The satisfaction New Delhi drew from President Barack Obama's intended omission of Kashmir from his public statements in India during his recent visit, has proved to be short-lived. Less than a week later, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei compared the Kashmiris' intifada with the Palestinians' and appealed to the "elite of the Islamic Ummah" to support their struggle for self-determination.
In his message on the day of Hajj, the Iranian leader described Kashmir as a "nation", like Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq that are engaged "in struggle and resistance against the aggressions of the United States and the Zionist regime". May be some would like to interpret the Iranian leader's statement as a riposte to President Obama's negative stance on the uprising in the India-occupied Kashmir. But that is not the fact; since June this year the Ayatollah has commented on this issue at least thrice. Given his stature in Iranian polity, his is essentially a moral position, and he has addressed the Muslims world over where he sees "the expanding wave of Islamic awakening".
But overcome by the first flush of American courtship, the Indian leadership would like to walk an extra mile to prove its worthiness of the new-found love. So this demarche, conveying the Indian government's protest, delivered to the Iranian charge d'affaires in New Delhi. Particularly cut up with the Ayatollah's labelling of Kashmir as a 'nation', the Iranian CDA Raza Alaei was informed that New Delhi was "deeply disappointed" over the spiritual leader's comment. Not only this, the Indian mission in the United States also did whatever it could to browbeat Tehran. In a vote moved by the anti-Iran members on the floor of the General Assembly about the state of human rights in Iran, the Indian delegate abstained, as its previous record of voting against - a move New Delhi says was deliberate and is believed to have been planned as retaliation. If President Obama had shifted his position on Kashmir in order to do business with India, it would be foolhardy to imagine that Ayatollah Ali Khemenei would remain silent on the bloodbath in the Held Kashmir. As to the size of the pogrom in the occupied territory, here is a stunning figure released by the Kashmir Media Service coincidental to the Universal Children Day; since January 1989 till date, 107,392 children have been orphaned in the Held Kashmir.
The New Delhi's counteraction to Tehran's stand in support of the Kashmiris freedom-struggle is too audacious to be treated as a routine diplomatic manoeuvre. India is trying to suggest that it would match the tremendously popular uprising, with equal brutality inside Kashmir and vicious diplomacy overseas. The extent to which Indian authorities would go to snuff out the ongoing freedom movement is reflected in their treatment of the Kashmiri leaders on the day of Eid. While anti-Indian protests rocked the entire Kashmir Valley, Kashmiri leaders were stopped from attending Eid prayers. Even while Indian repressive rule in Kashmir has been sharply criticised by the Indian public, including the Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy, the rulers in New Delhi have shed all their pacifist pretensions using muscle to crush the freedom movement. Over the last five months, more than a hundred Kashmiri protesters have been killed by Indian security forces, fully armed, both with sophisticated weapons and inhuman and unjust laws.
Given India's newly discovered potential to emerge as a counterweight to China, India has become an object to woo by the anti-China capitals. A kind of China-containment strategy is being implemented. Of course the United Nations is one such front where this strategy is more visible. No wonder that India then had succeeded in getting Kashmir removed as an 'unresolved issue' from the UN General Assembly agenda. One may agree with the novel argument explaining away this omission, but this does indicate that our mission in New York and the Foreign Office in Islamabad had no inkling whatsoever as to what the Indians were up to. It looks as if the appeasement-ridden CBMs, including the Musharraf-vintage 'out of the box' solution of the Kashmir problem - the General had readily agreed to accept Kashmir 'problem' as merely an 'issue' - and the back-channel diplomatic efforts are still alive and enjoy official approval. But that won't work anymore, now that the third generation of Kashmiris are out on the streets for freedom - at any cost. Pakistan must harmonise its foreign policy with the reality on the ground in Kashmir to remain relevant.
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