What is to be done?

The writer is a former ambassador to the US, India and China and head of UN missions in Iraq and Sudan.

How can one discuss the current situation in Kashmir and 'what is to be done? – in just a few hundred words? Tougher still, is to say it all in just one question: After 70 years of deceit and defeat, what is the word of any government of Pakistan worth?

The prime minister has rightly called India’s decision of August 5 “a strategic blunder.” He promised to “teach Delhi a lesson” if it dared expand its repression in Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK) to aggression against AJK or Pakistan. He has justifiably raised the awful prospect of genocide in IOK. Diplomatically, Pakistan is taking all the necessary measures and making all the appropriate noises at the UN and in major world capitals. The response has been what it has been. Not zero to be sure, but not much either. Nevertheless, Imran Khan as 'ambassador of all Kashmiris' can make a difference.

Trump’s word on mediation/arbitration which immediately transformed Pakistani skepticism about him into being besotted with him is turning out to be a somewhat chastened return to skepticism.

What can Pakistan realistically do? This is a question that begs a reference to the history of Pakistani governance, and its record of implementing its word. But all that is in the past and here we are today again asking for our fears and warnings to be believed, otherwise – otherwise what? There is an Urdu colloquialism which sums up the threat we imply: ab ke maar! (I dare you to punch me in the face again and again!)

But truthfully, apart from jumping headlong into war, something the prime minister rightly scoffed at during the joint parliamentary session, there are a whole lot of things we can do in an attempt to get India to take another look and reverse its August 5 blunder and, thereby, avert the real possibility of a catastrophic war. By and large, all this is being done and more, much more.

These include warnings that if Pakistan’s arguments, analyses, proposals, initiatives and pleas for peace and justice are treated either with sympathetic disdain by the international community or dismissive contempt by India, Pakistan may lose control over an escalating situation.

And remember, Pakistan and India are nuclear weapons powers without much clue about first and second nuclear strike options, the immediate and global impact of an India-Pakistan nuclear war, or the need for nuclear doctrines and modalities to ensure against an escalation from a conventional conflict between unequals to a nuclear conflict between equals. Moreover, the time available for the verification of reported missile or aircraft launches in our/their direction is practically zero. Under these circumstances, the best response is to act without verification, or better still, without waiting for any report at all. The mathematics of the absurd ensures the theater of mutual annihilation. That ought to do it.

And yet there is an eerie calm all around us. How come? Because in our bones we know we’ve been there, done that! Tashkent; Dhaka; Simla; Kargil; Abbottabad – and today? We have seen the world. We know how to handle situations. We’ve always survived if not thrived by ignoring facts and reason. We know how to calm and control our angry and outraged people. We have always picked ourselves up from the floor and done it all over again. We are professionals, not amateurs. Our bruises are our medals.

The world expects us to do more, and by and large we deliver – if not always for our own impatient and ill-informed people who are largely misled by miscreants for hire. When they ask for too much we refer them to the IMF, and should they persist, to the FATF. We put up with their insults. After all, they are our own. So are the Kashmiris.

Allama Iqbal asked the perennial question: pas chi bayad kard? What is to be done? Essentially, speak truth to the people. If anyone, friend or enemy or outsider, sees us shying away from doing that because of the fear of follow-up questions which we do not want to face, let alone answer, then they will conclude we are unlikely to do anything out of the ordinary, which is a matter of record. This, of course, explains the eerie if not happy calm to be found among a people who have seen it all before and picked up the bill every time.

There is no short-run way out of this conundrum which has built up over several decades of rule by apathy and treachery (there must be a Greek word for it.) An English non-literal but workable translation would be rule by class warfare and the unassailable power structure. Maybe we can get more contemporary: rule in the service of international corporate welfare – which is the ruling 0.01 percent of the US. Headed, of course, by the guy we just “loved meeting” in the White House!

We need to keep the following in mind: Modi’s political life could end if he reverses his August 5 decision. He has ended dialogue with Pakistan by taking IOK out of it. He must overcome the freedom struggle very quickly for his actions to be seen as successful. If the freedom struggle intensifies, he will scale up the repression to unprecedented levels. Meanwhile, he will ask the major powers to restrain Pakistan in its response.

