Daily Times

The rare closed-door consultations (on August 16) on Kashmir by the Security Council ended without any outcome or statement from the powerful 15-nation UN organ, was concluded with a majority mindset(albeit a show of power- play) to settle the issue via bilateral negotiations between New Delhi and Islamabad Kashmir. The UNSC policy of not settling the decades- old Kashmir dispute has to be seen within the frame of great power’s deep state ploy. By subverting the constitution, ignoring India’s Shimla obligation to ensure that the “principles and purposes” of the UN charter govern relations with Pakistan, and removing Kashmiris’ right to self-determination, Modi has placed himself squarely in the wrong. To argue, as he does, that Kashmir is solely an internal matter is to blatantly ignore the realities of 70-plus years of strife.

While the obvious Hindu-nationalist motivations behind the integration of Kashmir are quite clear to see, there appears a political thought behind the act which probably maintains that Premier Modi, over the course of his leadership, has tested the waters in his dealings with Kashmir and Pakistan, coming out successful on each occasion. On top of Modi’s own experience, India has for the first time witnessed the United States take more of a restrained role towards foreign policy. This, coupled with past incidents such as Crimea, and the convenience of the recent Hong Kong protests, has likely made the long and enduring task of revoking Kashmir’s special status somewhat a synchronized development for Modi (but it seems appalling in real terms).

In view of some analysts, Narendra Modi’s India is following the model of authoritarian populism pioneered by Putin’s Russia, Netanyahu’s Israel (West Bank, Gaza), Trump’s America, Duterte’s Philippines while the Hong Kong tragedy is played out on live television, 14 million under-siege Kashmiris suffer a communications blackout. Well over half a million Indian troops are on their streets. Armoured cars and jeeps are outside every row of shops and at the end of every road. The unprecedented communications blackout imposed on Indian-administered Kashmir could signal a departure in the way in which democratic states clamp down on information in contentious areas, the UN’s special rapporteur on freedom of expression, David Kaye, has said.

Understandably, Russia and China don’t always coordinate every aspect of their foreign policies, with the case of their clashing views over Modi’s unilateral actions in Kashmir(on August 5) being the perfect case in point and heralding a new era of “narrative competition” between the two on the one side and being the vector dynamic on UNSC member states’ foreign policy interests on the other. China came out in full support of Pakistan, which was to be expected after India’s moves threatened its administration of Aksai Chin and Home Minister Amit Shah even said that people might die over his country’s claims to that disputed territory as well, while Russia took India’s side and said that its decades-long partner acted within its constitutional framework when annexing Kashmir. That too was to be expected even though Kashmir is Pakistan’s Crimea because the Russian budget is disproportionately dependent on arms exports to India and the South Asian state has many agents of influence embedded in the Eurasian Great Power’s deep state.

The crime of aggression is now virtually recognised by the International Criminal Court, which means that political leaders might one day be prosecuted for launching a war

As for the Kremlin perspective , with the diplomatic and military-intelligence factions of the Russian “deep state” both taking India’s side on Kashmir now, it’s much more difficult for Moscow to regain is credibility as a neutral actor in the region and return to trying to balance South Asian affairs. Consequently, the more pragmatic/neutral military-intelligence faction was compelled to follow the diplomats’ lead once the die was cast and Russia came out in partisan support of India on this issue. Although there was a petition on 12 September to President Trump by four US Senators “to immediately facilitate an end to the current humanitarian crisis” in Indian-administered Kashmir, there has not been one syllable of condemnation by the administration in Washington. London remained silent also. These energetically vociferous supporters of human rights have voiced not the slightest criticism of India for its persecution and imprisonment of innocent Kashmiris. Western media always refer to the 2014 accession by Crimea to Russia as ‘annexation’ by Russia of the land that is historically Russian, whose citizens are predominantly Russian-speaking and Russian-cultured, and whose government held a referendum which overwhelmingly indicated a preference for accession to Russia. And yet conversely, there has been no referendum in Kashmir, as required by the international legislature since 1948.

Notably, one misguided perception holds a premise in international relations which argues while China identified “Occupy Hong Kong” as a mere Western-instilled and instrumentalized plot, India, for its part, decided to fully occupy Kashmir. Russia has extended full support to India on the issue of Kashmir. During the India-Russia Annual Summit on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russia, on September 05 where Valdimir Putin and Narendra Modi gave the joint statement. “The sides underlined the primacy of international law and emphasized their commitment to the purposes and the principles stated in the UN Charter including the inadmissibility of interference in the internal affairs of Member States,” a joint statement said.

In this backdrop, one needs to demystify the impression that If politically Narendra Modi is inspired by Putin’s imitative to annex Crimea and possibly he is equally inspired by Chinese President move to annul the autonomy in Hong Kong, then premier Modi is highly mistaken since the case of Kashmir is by no means similar to Crimea or Hong Kong. Kashmir’s political and legal legacy has unremitting obligations under UNSC resolutions– warranting the notion of self-determination that is certainly not the case with Crimea and Hong Kong and most significantly, Kashmir has been waging the resistance movement against the Indian tutelage for the last many decades.

The impression obsessively floated by the Indian analysts in the West argues: Western democracies like the US, UK and France–view India as a fellow democracy that seeks to uphold the liberal international order– in that they support India’s arguments on Article 370 being an internal matter. But this is not a fair analysis since the mainstream media in the west is paying its heed and attention to the harrowing human rights situation in Kashmir. Kashmir–(apparently a heavily militarized geopolitical tinderbox situated at the crossroads of Central Asia) is undoubtedly a nuclear flush point between New Delhi and Islamabad-which needs a humanitarian resolution backed by the UNSC member states. The crime of aggression is now virtually recognised by the International Criminal Court, which means that political leaders might one day be prosecuted for launching a war. Modi has to understand the gravity of crime he is committing in Kashmir. Kashmiris’ right of self-determination continues to haunt world conscience. The voice of global civil society is echoingday by day in order to save the deprived and dejected Kashmiris from Modi’s detention.

The writer is an independent ‘IR’ researcher and international law analyst based in Pakistan