Nilesh Kunwar
Two months ago, the Adviser to Pakistan’s Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs and National Security Sartaj Aziz informed the National Assembly that “The Prime Minister (Nawaz Sharif) will also raise the issue of RAW’s (India’s spy agency) involvement in Pakistan at the UN General Assembly.” At that time, many believed that since Aziz was not issuing a general statement for public consumption but making a specific commitment to legislators, Islamabad must be having concrete evidence to support its claims. After all, a Head of State addressing the UN General Assembly doesn’t go about accusing another member nation of such a serious misdemeanour without adequate proof to substantiate his allegation.
It was in May that the Pakistan army first accused RAW of “whipping up terrorism in Pakistan” publicly and ever since then the police and security agencies have claimed arresting a large number ‘RAW agents’. In August, law enforcement agencies announced apprehension of four ‘RAW agents’ in Lahore while in September ‘RAW agents’ were caught twice- once at Wagah and more recently in Kurram agency. If one goes by the claims made by the security agencies and police that all the arrested persons had admitted that they were working for RAW and were involved in terror related activities and sectarian attacks, then this would have been ample evidence to thoroughly expose the dirty games that New Delhi was playing in Pakistan. However, while addressing the UN general assembly, all Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif did was to utter a one- liner that “Wisdom dictates that our immediate neighbor refrains from fomenting instability in Pakistan.”
Certainly, Mr Sharif is not such a raw politician to expect that this wooly accusation of his minus any evidence would be enough to make the UN member states pounce upon New Delhi and force it to mend its ways. Furthermore, use of phrases like “wisdom dictates” and “our immediate neighbor refrains from” lack diplomatic finesse and give this statement a distinct army flavour as it sounds more like a dignified version of the crude military threat- ‘just try and then see what I do to you’! Lastly, the ‘dossiers’ on RAW involvement in Pakistan that Sartaj Aziz was seen waving so proudly were nowhere to be seen! Needless to say, New Delhi easily tore into Sharif’s unproven accusations with Indian foreign office spokesperson Vikas Swarup tweeting “Pakistan’s instability arises from its breeding of terrorists. Blaming neighbors is not a solution.”
A week before the UN general assembly meet, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif declared that Kashmir was a “core issue” which Pakistan would continue raising in all forums. However, while he may have tried his best, he failed to leave any lasting impression on the international community regarding resolution of the Kashmir issue and for this he has nobody but himself (or his script writer) to blame on three accounts. The first mistake that Sharif made was that he got so enthralled when US Secretary of State John Kerry commended him for his pledge not to distinguish between militant groups that he overlooked the fact that Kerry had simultaneously “urged (Nawaz Sharif to take) additional action against the Haqqani Network and Lashkar-e-Toiba.”
Kerry had made it clear to Sharif that notwithstanding the good work that the Pakistan army was doing to curb terrorism, its policy of “good” and “bad” terrorists was not acceptable to the international community. However, despite this polite warning, Sharif still made a clumsy attempt to justify militancy in Kashmir by stating that “Unfortunately, some seek to use the global campaign against terrorism to suppress the legitimate right of occupied peoples to self-determination.” While this illogical defence of violence may not have convinced anyone, it must have certainly reminded the audience of how Islamabad was still following its policy of “good” and “bad” terrorists and its refusal to bring the masterminds of the 2001 Mumbai massacre to book was adequate proof of this for everyone to see! New Delhi capitalised on this with Indian foreign office spokesperson Vikas Swarup rubbing in the point, tweeting “Pakistan is not primary victim of terrorism but of its own policies. It is in fact the prime sponsor of terrorism.”
The second mistake that Sharif made was to hold the UN and its member states responsible for the non implementation of UN resolutions on Kashmir. Here Sharif made an unpardonable error of wrongly accusing the UN for something that Islamabad is actually guilty of. The fact is that it is Islamabad that has refused to honour the UN resolutions on Kashmir that mandates the withdrawal of its armed forces from Pakistan administered Kashmir (PaK) before any plebiscite can take place! In addition, by claiming that New Delhi’s proposal to build a wall along the LoC should not be permitted as Indian administered Kashmir (IaK) is “disputed territory” was a serious diplomatic blunder that Pakistan’s ambassador to the UN made.
In the first place, New Delhi has never made a formal announcement of any such plan and thus Islamabad has shot itself in the foot by unnecessarily tilting windmills. While New Delhi has lost nothing as it has clarified that no such proposal was under consideration, Islamabad has tied itself in knots as now it would not be able to explain to the international community as to how it had ceded parts of PaK (which too becomes “disputed territory” by Pakistan’s analogy) to China,? No great wonder that New Delhi exploited the double standards being displayed by Islamabad through its foreign office spokesperson tweet “Sharif UNGA speech: Pak PM gets foreign occupation right, occupier wrong. We urge vacation of Pak occupied Kashmir.”
The third and biggest mistake that Sharif made was to mention that “Three generations of Kashmiris have only seen broken promises and brutal oppression” and that “Over 100,000 have died in their struggle for self-determination.” Though this statement was primarily meant to embarrass New Delhi, it nevertheless must have also compelled the international community to take note of and introspect upon. However, the world knows that though the movement for attaining the right to self determination has been going on ever since the UNSC passed a resolution sanctioning this, killings in Kashmir started in the early nineties and that too only after Pakistan commenced its proxy war against India under the guise of “freedom struggle”. Exploiting this fact, Indian foreign office spokesperson Vikas Swarup reminded the international community of Pakistan’s complicity in cross border terrorism and rubbished Sharif’s key peace proposal regarding demilitarisation of Kashmir by tweeting “To de-militarize Kashmir is not the answer, to de-terrorize Pakistan is.”
This argument also leads onto a comparison of the democratic freedom enjoyed by people of IaK and PaK. In this regards, while people in IaK have the right to speak against accession of J&K to India, the fact that residents of PaK are constitutionally debarred from questioning accession of PaK with Pakistan paints a dismal picture of the state of affairs in PaK. The currently circulating video showing residents of PaK protesting against Government being subjected to inhuman treatment and harrowing brutality by security force personnel further buttresses the opinion shared by many that residents of PaK are anything but free!
The most surprising thing is Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s belated announcement that the dossiers on Indian interference in Pakistan’s internal affairs and fomenting terrorism on Pakistan’s soil would soon be handed over to the UN Secretary General. Was it that he inadvertently forgot to do so earlier? Or could it be that since the dossiers contained nothing substantial, Sharif had intentionally decided on not handing over the same in order to avoid embarrassment? Or was it because Sharif made the mistake of not consulting his namesake who runs the army in his country and was now being forced to hand over the dossiers to the UN Secretary General?
Every Head of State endeavours to project his country in good light and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif too attempted to do the same. Regrettably, he overdid it by trying to find fault with and blame everyone expect Pakistan and as a result his address failed to make any discernable impression on the audience. On analysing Sharif’s address, one finds that it was very high on rhetoric but extremely low in content and this is surprising since Pakistan’s Foreign Office has no dearth of expertise in drafting excellent speeches. Therefore, even though the rumours that Sharif’s speech was either prepared at the General Headquarters Rawalpindi or approved after due amendments by the army may be completely baseless, but these will still take some time to die down!
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