Maliha Zeba Khan
Pakistan has gotten on nerves of India as after every terrorist incident, India sees Pakistan involved in it despite the fact that terrorist organizations and militants are the non-state actors and no state sponsors their activities. India has been accusing Pakistan for sponsoring the terrorist organizations like Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM), and other banned outfits in Pakistan while forgetting its own security flaws, breeches, defected state policies, and the human rights violations causing massive unrest across the IOK. After every such incident, either 2006-Doda and Udhampur incidents, 2014-Kashmir Valley attacks, 2016-Uri attacks, 2018-Sunjwan attack, or 2019-Pulwama attack, India starts convincing the world about its connection with Pakistan as an act of cross-border terrorism and demands stopping of interference across the LOC without considering the fact that the Second Kashmiri Intifada is solely indigenous. This is the fact which has been endorsed from within India by writers and scholars like Suzanna Arundhati Roy and Ashok Swain.
Historically South Asia has never been the region with incessant peace, security, and stability. Rather it has become the victim of turmoil time and time again, essentially linked with political and strategic instability. Particularly India and Pakistan have been known as the major actors in the region, yet interlocked in enmity since 1947. The bone of contention between the two countries had been the territorial disputes by and large. The hastily made and implemented Partition Plan can be called as an unwise rather influenced decision by Lord Mountbatten which put the region in grave danger for the rest of history.
The first war between Pakistan and India broke out in November 1947 over Jammu and Kashmir issue which was continued almost for a year after which India brought the issue to the United Nations Security Council. The UNSC passed the framework to resolve this issue in the form of the UN Resolutions suggesting the plebiscite for the disputed territory. Therefore the unclear and ambiguous plan of partition in the Himalayan as well as the maritime region, i.e. Kashmir and Sir Creek have been endangering the peace, security, and stability of the region since then, and both countries have fought three wars and numerous escalations and limited wars like Kargil War. Even the British government has accepted the fact that Kashmir issue was one of the British baggage and legacies to the world by the then-British Prime Minister Mr. David Cameron during his visit to Pakistan in 2011. Mr. Cameron during a speech at that time stated that he did not want “to try to insert Britain in some leading role where, as with so many of the world’s problems, we are responsible for the issue in the first place.”
India has been trying to distract the world by accusing Pakistan of supporting and sponsoring the Kashmiri freedom fighters just to avoid implementation of the UN Resolutions and the right of self-determination. As matter of fact, since President Musharraf had proposed different formulas to resolve this British Legacy issue, and took strong measures to stop infiltration of the militant support to the Kashmiri activists from Pakistani side, and even banned the suspected organizations, there has been no evident infiltration of militants from Pakistani side. Nevertheless nothing could stop India from blaming Pakistan. Rather it has been covering up its internal instability, flawed policies regarding dealing with the native unrest, grave human rights violations, and infliction of the worst kind of torment and persecution on its population striving for their right to freedom from the Indian oppression.
Despite the fact that the Kashmiri people’s struggle for their right of self-determination and freedom has emerged as purely indigenous movement, India does not want to accept its failure to control the Kashmiri uprising. This phase of Kashmiri movement has been known as the second Kashmiri Intifada globally which started in 2008 after Amarnath land scam, and got strengthened with the agitation in reaction of Shopian double rape and murder case. Since then it did not look back and every stratum of Kashmiri population have joined the movement which does not demand anything other than freedom from Indian control. They only chant “Azadi”, and these chants on their lips, sticks and stones in their hands, and eyes filled with impetuous passion have taken aback the Indian government and its security forces.
The nature of the Second Intifada is quite different as it is fearless and determined despite the anguish being faced by the Kashmiris on the hands of the security forces, the greatest numbers of abductions, physical and mental torture, mass graves, mass blinding due to pellet guns, rapes, and rising number of youth being martyred by the Indian army and para-military forces. The movement was fueled by the martyrdom of a young Kashmiri Commander, Burhan Wani which further intensified the uprising. Previously the first Kashmiri Intiifida started in 1990 with a fury but was dissolved in 1995 because people from within stepped back from the movement; but this time it is quite different.
India has deployed big number of security forces, reported as more than 1 million to stop this demand of freedom. The deployment of the huge number of the Indian army is not only making the situation worse, but that is also against the UN Resolutions. The Indian security forces have been imposing unbearable torture and oppression on the indigenous Kashmiris to stop them from their demand of freedom from Indian occupation. Even the alleged perpetrator involved in the Pulwama attack, Adil Ahmad Dar was a Kashmiri youth who had been going through continuous humiliation and mental and physical torture at the hands of the Indian army that caused severe reaction. According to reports, he had been in custody of the security forces since last year and had been used for this attack.