We must also remember that: the US will, among other options, use the FATF and IMF to threaten Pakistan with economic collapse and political isolation. The US has indicated it is more concerned with violations of the LOC than Indian repression. Modi will meet Trump in September in the US and try to get him to publicly back India and renege on any commitment to playing a mediating role between India and Pakistan. Instead, he will try to get Trump to demand Pakistan accept the post-August 5 status quo. The freedom struggle in IOK must continue in these most challenging circumstances. It must continue for at least the rest of the terms of Trump and Modi;

Further: while Pakistan must play a constructive and impartial role in facilitating an Afghan peace, it does not have to specifically pull American chestnuts out of the Afghan fire, given its duplicity and hostility. According to international law and UN resolutions, armed struggle against the forcible denial of internationally acknowledged human and political rights and against repression is legal. Similarly, soliciting and receiving external armed assistance for resistance against illegal occupation and repression is also legal. However, since 9/11 there is a distinct international political inclination to view any armed struggle against State repression and human rights violations as equivalent to terrorism. State repression is not seen as terrorism.

And: Pakistan must find internationally acceptable ways to support the Kashmiri freedom struggle. This cannot be done through sending militant proxies across the LOC even in response to Indian provocations. It is important to persuade both Kabul and the Taliban and other Afghan political entities to publicly take issue with Indian repression in Kashmir including the violation of all UN resolutions concerning Kashmir. The APHC and other erstwhile pro-India parties in IOK (NC and PDP) must get together on a common platform of resisting India’s illegal absorption of Kashmir without any consultations and treating all Muslims in Kashmir and India as suspect and subject to black laws and Hindutva discriminations. They should reiterate their oft-repeated invitation to Kashmiri Pandits to return in complete safety to their homes in the Valley from where they were induced and coerced to leave by Governor Jagmohan Malhotra more than by militants.

A Kashmiri government- in-exile needs to be established whose single demand must be the implementation of UN resolutions on Kashmir if a humanitarian catastrophe is to be avoided. Pakistan must explain to its Kashmiri brethren that Article 257 of the Pakistan constitution gives the full substance of the option available – including a confederal relationship – when it says that the relationship between Pakistan and the state of Jammu and Kashmir (should it wish to accede to Pakistan) shall be determined in accordance with the wishes of the people of that state. This will help prevent India from driving a wedge between Pakistan and the freedom struggle in IOK. Pakistan must similarly constitutionally address the concerns of Gilgit-Baltistan and grant it full provincial status pending a final Kashmir settlement.

After all these efforts at a peaceful settlement if Indian repression in IOK assumes a genocidal aspect, Pakistan must clearly let the world know it will take any and every measure to prevent such a crime, if the international community including the UNSC fail to discharge their UN Charter responsibilities.

If the above is regarded as a soft state’s desperate bluff it will be called immediately. But if it is seen as for real, there is every chance India will sooner or later be compelled to take another look at its strategic blunder to avoid a looming doomsday scenario. This could possibly open a whole new chapter of possible cooperation in South Asia appropriate to the challenge of living in a Century of Climate Change;

And, finally, in emphasizing the likelihood of war in case of an Indian invasion of AJK and/or Pakistan we risk sending the wrong message. The Indians are most unlikely to invade AJK or Pakistan before completing their subjugation of IOK. Unless, of course, Pakistan intensifies its legitimate support to the legitimate Kashmiri resistance to such criminal and inhumane subjugation while the world looks on shaking its head in diplomatic disapproval of both Indian repression and efforts to resist it; and if policy clarity is not acceptable to our movers and shakers they will still, sooner or later, have to tell our Kashmiri brothers and sisters in IOK that they can and will help all they can, but Pakistan’s strategic deterrent is meant to deter Indian aggression; not to protect its “jugular vein.”

Without enduring realism and fierce self-respect informing our commitments, whatever we say will eventually turn out to be just another repeat of deceit and defeat. Surely that cannot be the basis of Naya Pakistan.

Email: ashrafjqazi@gmail.com