Asking Trump to mediate between Pakistan and India a bad move, says ex-foreign secretary

During these extremely difficult times of oppression, the people of Indian-held Kashmir see Pakistan and the international community as their only hope. Though Pakistan has been active for the Kashmiris since the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government in India revoked the special status of Kashmir in the constitution of India in August 2019, these efforts do not seem enough as more pressure needs to be exerted on India.

Former foreign secretary Riaz Hussain Khokhar, who also served as the high commissioner of Pakistan in India, said this on Wednesday as he spoke as the keynote speaker at the inauguration of a two-day conference on Kashmir, titled ‘Conference on Kashmir: The Way Forward’, organised by the Pakistan Institute of International Affairs (PIIA).

Being the keynote speaker, Khokhar summarised the position of various global stakeholders on Kashmir, especially after the constitutional amendment in India, and brought up many points for the conference to look into. He said that being a staunch proponent of Hindutva ideology, what Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi did to Kashmiris was not surprising but one needed to understand the calculated timing of the decision.

Khokhar said India changed the articles 370 and 35A of its constitution in August 2019 when Eidul Azha was near. He added that due to the overwhelming victory of his party in the elections, Modi was also convinced that his move would be very popular as 88 per cent of the population of India comprised Hindus and Modi thought most of the Hindus would have no problem with his annexation of Kashmir.

The former foreign secretary was of the view that India had also this impression that the global powers would not listen to Pakistan if it deprived Kashmir of its special status. Moreover, India also knew that many influential countries of the Organisation of Islamic Conference would also not support Pakistan due to their economic ties with India, he said.

Khokhar remarked that the weak economy of Pakistan was also a factor that Indian had likely considered before it ordered the clampdown in Kashmir. He said India knew Pakistan would not prefer a war with it, especially when its economy was in trouble.

He said India had always wanted settlements with Pakistan on its own terms. Referring to the past, he said India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who had told the United Nations that India was committed to holding a plebiscite in Kashmir so that its people could exercise their right to self-determination, did not intend to keep his promise. In fact, his own daughter Indira Gandhi once remarked that Nehru was not serious when he talked about plebiscite in Kashmir, the speaker maintained.

According to Khokhar, this impression was wrong that Pakistan had not been following India, and Modi’s act of annexing Kashmir was a surprise to us. He said that though he was not formally part of the government, he knew the Pakistani government had been keeping a weather eye on India.

He said that more than the Hurriyat leaders in Kashmir, the pro-Indian leaders of Kashmir such as Mehbooba Mufti, Farooq Abdullah and Omar Abdullah were shocked by the Indian government’s decision. However, he ruled out the possibility of such leaders working in collaboration with the Hurriyat leaders against the Indian government.

Another interesting remark made by Khokhar was that the leadership of anti-Indian Kashmiris had passed on from veteran Hurriyat leaders such as Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Yasin Malik. Yet he said he did not know who the new leaders of the oppressed people of the Indian-held Kashmir were.

He was full of praise for some Indians such as Arundhati Roy who wrote against the Indian oppression in Kashmir in a more effective manner than Pakistani writers did.

Commenting on the ongoing turmoil in India after the new citizenship law was promulgated there, Khokhar said the ongoing protests had nothing to do with the Kashmir issue, though they had shocked the Indian government and prompted the West to question the secularism in India.

Regarding the possible options for Pakistan, Khokhar said war was definitely not an option. “People don’t understand what a nuclear war is,” he said, adding that we should realise that when we cannot handle a bus accident in this city, handling a nuclear war is something beyond our imagination.

He, however, asserted that we should not be afraid of war in case India opts for it. If war happens, it needs to be India’s initiative, he remarked.

Khokhar said the United Nations Security Council was reluctant to play its role as the United States (US), United Kingdom and France did not want to go against India. Approaching the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court could also be Pakistan’s options, he said, adding that but many formalities were required before these institutions could be involved. He also stressed the need for a massive worldwide campaign to highlight the Indian violations of human rights in Kashmir. In the speaker’s words, such a campaign “is yet to be launched”.

He also lamented the role of the OIC, saying that all it did on the Kashmir issue was coming up with pathetic statements. “I do not know what will energise the OIC.”

The former foreign secretary also advised against using backchannels for diplomacy, saying that they mostly caused misunderstandings. He recalled the use of backchannel diplomacy during Musharraf’s era which eventually resulted in both the countries accepting the status quo on Kashmir. “It is best to only involve formal channels [of diplomacy].”

Khokhar also dismissed the idea of asking US President Donald Trump to mediate between Pakistan and India. He said no one took Trump seriously, including the deep state within the US. He added that in the present times, India was a strategic partner of the US against China, and if the US acted as a mediator, it would pressuriaw Pakistan into accepting the status quo.

The speaker ended his speech with stressing the role of the media. He said Pakistan needed to make a media strategy to make the world aware of Indian transgressions. He said the news stories published in New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian and other reputed papers made the world aware of the situation in Kashmir.