Fully support the Kashmir cause

• But avoid sentimentality

The people of Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK) have fought state repression decade after decade but refused to surrender. Arrests, torture, forced disappearances and recourse to pellet guns have failed to break the Kashmiris’ resolve. The latest series of repressive measures including five weeks of shutdown, curfew, blocking of telephone lines and mobile and internet services have added to their miseries but have failed to dampen their spirit or quell their struggle. While Pakistan needs to provide the people of IOK full political and moral support, the Kashmiris don’t need anyone to tell them how to fight their battles.

It is widely understood that costly wars fought between India and Pakistan failed to resolve the Kashmir issue. With both sides possessing nuclear weapons a war is all the more inconceivable. Anybody who thinks a war between the two countries will help the Kashmir cause is living in an ivory tower. What Pakistan presently needs to do is to undertake an aggressive diplomatic campaign to expose the BJP government’s Hindu supremacist policy and its consequences for the region. Pakistan has to forge international opinion in favour of a peaceful resolution of the Kashmir issue in line with the wishes of the Kashmiri people. For the time being, Pakistan needs to concentrate on measures required to keep the issue of the forcible annexation of Kashmir alive through public protests, dispatch of multi-party delegations to important capitals, write-ups in international media, presentations at the prominent think tanks and mobilising world figures for a peaceful resolution of the Kashmir issue.

Pakistan has to discard unrealistic notions spread by politically backward elements. It was fanciful to expect Gulf regimes that equate democratic struggles in their countries with terrorism to support the Kashmiris’ democratic movement for self-determination. Gleeful predictions of a Pakistan-India war in “October or November” are thoroughly senseless, misleading and dangerous for the country. China has numerous disputes with India but supports their resolution through talks while strengthening its economy and gaining prestige in the comity of nations. This is what it expects Pakistan also to do. And remember, no country in the world would ever support India or Pakistan to initiate nuclear strikes. So better stop hurling the threat.