Covid-19, Kashmir and us

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

No one knows how long the Covid-19 pandemic will last. Or if it will be followed by sequential waves over decades, some of which may be much more lethal than the present wave.

How many will die before an effective vaccine is available or the virus mutates into less lethal forms? If we wait for the acquisition of ‘herd immunity’ experts say it might require 80 or 90 percent of a population to acquire immunity through infection. Given a world population of eight billion and a death rate of two to three percent of those infected this could mean a global death tally of between 128 and 216 million people! This would still not match the Black Death in the 14th century which may have killed 200 million people out of a global population of just 500 million.

No successful vaccine for the corona family of viruses, of which Covid-19 is a member, has been developed. Dr David Nabarro, the WHO’s special envoy for the coronavirus, says it is quite possible humanity will have to live with the fear of Covid-19 forever. Containment (not cures) through therapeutic vaccines; non-pharmaceutical interventions; radically changed lifestyles; respect for science, reason and peace; and economic recovery strategies compatible with workers’ health and welfare imperatives will have to become a central political focus for the future.

A successful vaccine may yet be developed but, as Dr Fauci cautions, talk of 12-18 months is more best-case possibility than science-based prediction. Normally, it takes much longer for an effective vaccine to be developed and made available globally.

Moreover, Covid-19 is not the only ‘grim reaper’ threatening humanity. Catastrophic Climate Change; the risks of nuclear war; AI-generated ‘under the skin’ surveillance; undetectable fake news; and the ever greater concentration of political, economic and technological power in the hands of the 0.001 percent ‘masters of the universe’ are far greater threats to humanity.

Unless a Green New Deal can be put in place before the decade is out, global warming will transition from being cyclical and incremental to being exponential and irreversible as feedback loops multiply. Every year will be warmer than the previous year until the world’s only globally polluting and suicidal species is either wiped out or radically changes its behaviour, beginning NOW. State-sponsored Corporate Capitalist Militarism’s control of technology, its essentially fascist greed, class warfare, and human culling propensity is the world’s most lethal virus.

Incorrigible charlatans like Trump and several others like him around the world defy a scientific and moral consensus with regard to pandemics, climate, human rights, justice and war. Despite their diseased and inflated egos, they are no more than servile servants of the wretchedly insatiable rich and powerful. They are the elected enemies of their own people. They are rewinding the Doomsday Clock to just seconds before midnight!

No wonder the UN secretary-general has called for a worldwide ceasefire and the peaceful settlement of long-standing disputes to enable the world to come together to fight a whole range of global menaces that demand global cooperation on a scale utterly unprecedented. Unsurprisingly, Trump has rejected the UNSG’s call. How Satanic can one be?

Which brings us to a menace closer to home. This is the double lockdown imposed by India on Indian Occupied Kashmir. One lockdown is designed to destroy the Muslim majority of IOK as a political entity. The other is part of the larger RSS/Hindutva project to destroy the 200 million Muslim minority of India as a viable political community anywhere in India. Both constitute the building blocks of genocide according to the 1948 Genocide Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and the Genocide Alerts issued by Genocide Watch immediately after the elimination of the State of Jammu and Kashmir (IOK) by Modi on August 5, 2019.

Modi’s strategy has been to seduce and divide the 200 million plus Dalits on the one hand, and destroy the 200 million plus Indian Muslim as a political entity on the other, to make permanent the political dominance of the fascist RSS/BJP/Hindutva ideology in India. Domestically, the Congress Party has been eliminated as a national rival. Externally, Pakistan far more than China, is the obstacle to be overcome since China is an obstacle that: (a) cannot be overcome; and (b) is not seen as a specific threat to the Hindutva ideology.

Most countries have ably or incompetently sought to combat the coronavirus to save their people. Modi’s India, however, regards the majority of IOK, whom it claims to be Indian, as hostile and indeed enemies of India. It regards its own Muslims as unwanted and untrustworthy and therefore expendable. At one time India, albeit illegitimately, claimed IOK as its “only Muslim majority state” to prove its secular credentials.

IOK as a state is now eliminated and its Muslim majority is being directly ruled from Delhi by a Hindu Rashtra whose national ideology openly proclaims Muslims can never be equal citizens of India. There is no pretence. It is blatantly honest and wicked. It is genocidal and totally inimical to peace in the Subcontinent. It is being implemented by the massive use of force in IOK, the suppression of Indian Muslims, and military threats against AJK and Pakistan.

Pakistan believes diplomacy alone can resolve this challenge. It cannot. Yes, the Western world is upset with India’s treatment of Kashmir and the Muslims of India. But, far more importantly, it is determined never to compel India to revise its policies against its own will. It sympathizes with India’s Kashmir dilemma due to the fact it has absolutely no support in either the Kashmir Valley or Azad Kashmir. So the Western effort is to relentlessly press Pakistan to allow India to overwhelm Kashmiri resistance in the Valley without forcing it to resort to full-scale genocide and/or invade AJK or Pakistan!

Pakistan will be told to reconcile itself with the loss of Kashmir, mend fences with India, and maintain “political/social distance” from China. However, by unilaterally changing the status of IOK on August 5, 2019, India has effectively denounced the Simla Agreement, eliminated the LOC which was based on it, and rendered bilateral dialogue with Pakistan, including dialogue on Kashmir, almost impossible.

What should Pakistan do? Diplomacy and lawfare are, of course, essential and must be intensified. But they can never be sufficient. The humanitarian and political situation in IOK is indescribably horrible. The people have been under a near total lockdown – or rather military siege-cum-occupation – for well over nine months.

Covid-19 has shown that people around the world cannot tolerate a strict lockdown beyond two weeks. IOK is not even allowed anything faster than obsolete and dysfunctional 2G internet. They cannot download even basic survival information. They will not surrender. But they could be overwhelmed. What impact would that have on AJK and Pakistan?

Pakistan will need to follow a two-track policy of: (i) taking the significant political risk of demonstrating to the world that it is ready to patiently explore every opportunity for peace and dialogue with India despite Modi’s arrogant hostility: and (ii) credibly alerting the world that if India nevertheless pursues a genocidal course in Kashmir, Pakistan would respond to it as an existential threat. These tracks are mutually reinforcing, not mutually contradictory. They would also have the best chance of averting both genocide in Kashmir and war with India. They could even open up a new chapter in Pakistan-India relations.

Email: ashrafjqazi@gmail.com