In the course of the day

Express Tribune

2 days ago

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I am visiting abroad and not able to keep up with the 24/7 television news which would sink a day into an unending cycle of how great we are doing, how insidious the enemy is, and how PTI continues to be the anathema to our collective drive to greatness. But I do catch glimpses here and there to know where the rest of the world is going — not great places, I can assure you, and how I have found my relative freedom from such imbecile engagement.
Two things though still caught my eye: Qasim and Suleman, Imran Khan's kids, are the new threat and they need to be closely monitored for they may upturn the system of power in Pakistan.
And second, in continuation of how intimately we are waltzing with the new US administration in Trump's repeated infatuation with power, even if it emerged from the F-10/PL-15 combo — China brand — there was better sense and a promise when Ishaq Dar spoke to a Washington think-tank and suggested Pakistan can and may be ready to look at out-of-box solutions on Kashmir, such as moving away from the UNSC Resolutions which are binary and do not per se provide the option to expand the list of options where Kashmiris can have the right to seek a third option other than the zero-sum choice of India or Pakistan as their homeland.
What if they now, after seventy-eight years, seek a country of their own? The interpretation and the argument are entirely mine. No politician worth his salt would risk being seen with these words. All he reportedly said was that it doesn't have to be one or the other — India or Pakistan — but what the Kashmiris want. There is enough plausibility for denial built into this 'official' and 'reported' statement.
The rest is left to imagination, primordial or ideational. Not a soul though will stand for what is not safe and official. Hence, life will be as it has been for the rest of our lifetimes. So much for breakthroughs and an improved Pakistani recognition and space on the global stage.
A few things should be clear. The US is in no position to arbitrate on Kashmir. Yes, they did the region a huge favour in intervening to stop the war but that's about it. Our compulsions are local and so are our issues though with implications that can mushroom globally and hence, the world has kept running to keep us from our periodically default conflict-prone recourse. Pakistan did great in reestablishing and reinforcing the deterrent — a combination of the conventional and the nuclear — against India.
This is a huge positive which endowed greater freedom of action to Pakistan to work on challenges which are mostly internal along a broad spectrum. How long will such space remain is to be seen. Will India try another hand on testing the threshold? Probably not yet or not right away. There are serious gaps that have come to light in its own system of forces which needs time and attention.
It would like to have all her bases covered before she indulges in another adventure. She might utilise other avenues in the lower spectrum with transient or lower effects as is being evinced for some time now on the Afghan border and in Balochistan. Also, not the very best of a nation's defence is needed to counter such a threat which can be effectively handled by counter-terror police and paramilitary forces. Though this threat needs to be fully neutralised early enough to avoid casting adversely on Pakistan's economy and society. Cumulatively, it can leave a debilitating fatigue and a lingering sense of inevitable unease. Pakistan should not let that set in.
But then there is that gap and liberty of action in policy innovation that Pakistan can pursue to solve and resolve Kashmir — I use both terms deliberately. It may not change the paradigm of engagement in South Asia, but it will eliminate a major source of triggering a wider conflict of the kind that India and Pakistan almost entered in May and barely escaped from its most dreadful consequences with outside help.
Like in the Cold War, if the level of animosity is such that the two must still bring the other down for whatever reason — civilisational, arrogance of assumed power, or mere subjugation — at least the means can remain restricted to proxy only as is currently the case. This can still be handled and neutralised with a focused effort. But what it leaves is a more formal, political space for dealing with the root cause plaguing the region. The Foreign Minister was not only right, but brave to think beyond the shackles of an anachronistic policy which has kept the region locked in inaction on this front. They can fight wars but not solve issues.
Politically, if India puts forward status quo as its preferred dialectic, the response option remains with Pakistan to move India away from its entrenched position. The cost on the battlefield for forcing policy options is horrendously unsustainable for either side as the small war showed. Hence the crying need instead to get to the table.
The world at large too is desperate to hear differently from the region of how to assist. The zero-sum option formalised in the UNSC statutes generates its own fatigue and most of the world simply walks by such an argument. It is time to break the mold of our own response and see if it can entice public and international attention. In that sense Ishaq Dar's statement even if to initiate an academic discussion is a welcome break.
I have long proposed an independent Kashmir on the lines of Switzerland as a breakout option from the logjam that has held us in an eternal face-off. What seemed right under the principles of the partition then would have surely changed as Kashmiris have fought for their independence with a cost paid in almost 100,000 lives in the last three decades. It is about time that the world noticed their fundamental right to determine their own future.
How can Pakistan or India decide what their future might be? It is time that the issue of Kashmir be looked at in a new light. This may also unshackle the potential of this region and its people towards far greater prosperity and promise than what has fallen their way bound in unimaginative policy. If we have garnered space at the world stage, courtesy of some great work done by our warriors, rather than fizzle in useless chest thumping it be put to constructive use. It may return a blank but then we already have that. The space should be used to turn the almost dead stone over.
In the meanwhile, Qasim and Suleman have ended their brief sojourn to the US and decided to let Pakistani politics proceed at its own pace. The threat of them pulling a rabbit out of the hat stands thankfully postponed.