy and higher stakes in the global political and economic order, its leverage has increased. After 9/11, India has successfully persuaded the world that Pakistan is pursuing terror as an instrument of state policy and is using violence in Indian-administered Kashmir to cause death by a thousand cuts.
The recent Pulwama suicide attack in mid-February was a watershed moment when almost every country, including the UN expressed solidarity with India. Yet when Indian warplanes crossed the international border and dropped their payloads in the very heartland of Pakistan on February 26, no country expressed solidarity with Pakistan.
The very next day Pakistan upped the ante, when in an air exchange it shot down an Indian fighter jet and captured its pilot. It then quickly diffused the crisis by releasing the pilot.
Prime Minister Imran Khan wanted to be the prime minister who would normalise relations with India. So when he succeeded in getting an audience with President Trump in July, he wanted the US to help in improving relations which had gone awry after the February episode.
Trump pulled a pleasant surprise for Imran Khan. In a press conference where he did most of the talking, Trump stunned Khan by announcing before cameras that Modi wanted his mediation on the Kashmir dispute. An elated Khan returned home, likening his visit to winning a second world cup.
While Khan and his cohorts were busy celebrating the success of the Washington visit, strange things began taking place in Kashmir in the first week of August. Additional troops were deployed in the valley by thousands, visitors from outside Kashmir, including the pilgrims of Amarnath Yatra, were forcibly evacuated amid fake reports of threats of a terror attack. In the early hours of August 5, all communications lines were cut off. All political leaders – even those close to India – were arrested and a curfew was imposed across the state.
In the morning, India’s Home Minister Amit Shah revealed the sinister plan in the Upper House of the Indian Parliament. First he introduced the reorganization bill. This was followed by presidential decree ending the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, and de-operationalizing Articles 370 and 35-A of the Indian constitution.
As if this was not enough, the state was bifurcated and a new union territory of Ladakh – historically part of the extended state of Jammu and Kashmir – was carved out as a new union territory without its legislature.
This took Pakistan by complete surprise. If Pakistan knew this was about to happen, Foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi would not be in Saudi Arabia performing Haj, and Pakistan’s permanent representative in the UN Dr Maleeha Lodhi would not be in Europe on holiday. It was a complete intelligence and diplomatic failure of the Pakistani state. There is no public admission of this failure yet.
About forty days have passed since August 5 and what has Pakistan done so far? It has only internalised the Kashmir issue by making symbolic gestures.
Now, after a few days, Imran Khan will make a fiery speech at the UN highlighting the Kashmir issue, something pretty much every head of Pakistan’s government has done over the decades. Isn’t that what Pakistan has been doing over the decades? The only difference is that previously we had some global support. Now we don’t find any country supporting our stance.
Since we can’t fight conventional or unconventional war, we remain diplomatically isolated, with no country except China, Turkey and Iran taking our side. Our economy is decimated and we are extremely polarised at home. The political dispensation is teetering at its foundations. Why are we repeating failed practices? If we are serious about addressing the miseries of the people of Kashmir, we would have to create a new playbook. The old playbook on Kashmir is not working.
The writer is a journalist based in Islamabad
