The back and forth between India and Pakistan that has been ongoing since Kashmir erupted in protest once again after Burhan Wani’s killing has led to another set of violations of the Line of Control. With both countries celebrating their Independence Days with traditional vitriol, it could be that some of the Indian troops stationed on the border in the Haveli district started to get a little over excited on Pakistan’s Independence Day as artillery shells made their way across the border for around six hours. Pakistani troops responded in kind. The trouble is that this over-excited state is one that is shared by Indian politicians. After Pakistan’s High Commissioner in India Abdul Basit repeated Pakistan’s well-known position on Kashmir’s right to self-determination, members of India’s ruling BJP began to demand that Basit be sent back to Pakistan for using his office to fuel terrorism in India. This, of course, is nothing but a way of getting rid of the real issue. Basit did not state anything Pakistan has never raised before. It is Pakistan’s well-considered position that the Kashmiri people have the right to determine their own future. Pakistan cannot be expected not to repeat its position in light of what are clear human rights violations by Indian troops inside Kashmir after the recent set of protests in the region.
The trouble is that both countries are in no mood for diplomacy at the time. The other country is available as a ready-made excuse in the face of both India and Pakistan’s failure to deal with serious issues within their own territories. What is more troubling is the possibility that the diplomatic war of words could translate into another extended period of firing across the LoC. The 2003 agreement to maintain ceasefire along the working border was almost put to shreds by months of cross-border fire between India and Pakistan last year when over 70 civilians from both sides lost their lives. The gunfire across the LoC serves no purpose: strategic or military. Neither of the two countries defends it as an instrument of policy. But somehow, the troops on the border cannot be told to stop using their ammunitions, as if the LoC were some kind of training range. We hope that the matter can be stemmed here, with both countries stopping unnecessarily provoking the other. Sartaj Aziz offered a way out by inviting India to open the lines of communication on Kashmir once again. It is unlikely that India will take this invitation up. Instead, it has insisted that the only thing it is willing to talk about is reclaiming the Pakistani-side of Kashmir. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, ever the hawk, went much further in his August 15 speech. In an extraordinary diatribe, he condemned Pakistan as a supporter of terrorism and said he had been thanked a lot by the people of Balochistan, Gilgit and what he referred to as Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. These thanks Modi has received are surely a figment of his imagination but reveal a lot about how he views Pakistan. It is not surprising Modi has turned his attention to Azad Kashmir as a way of deflecting attention away from his country’s brutal occupation of Kashmir. In the end, all this anger is merely posturing and cannot resolve Kashmir or any other issues between Pakistan and India. It is time for empty posturing and empty shelling to be rooted out of our regional politics. https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/142764-Empty-posturing
War of words between Pakistan and India: edit in Daily Times, Aug 16, 2016
Things are spiralling from bad to worse as Pakistan and India has engaged in a war of unsavoury words. Tensions soured as the resistance movement in Kashmir became violent following the death of Burhan Wani, a Kashmiri separatist commander. Pakistan adopted a line that diplomatically supported the Kashmiri resistance movement, and condemned Indian atrocities in the Indian-occupied Kashmir. However, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation’s Home Ministers’ summit held in Islamabad presented an opportunity to initiate dialogue on its sidelines as Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh also attended the conference. However, the opportunity was lost as Singh decided to repeat the same old allegations on Pakistan in a thinly veiled manner in his speech, and Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar rebutted him in his address. What can be characterised as churlish behaviour at best, the way this conference was handled by both the ministers naturally did not fare well for thawing the icy tension between the two states. However, Pakistan in a step to reinitiate dialogue presented a proposal to carry out dedicated talks on Kashmir, which was rejected by India, as it had said that India would talk about “relevant” issues that at the time are “cross-border terrorism.” Meanwhile, Pakistan’s High Commissioner in New Delhi dedicated Pakistan’s Independence Day to independence in Kashmir. This drew a virulent response from India’s ministry of external affairs, which hurled allegations at Pakistan for exporting “international terrorism, cross-border infiltrators, weapons, narcotic and fake currency.”
Sadly, there is nothing new about any of this as Pakistan and India have long held intransigent positions, and indulged in political point scoring that has effectively precluded the possibility of any meaningful progress. Whether it is Pakistan that wants to talk about Kashmir on every possible forum, or India that wants to talk about cross-border terrorism without putting Kashmir on the table, the real losers in this state of perpetual enmity are the people of Pakistan, India and Kashmir. India cannot declare Kashmir to be an irrelevant issue when in the same breath it asserts that it is a bilateral issue that must not have any third party interference. India would have to realise that Kashmir is the main bone of contention between Pakistan and India, and it alone has the key to attain lasting peace between the two states. Meanwhile, Pakistan would also have to address India’s security concerns and apprehend all those who are involved in cross-border terrorism.
However, amidst all this Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi’s 15th August speech was particularly confrontational and in appallingly bad taste. Needless to say, it did not befit the prime minister of a country to so brazenly declare that the people of Balochistan, along with Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, had “thanked him a lot in the past few days.” While Azad Kashmir is a disputed territory, and Pakistan itself has not given Gilgit-Baltistan full constitutional status, but going so far as to include Balochistan in the list was clearly over the line. Particularly considering the sensitive situation in Balochistan, and repeated Pakistani accusations of the role of Indian intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing’s, in stirring up instability there, Modi’s remarks would worsen Pakistan-India relations, and give teeth to Pakistan’s allegations. Notwithstanding the utter disregard for international norms while talking about a country’s internal matter, maybe Modi should have remembered the insurgencies in India’s northeast and the alleged human rights abuses there. Even former minister of external affairs of India and Congress leader, Salman Khurshid, criticised Modi saying that Balochistan is Pakistan’s internal matter, and he should not have talked about it.
At the moment, things do indeed look bleak between Pakistan and India, and it would require extraordinary diplomatic manoeuvring to reshape relations from here. http://dailytimes.com.pk/editorial/16-Aug-16/war-of-words-between-pakistan-and-india
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