ON 5 February, the Pakistani nation, as usual, demonstrated its spirit of solidarity with the people of Kashmir—a feeling of affinity that our nation displays towards the people of Kashmir. The fact remains that Kashmir is an organic limb of Pakistan. For the last 76 years, the people of Kashmir have been devoting their lives for the acquisition of freedom from a ruthless Indian yoke. The government of Pakistan, its armed forces and its proud people have promptly stood with the people of Kashmir in their struggle for self-determination in accordance with the UNSC resolutions.
Kashmir & Pakistan: The Kashmir issue is a byproduct of the British colonial project in India that led to a strained relationship between Pakistan and India. The international community has shown little capacity or interest to resolve the issue for 76 long years. Pakistan’s political philosophy intrinsically lies in its ideological mooring where Kashmir holds a centripetal and organic importance—vehemently endorsed by the sayings of Allama Iqbal and Quid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah—the founder of Pakistan.
Needless to say, Pakistan’s official ideology, Pakistan as a nation-state has been considered incomplete without Kashmir, a Muslim-majority territory contiguous to the Pakistani provinces of Punjab and the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Province. Pakistan has adopted a policy to maintain and justify the ideological relevance of the two-nation theory and to warrant its regional security narrative vis-à-vis India. Moreover, the Kashmir dynamics seen from its territorial saliency and geographical affiliation establishes its unique value for the people of Pakistan. Kashmir is an integral part and an organic limb of Pakistan. It is the pivot of the Kashmiris who, for decades, have been the victims of ruthless subjugation of their rights. It is a utilitarian geopolitical interest that the western countries do ignore the plight of Kashmiris for a larger geopolitical game at play against China, but like Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the Indian-propelled human catastrophe in Kashmir seems to render greater political and security risks for the South Asian region.
India’s violation of IHL and IHRL in Kashmir: Since 1989, the international humanitarian law applicable to the conflict in Kashmir is found in Article 3 common to the four Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949-known as “Common Article 3.” Common Article 3 provides international law and standards governing the conduct of parties in an internal armed conflict, including government forces and insurgents. Common Article 3 provides that: (1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.
Modi’s settlers’ colonialism, India’s illegal Kashmir annexation: it is highly suggestible that the Modi Government intends to encourage Hindu settlers as a way of altering the demographic balance in the Vale. Given that almost two million people – mostly though not all Muslim – have been deviously migrated to the Muslim majority areas. Arguably, the issue of Pundits is being used to create a state within the state on the lines of Israel, non-local residents can now get domicile and buy properties there. The world must note the growing Indo-Zionist policy syncretism vis-v-vis unjust Jews and Hindus settlements in Palestine and Kashmir.
According to the Hard Law review, ‘’August 5,… marked a critical turning point in the Kashmir dispute. Although the colonial lens has been applied to Kashmir in the past, the abrogation suggests that the settler colonial lens may be more fitting. Settler colonialism is premised on the recruitment of a settler class whose goal is not only to occupy indigenous land but also to eliminate the indigenes who stand in their way. Thus, as non-Kashmiris flood the region as new residents, India’s identity as a settler state comes to the fore’’. Needless to say, it has been Modi’s policy per se to transform the native Kashmiri state based on the domicile status of the Kashmiris into the Hindu-dominion state via alleged migration from other parts of India. With the Modi Government acting unilaterally to revoke Article 370, the status quo ante has become even more dangerous for the future of a nuclear South Asian peace and stability.
India’s promoted centrifugalism in the region: To divert international attention from the Kashmir issue, it has been a persistent policy of the Modi Government since 2014, to politically destabilize Pakistan. In order to implement this centrifugal design, New Delhi has been backing an agenda of promoting domestic terrorism in Pakistan. Time and again, India with the help of the non-state actors has been exporting terrorism into Pakistan. Since The US-NATO forces have left Afghanistan in August 2021, India has been pampering up the TTP network in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province while simultaneously motivating the BLA and BLF agents in Balochistan. In recent years, India has been engaged in promoting this nefarious agenda against Pakistan.
Kashmiris’ right to self-determination: Since the very partition of the Subcontinent, Pakistan has historically supported the Kashmiri Movement for self-determination in Indian-occupied Jammu & Kashmir, both diplomatically and politically. For the Pakistanis and the Kashmiris as well, Kashmir remains an incomplete agenda of the partition of the subcontinent. The United Nations officially acknowledges Kashmir as a disputed territory, a consensus upheld by the entirety of the global community save for India. The fact is that all the principles on the basis of which the Indian subcontinent was partitioned by the British in 1947 justify Kashmir becoming a part of Pakistan: the State had a majority Muslim population, and it not only enjoyed geographical proximity with Pakistan but also had essential economic linkages with the territories constituting Pakistan.
To conclude, the Kashmir issue remains core to regional peace and stability. Kashmir holds a very significant position in the eyes of Pakistani armed forces who are profoundly concerned about India’s HR violations in Kashmir. Against this backdrop, General Asim Munir reiterated the significance of a peaceful solution to the longstanding Kashmir dispute, in a latest meeting with the UN’s SG Antonio Guterres, while saying the peace in South Asia will remain elusive till then.
—The writer, an independent ‘IR’ researcher-cum-international law analyst based in Pakistan, is member of European Consortium for Political Research Standing Group on IR, Critical Peace & Conflict Studies, also a member of Washington Foreign Law Society and European Society of International Law. He deals with the strategic and nuclear issues.
Email: [email protected]
views expressed are writer’s own.
