Post 370 Kashmir has no place for UN office
Improved prospects for peace in Kashmir must trigger the closing of a redundant Cold War relic — the United Nations office in Srinagar.
Recent strikes by Pakistan Air Force in Afghanistan, the last was on Christmas Eve, are a grandchild of the Cold War triggered by American diplomat George Kennan’s 8,000-word telegram from Moscow in 1946 that was realpolitik in its most clinical form; he scorned democracy and saw no American interest in defending American values far from home.
The debate in foreign policy around values versus interests is unresolvable. Yet, America’s partnership with Pakistan, a superb supplier of talent, treasure and time for radical Islam, indicates the inability of countries to calculate long-term self-interest. Meanwhile, improved prospects for peace in Kashmir must trigger the closing of a redundant Cold War relic — the United Nations (UN) office in Srinagar.
Kennan’s Grand Strategy created unusual partnerships. China hosted two American signals intelligence facilities — Korla and Qitai — to monitor Soviet missile testing. America’s Pakistan partnership was partly enabled by India’s mistake of asking for UN intervention in Kashmir in 1948. The UN viewed Kashmir as a bilateral dispute in which religion favoured Pakistan’s claims while ignoring the constitutional legality of Hari Singh’s accession and the diverse aspirations of Jammu, Ladakh, Kashmir, and Gilgit.
Pakistan embracing the western Cold War alliance was rewarded by 13 favourable UN resolutions on Kashmir between 1948 and 1957, a United States (US) President ignoring his team’s warning of genocide in Dhaka (masterfully chronicled in Blood Telegram by Gary Bass), and liberal financing for the garrison state. Pakistan’s awaam still bears the punishment of this reward.
History remembers 1989 as the end of the Cold War. But most Russians (according to a survey by Levada Center) remember that year not for the fall of the Berlin Wall but for the humiliation of an Islamist insurgency (in Afghanistan) defeating a superpower (the USSR). It’s no coincidence that the first Kalashnikov in Kashmir was recovered around the same time; Pakistan’s terror factory had found financing in over-invoicing the Americans for Afghanistan, America had abandoned the Afghan mujahideen after arming them with weapons and jihad, and General Zia-ul-Haq had completed Islamising his military.
We are not naive about power or childish about morality: The strong have double standards, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and geopolitics often offers lesser evils (Saudi Arabia over Iran, Suharto over the Communists in Indonesia, mujahideen over Soviets, Ba’athists over jihadis, and the Soviets over the Nazis). Powerful countries rarely hesitate to pursue their interests; the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria was celebrated by jets from three foreign air forces bombing targets in the newly liberated country; America attacked the Islamic State, Turkey attacked Kurdish-led militia, and Israel attacked chemical weapon sites.
Western double standards often backfire — early support of Assad, regime change in Afghanistan, and American-trained Osama bin Laden attacking America on 9/11 before finding shelter in American ally Pakistan. These double standards are spreading to economics. The West berated developing countries to open their borders for decades, yet now that Chinese and Indian firms threaten their firms, western countries are resorting to tariffs and industrial policies. But we agree with former minister Jaswant Singh, who suggested, “We need to expose the double standard in global policy …and yet, in the process, join it, to share those privileges, and thus to become partners in that double standard”. Reflecting on being a great power is hardly new; To Raise a Fallen People by Rahul Sagar shows how many 19th-century Indians began imagining India’s place in the world.
Jawaharlal Nehru regretted involving the UN in Kashmir within a month, writing to Vijayalakshmi Pandit, “I could not imagine the Security Council could behave in the trivial and partisan manner in which it functioned” and “believed the UK and US had played dirty”. The United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP), established in 1949, now spends over $10 million annually for 110 people to “observe, report and investigate complaints of ceasefire violations”. As long-time Gupkar Road neighbours of this office, we both have found this presence painful since April 1990 when a shameful press conference at the UN headquarters by Amanullah Khan eulogised Kashmiri violence, murder and terrorists. There were earlier signs: Jammu and Kashmir deputy prime minister Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad wrote to PM Nehru in 1951 that the “UN observers don’t confine themselves to their legitimate function …. but in greater part act as agents of Pakistan”.
India must shift UN engagement to Resolution 1373, which obliges states to undertake actions to prevent and undermine the ability of terrorists to use their soil to recruit, train and raise funds. This resolution considers terrorist events a threat to international security and carries the possibility of a forceful response by the UN and member states. If any country deserves this response, it is Pakistan. Also, advocating replicating the UNSC 1267 Committee (the Al-Qaeda sanctions committee) for Pakistan’s deep state actors supporting terror will help their gasping democracy.
In The March of Folly, historian Barbara Tuchman defines wisdom as the exercise of judgment acting on experience, common sense and available information. She suggests this wisdom is often missing through history, regardless of place or period, as governments pursue policies contrary to their interests like we did in Kashmir after 1947. But the prospects of peace in Kashmir have radically improved because of the abrogation of Article 370, cross-border Indian military strikes, the global acceptance of radical Islam as a problem, the blows to Iran and its terror proxies (Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas), Pakistan’s economic weakness, and India’s rising strengths. President-elect Trump will amplify transactional US foreign policy with contempt for the UN. Unlike the Cold War, this should help India and hurt Pakistan. But we should help ourselves by prohibiting UNMOGIP from returning to Srinagar from Muzaffarabad next summer.
MN Sabharwal is a former J&K Police chief and Manish Sabharwal is an entrepreneur.Their recent book is Kashmir Under 370.The views expressed are personal
Recommended Topics