Presenting the ‘India dossier’ at the UN

It must have taken quite an effort to convince Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who is generally considered to be very cautious when it comes to India, to take up the serious issue of India’s aggressive and highly unwarranted interference in the internal affairs of Pakistan at the United Nations.
The last time Pakistan approached the UN was in 2000 when it claimed compensation for Naval Atlantique aircraft which was shot down by the Indian airforce during the Kargil crisis. The case was dismissed by the International Court of Justice on the grounds that it had no jurisdiction over the matter. Our distinguished legal team should have known that minor detail – if it didn’t it was plainly incompetent and if it did and yet went ahead, it was undesirable self-interest.
India, on the other hand, is a frequent visitor to the United Nations, where it attempts to put Pakistan in the dock of international public opinion every now and then. The most recent occasion being during a meeting of the UN Sanctions Committee where it demanded action against Pakistan on the grounds that the release of Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi (LeT) was in violation of UN Resolution 1267, which deals with designated entities and individuals.
The sanctions committee consists of five permanent and ten non-permanent members. All except China supported India’s stand. Pakistan got off the hook narrowly when China blocked India’s move on the grounds that it had furnished insufficient information. Whether this was a manifestation of superior Indian diplomacy or the plight of our Foreign Office is up to the readers to conclude. But 14 member states not viewing our legal code worthy of any respect should serve as yet another wake-up call on our place in the international arena.
India still claims success in its efforts to freeze Lakhvi and others’ economic resources and properties during a meeting of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) at Brisbane which works under the aegis of the UN. If true, it only further suggests that there is a limit to a helping hand from China in the global politics.
Earlier, the father of an Indian army officer (late Captain Saurabh Kalia), had filed a petition with the office of the high commissioner of human rights in Geneva in 2012 alleging that his son was subjected to torture in custody by Pakistani forces and later killed in cold blood. The case didn’t make much headway due to the positions taken by the UNHCR and later by the Indian Supreme Court in 2014 but it tainted the image of the Pakistan Army for years after the Kargil conflict.
Pakistan has now finally decided to go to the UN on the issues of Indian interference in our internal matters, the belligerent statements of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the issue of the funding for the MQM. This is something that should have been done much earlier.
The long narrative of ‘Indian Dossier’ would, however, appear to date as far back as 1968 when RAW was established in the wake of the Agartala conspiracy in 1967 with the clear intent to harm Pakistan – an objective which was achieved only three years later in 1971.
Buoyed by this success, RAW later delivered Sikkim to India in the 1970s and continues to ferment trouble in the neighbourhood. Whether Pakistan’s trajectory in history have been different if the Agartala case had been taken to its logical conclusion is now of academic interest only.
For some time now there have been reports of enough evidence to point towards RAW’s involvement in promoting the insurgency in Balochistan and undertaking other activities to destabilise the country. Many rounds of bilateral talks between the two countries however failed to bring the two sides to serious talks on this issue.
The nearest success came at Sharm el-Sheikh when Pakistan and India agreed to discuss Balochistan in their future parleys but India’s then prime minister Manmohan Singh quickly reneged on his return to New Delhi.
India clearly feared that by including Balochistan in future agendas, Pakistan would also portray itself as a victim of external terrorism – something that only India had thus far been orchestrating successfully on the world scene regardless of its own huge human rights abuses in the Kashmir valley.
It is strange that India wants to paint itself as a victim of terrorism because of the Mumbai incident (unfortunate as that was) but doesn’t consider Pakistan as a victim of the same terrorism even after nearly 50,000 deaths in this country. This is an untenable argument and will have to be countered forcefully.
Pakistan faces the challenge of drawing the world’s attention to the Indian dossier, since at present there is a complex matrix of global politics in play on the international stage. For one, the EU has imposed sanctions on Russia over Ukraine while Russia is getting worried about Nato being right at its doorsteps and has embarked on modernising its nuclear arsenal.
The US is in a strategic relationship with India in its eastward pivot and cannot be expected to lean heavily on the country. China is building a 10,000 feet long runway on Fiery Cross Reef in the strategically vital shipping lane in the South China Sea, also believed to be rich in oil and gas; this has raised some eyebrows.
This year will be the 70th anniversary of the world body and it will be keen to mark the occasion with some tangible initiatives on issues of far greater global significance such as sustainable development and climate change.
Pakistan’s delegation will therefore have the difficult task to emphasise upon member states that although there has been some success in war against terrorism, the threat is far from over. If the world is really serious about eradicating terrorism then it will also have to revert back to the UN’s basic charter where member states respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of others and the UN has a responsibility to assert itself wherever there is a danger of collapse of this order.
On such occasions India invariably takes the position that it is a responsible state and does not need the UN or any other country to mediate in regional issues. Pakistan will have to distance itself away from this oft-repeated spin and express its utter lack of confidence in the process of bilateralism which, as the track record suggests, has fostered more problems than it has solved.
In the meetings on the sidelines Pakistan will also have to remind the US and UK that we understand their interests in India but their policies of running with the hare and hunting with the hound will not help Pakistan’s fight against terrorism and they will have to play their roles in reining in India from its misadventure in Pakistan. India’s present path can only lead to a war of agencies in which there will be no winner.
India has always tried to nurture a perception in the world that every civilian government in Islamabad is under the influence of a strong military. This may be true to some extent but the other significant truth is that the influence of India’s own military on its policies is no less intrusive. We have seldom won a war of global perception but losing any more wars is not an option any longer.
The world body needs to ponder over a situation arising out of India’s intransigence against the UN’s mediation and adopting a path which can only lead to regional instability while Pakistan is repeatedly urging for a mediatory role in the interest of peace and stability.
Just as after 9/11 the world rallied around the cause of fighting terrorism which overshadowed even genuine causes of oppressed people around the globe who were fighting for their rights and freedom, the message for all member states on the 70th anniversary of the UN should be that there will be zero tolerance for the downright imprudent idea of states dreaming about fighting terrorism through sponsoring terrorism in other states under what they fashionably call ‘nuclear overhang’.
This is a highly dangerous notion in nuclearised neighbourhoods with the potential to eventually wipe out an entire civilisation, and should be curbed now before it is too late.
The writer is a retired vice admiral.Email: tajkhattak@ymail.com