In the name of retaliation to this attack, India once again violated the Line of Control and IAF jets intruded into Pakistani territory on February 26, 2019. Next day Pakistan stroked back on India and hit two IAF warplanes and captured one pilot alive. The tension between the two countries rapidly got escalated and it was being threatened that the escalation could be converted into a limited war. The cross border heavy shelling, firing, targeting each other’s check posts, India’s targeting of the civilian population, numerous deaths have been one aspect of the heightened tension between these two countries. But, simultaneously there were several other factors which could not be denied at all in which on top was the fact that both countries are de-facto nuclear powers. The further escalation could simply convert into the nuclear war, either tactical or strategic, and could cause unimaginable disaster for the mankind.
The situation was quite alarming for the international community, and even Russia and Turkey offered the role of mediator between both states. The UNSC also insisted upon to resolve the issue on table and not through military escalation. However according to the analysts, the de-escalation process could not be as swift as expected by the world; due to Modi’s election campaign and his willingness to win anti-Pakistan vote. The voices from within India have blamed Modi to plot Pulwama attack and further escalation just to divert its people’s attention from the inadequate policies of the BJP, his gigantic corruption especially in the Rafale, the French Dassault aviation combat aircrafts, and surging cases of intolerance across India. These dissenting voices are getting stronger day by day, and even other politicians especially from Congress have pointed fingers at Modi regarding the Pulwama attack.
The concern as well as hopefulness by the US President Trump has different dimensions. As the matter of fact, the US has been having robust yet bloody presence in Afghanistan since October 2001. At the time when the US has lost hope to find any way-out for sustainable peace in Afghanistan, has agreed upon the Taliban as inevitable stakeholder to the Afghan peace process, and has been willing to evacuate Afghanistan as soon as possible, it would have caused serious implications for India.
India has been investing heavily in Afghanistan to extend its influence in Afghanistan with the undeniable desire to encircle Pakistan. If the US leaves Afghanistan to a subsystem in which the Taliban would be stakeholders, India must be offended as it finds the Taliban as the natural ally to Pakistan. The US-forces’ evacuation from Afghanistan is going to create serious vacuum for which Russia and China will be willingly ready to increase their control and influence in the regional politics. In this situation, India is feeling seriously endangered as the US departure from the region, and Russia and China as potential actors would be nail to the Indian coffin. Though India has strategic deal with Russia, but as undeniable fact, the national interests are foremost at the time of decision making; while China, despite all the portrayal of neo-functionalism with India, sees the state a pawn to the US designs of new containment approach, especially through the Indo-Pacific perspective.
On the other hand, Indian allegations toward Pakistan are quite irrational, but India is affixed on the notion of telling lies so repeatedly that people start considering it as part of the plan and a new norm if not hundred percent truth. Obviously the Pulwama attack and so-called Indian retaliatory move can be acknowledged as its desperate and delusional effort to mutilate the facts in IOK, and to disfigure the Second Kashmiri Intifada as an indigenous movement. India has only egg left in its bucket is to involve Pakistan and portray it as terrorist state through using FATF as its tool. But it is also a fact that the maximum which India can do is to exclaim Hafiz Saeed and Moulana Masud Azhar as terrorists, and to call for dismantling the already banned organizations like LeT and JeM. But one should never forget that this step will merely be considered a fraction of diplomatic victory, because the world cannot be kept blind at all for long.
The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) had a scheduled conference in beginning of March 2009 in which Indian Foreign Minister Ms. Sushma Swaraj had been invited as a guest of honour. Pakistan skipped to participate in protest, but Indian diplomatic victory was shattered when the OIC called for halting Indian aggression and human rights violation in the IOK. The British Parliament as well as the European Union also has called for the permanent solution of Kashmir issue, and the UN already have the resolutions for the purpose. This limited diplomatic victory or even the announcement of date of election in India will not over-shadow Kashmir issue, and if India insists on ignoring it, the fire of hatred and its military adventurism will throw it in the situation of escalating of other secessionist movements across the country. India has only one viable option, either to free Kashmir and let the UN resolutions be implemented or let the rest of already shambling Indian Federation fragmented into further states.
*The writer Ms. Maliha Zeba Khan is Lecturer at the Department of International Relations, National University of Modern Languages (NUML), Islamabad.
