Daily Times

Prime Minister Imran Khan’s narrative on Kashmir is so faulty that it is not taking us any where. His repetition of rhetoric as if it is for the first time Kashmir issue has been taken up by any one when the fact is that it has always been our core issue since partition. Only success globally it ever achieved was when the government of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto lobbied for the All Parties Harriet Conference (APHC) to get observer status at the OIC.

The second biggest achievement ever that Kashmiri cause acquired was when for the first time a major European political party-the Labour Party- acknowledged it as a world peace threatening issue in 1995 and considered it as part of unfinished agenda of the partition in 1947 left over as Raj’s legacy. Since it was Labour Party that brought about partition in 1947, it was considered its moral and political responsibility to resolve it. Indeed, from that achievement onward there has been no forward movement except blowing of hot, talking of imminent nuclear conflagration and various attempts at resuming the composite dialogue.

Significant contribution of the present government is that it has made Kashmir a fixed agenda for the pep talk to be regularly given by Prime Minister Khan who has since his ‘selection’ grown too found of listening to his jingoistic voice and his expression of English language much like Don Quixotic swipes.

Indeed, in context to his televised speeches much too often with the same text and plethora of charges against his political opponents one is reminded of great Urdu poet Ghalib’s famous verse-‘with what face would you go to Ka’aba with your felonious record of misdeeds’-when you accuse Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi of imposing reign of terror in occupied Kashmir when the human rights record of Pakistan under Khan’s rule is as much of fascist as that of Modi’s.

If Modi is found to be oppressive with his Muslim opponents in Kashmir, so is Khan full of vengeance with his opposition denying space to much needed national unity and cohesion to pursue a common agenda for helping Kashmiri population

There is a consensus that never before in Pakistan’s history media was as repressed as now and free voices as strangulated as now. When I tell younger generation journalists that General Zia’s martial law was the worst, when he hanged most popular elected leader of Pakistan on a trumped up murder charge to eliminate him from the political scene. I reminded them of how our hair used to stand at their ends at the mid night knocks at our doors, when journalists were picked up for writing the truth and noting but the whole truth that too in the national interest, when journalists were tied with their four limbs on an inquisition like contraptions in public stadiums to be whipped mercilessly to instil fear in the masses and to castrate their political will to oppose military dictatorship. Their answer to me is that it was all covert while now everything now is overt. You write something and much before the ink gets dried, you are hijacked in the way and taken by official kidnappers to their dreaded dungeons of oppression never to be heard again.

Prime Minister Khan indeed needs to be told that his Kashmir narrative in the global context becomes meaningless when he is countered by assassinated Benazir Bhutto’s son Bilawal Bhutto accusing his government of conspiring to kill his father ex-president Asif Ali Zardari when he is deliberately denied medical treatment for his fast deteriorating health condition that includes uncontrolled diabetes, high blood pressure, a serious heart condition and spondylitis of the back. Any further deterioration for want of treatment could God forbid lead to fatal consequences and surely one major political opponent less for Imran Khan.

Notwithstanding the charges against Zardari or the former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, even as accused persons they cannot be denied medical treatment for their serious ailments. Whatever is being deliberately done to them will be counterbalancing Imran Khan’s Kashmir hullabaloo. World is watching closely the treatment meted out to former elected President and Prime Minister and the political opponents of PTI government and in its eyes it is as fascistic as is the oppression inflicted on the population of Indian held Kashmir being kept under military siege by Modi Sarkar.

In his most recent telecast to the nation Prime Minister Khan lamented a great deal over the contemptuous lack of support from the members of Islamic Ummah where there is a race among members to outrun each other in rewarding Prime Minister Modi with their countries highest civil award for his ‘contribution to global peace and humanitarian causes’. Not only that, worst slap was inflicted by Imran Khan’s most trusted newly acquired friend American President Trump who won his heart for his alleged keenness to act as mediator between Pakistan and India over Kashmir which has so far proved to be noting more than a pep talk to take Pakistani Prime Minister on a joy ride to cuckoo land. Indeed, President Trump is reported to have made mention of Kashmir as a dispute to his profound Indian strategic partner Modi and both agreed that it is a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan that could be resolved by bilateral talks. President Trump must have spilled cold water on IK’s hopes of him taking up the Kashmir issue with Prime Minister Modi. Surely, in a nutshell, all that was built by Khan and his pokerfaced foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi fell flat with a loud thud on the barren ground.

In the given scenario with no hope of any substantive support from the Ummah and much talk of the same from other otherwise friendly countries call for a change in the narrative. If Modi is found to be oppressive with his Muslim opponents in Kashmir, so is Khan full of vengeance with his opposition denying space to much needed national unity and cohesion to pursue a common agenda for helping Kashmiri population to achieve its goal of right of self-determination given to it by the UN Resolutions for impartial plebiscite and as solemnly agreed to by India’s first prime minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru as non-negotiable agenda for the resolution of the disputed state.

The writer is former High Commissioner of Pakistan to UK and a veteran journalist