Dr Muhammad Khan
FOLLOWING the offer for the mediation over Kashmir by President Trump, Indian Army geared up its brutalities in the occupied Jammu and Kashmir. Besides, its political leadership has intensified activities for deceitfully diluting Article 35-A and finding ways to undo the special status of the State under Article-370 of Indian Constitution. Indian Army has once again started violating the Line of Control (LoC), firing all along with heavy weapons and even artillery, inflicting casualties on civil population of Azad Kashmir in frustration. Through its media campaigning, India is trying to misreport the initiation of 1999 Kargil conflict and its unfortunate political end. Through psychological warfare, Indian Government and its media is building a narrative to create rifts among the troops and officers of Pak Army on one hand and between the senior and junior officers on the other. The reality is that, ill-trained Indian Army could do nothing to evict the Pakistani troops from Kargil and Dras area of Kashmir until fateful day of 4 July 1999.
On that day, once Pakistani troops were ordered to pull out from their posts as a result of political decision through an agreement between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and President Bill Clinton for maintaining the LoC, they suffered physical losses including casualties due to heavy Indian artillery shelling. The assurances given to former Prime Nawaz Sharif by then US President (Clinton) for his personal interest towards resolution of Kashmir dispute, fell-flat and dissipated somewhere between Washington and Islamabad. In fact, the powerful Indian lobby alongside Jewish lobby played a very dominant role in betraying President Clinton and later President Obama over the efforts they might had intended to undertake for facilitating dispute resolution. President Donald Trump has reiterated now to play a mediatory role for the resolution of this apparently complicated dispute. How much determination and sincerity would be undertaken by him, only time will tell us, since Indian lobby is much more effective in all Western capitals including the US, today. Besides, the strong US Establishment is standing behind India and Indian lobbyists. It is worth mentioning that many in US government, and Western governments including the pseudo scholars, intellectuals, think-tanks and columnists kept their guns pointed towards Pakistan and never lowered their muzzles. Among them some notable are Declan Walsh, Seymour Hersh, Christian Fair, Steve Cole, Brian Stelter, Christina Lamb and many others. They are being fed by people like Hussain Haqqani, the so-called Pakistani losers. Lawrence Sellin is a US Army retired reservist colonel from New Jersey. In many of his articles he blamed Pakistan for duplicity that caused the US to lose Afghan war. He has been a staunch critic of Pak-China friendship and blames this partnership as a power imbalance in the region.
In one of his articles “China-Pakistan Alliance a Threat” published in the Indian Defence News, he openly said that the Americans need to recognize that Pakistan is not a friend of the United States, but a staunch ally of China. Taking a towline from CPEC he made further ingress and looks the liberty with Balochistan and openly named CPEC as a reason for so-called human rights violation in the province besides terming it as official Pakistani state policy to suppress ethnic self-determination. So much so that he called Pakistan as the Yugoslavia of South Asia. He pursues a narrative, “A successful Pak-China partnership and cooperative mechanism would mean isolation of India; therefore, US must support India.” In fact, he is mistrusted even in his own state, where people even called him as the ‘Disinformation Campaigner’. He is normally taunted as a creepy piece of work and general readers are usually warned not to take him seriously. Sellin’s bio declared him as a PhD in physiology. Hence the moral of the story is that idiots come from all walks of life. Sellin’s PhD just means that he’s a Satan with certification. During his joint media interaction with Prime minister Imran Khan, President Trump made a mention of a request made by Prime Minister Modi for playing a role through US mediation. Indian Government has denied any such request made by Prime Minister Modi. Some in the Indian political circles are even trying to convince the domestic audience and international community that President Trump might have misunderstood the very sophisticated English of Prime Minister Modi. Salman Khurshid, the former Indian Minister for External Affairs, even said, “Maybe Prime Minister Modi wanted to say why you don’t meditate for Yoga, and he thought Modi was asking to mediate.” It was a problem of communication. This clarification by such a senior politician is a joke in itself, since ‘diplomacy is all about communication and if you are not able to communicate properly, what kind of diplomacy you are asking for’. In his opinion, President Trump might have confused ‘meditate’ with ‘mediate’ as if English is the mother tongue of Modi and an estranged language for Donald Trump!
Nevertheless, Indian media and some of the BJP political leaders have declared President Trump as liar, claiming that no such request has ever been made by Modi or Indian Government. The truth is occupied Jammu and Kashmir has slipped out of Indian control. Trump is a very shroud leader and his memory is intact with a very clear understanding of English language. In the first two years of his rule, Trump made drastic changes in the US domestic and foreign policy. He has been able to put the sinking US economy back on track. Then, he has been elected by a civilized community, unlike like the remote Indian masses, which still drink cow urine and eat the patties, made from the cow dung. Furthermore, sprinkling of cow urine is said to have a spiritual cleansing effect for Hindus. In the field of militancy, BJP and RSS are taking India to another extreme, where only Hindus are allowed to live in India and all others have to leave this land of Hindutva. The factual position is that President Trump has understood and identified this Indian mindset. He thus, decided to expose the self-centred and militant attitude of India. Besides, Trump has also identified the Indian military brutalities in the IoK. He has the habit of thinking out of the box and away from what the US strong Establishment thinks in terms of their national interests and long-term strategic objectives. Pakistan desires a peaceful resolution of Kashmir dispute as per wishes of its subjects. Pakistan would also expect the western governments and President Trump to stop the lobbyists, who wrongly plead the Indian case in almost all western capitals in lieu of heavy Indian funding.
— The writer is Professor of Politics and International Relations at International Islamic University, Islamabad.
