Sin of appeasement

The bulldozing of legislation facilitating Indian spy-terrorist Kulbhushan Jhadav in the joint session of parliament was the latest evidence to confirm that “we are in the presence of a disaster of the first magnitude. I fear that we have deeply compromised, and perhaps fatally endangered, our safety and independence. There has been gross neglect and deficiency in our defenses; we have sustained a defeat without a war.”

Thus spoke Winston Churchill in the British parliament – having witnessed Great Britain appeasing Germany and Hitler annexing Sudetenland without firing a single shot. The Pakistani people have witnessed Pakistan appeasing India since 2018 and Modi annexing occupied Jammu & Kashmir (IIOJK) without firing a single shot.

Imran Khan’s (IK) government signaled appeasement from the start. It kept silent on the massacre in southern IIOJK by Indian forces in October 2018. Instead, IK began construction of the Kartarpur Corridor in November 2018.

His desperation emboldened Indian Prime Minister Modi to attack Balakot in February 2019. Indian aircraft violated our international border for the first time in a half century. IK’s precipitous return of captured Indian Air Force Wg Cdr Abhinandan Varthaman to India without any quid pro quo was appeasement, not peace. Thus was squandered the outstanding counter-offensive by the Pakistan Air Force.

An early nadir of IK’s appeasement of Modi appeared in an interview to The New York Times less than two months after Balakot. “Mr Modi’s government might actually be the best possible option for settling the Kashmir conflict,” IK said, “because right-wing Hindus would support Mr Modi in achieving it.”

India harvested the fruit of IK’s appeasement immediately at the United Nations, where China dropped its longstanding objection to the listing of a Pak national as a terrorist. Also at the UN, three months after Balakot, Pakistan backed India’s candidature for a two-year term for non-permanent seat at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

IK wasted in 2018-19 the opportunity to launch a diplomatic assault on India’s human-rights record using three unprecedented reports – two by the UN high commissioner for human rights on Indian abuse of human rights in IIOJK as well as a milestone report on India’s systematic, decades-long torture of Kashmiris.

IK’s visit to Washington DC in July 2019 raised thorny suspicions that have not been allayed more than two years later. Former US President Trump’s offer of mediation with India on Kashmir never materialised. Harder to explain is IK’s statement upon return to Islamabad that “I feel I have won a second world cup”. Exactly eleven days later, India annexed and split IIOJK. India shattered the principal pillar of Pakistan’s foreign policy, but PM Khan’s response was mere rhetoric. The same Modi whose government four months earlier was “the best possible option” overnight became the fascist, Hitler-avatar Modi.

Yet less than a month later, PM Khan reverted to appeasement. During a convention of Sikhs in Lahore, IK offered to India no-first-use of nuclear weapons: “if tension escalates the world will face danger but there will be no aggression from our side.” Director-General ISPR contradicted the prime minister straightaway: “We have no ‘no-first-use’ policy, these are weapons of deterrence”.

IK’s histrionics at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2019 ensued and exposed Pakistan’s diplomatic ruin. Not a single multilateral forum castigated India for breaking international law and violating extant UN Security Council resolutions, as well as violating its commitment not to unilaterally change IIOJK status. It took the Organisation of Islamic Conference fifteen months to issue even a token condemnation. The consultations at the UNSC under the rubric 'India-Pakistan question' have produced so far not a single word of outcome.

IK’s inauguration of the Kartarpur Corridor in November 2019 cemented the impression that Pakistan had accepted as fait accompli India’s assault on IIOJK. IK then failed to capitalise on the strategic opening provided by India-China tensions in Ladakh in the summer of 2020. On the first anniversary of India's annexation of IIOJK, Islamabad descended into farce. The state’s initiatives consisted of one song, one new appellation for Indian-occupied Kashmir, an old map announced as new, and one re-named road.

Once the Indo-Pak intelligence-chief talks began in December 2020, IK deleted even his 'Hitler-fascist' rhetoric. On Kashmir Day 2021, IK said at Kotli AJK and later repeated that “when the people of Kashmir will choose Pakistan Inshallah, then Pakistan will give Kashmiris the right to decide whether they want to become a part of Pakistan or remain independent.”

The ceasefire at the Line of Control (LoC) announced in February this year confused those who believed PM Khan’s repeated assertions that Pakistan will not talk to India until it withdraws its action of August 5, 2019. This strategic confusion deepened at the Islamabad Security Dialogue in March, during which statements appeasing India were the norm.

IK’s march of folly took him to the Foreign Office in May this year, where he attacked Pakistan’s diplomats, live on media. He then told Reuters that Pakistan was ready to restart talks with India if Delhi provides even “a roadmap” towards restoring the previous status of Kashmir. And in an interview to a US entertainment channel, IK declared that “The moment there is a settlement on Kashmir… We will not need to have nuclear deterrents.”

IK has reduced Pakistan’s Foreign Office to express merely 'serious concern' over Modi government’s plans to deepen and expand administrative and demographic changes in Indian-occupied Kashmir. IK’s 2019 decision to support India for UNSC non-permanent membership imploded spectacularly in August 2021. During its presidency of the UNSC that month, India denied Pakistan repeatedly the opportunity to address the UNSC on Afghanistan, only to result in a series of petulant tweets by the foreign minister.

Questions remain: what gains has Pakistan made from appeasing India since 2018? Has IK been able to reduce the misery of Kashmiris in IIOJK even a fraction? Has IK been able to affect any positive change in Indian policy? Has IK been able to convince the world to condemn Modi’s illegal and coercive actions? The answer to these questions is emphatic and unequivocal: no.

Three years of IK’s appeasement of Modi, with all its scandal and shame, and three years of talks with India have not moved Indian policy back a single millimetre. India’s repression of Kashmiris – killings, torture, curfew, communication lockdown, abductions, and rape by Indian security forces – continues unabated and uncensured by the world.

“The responsibility must rest with those who have the undisputed control of our political affairs,” said Churchill. “They neglected to make alliances and combinations which might have repaired previous errors, and thus they left us in the hour of trial without adequate national defense or effective international security... And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning.”

Appeasement might clothe itself in geo-economics or a desire for peace, but it is naked feebleness. It did not work for Britain facing Nazi Germany; it has not worked and will not work for Pakistan facing RSS India. “The sin of weakness”, wrote the poet Iqbal, “is punished by sudden death.”

The writer is a member of the National Assembly. These are his personal views.

Twitter: @kdastgirkhan