Pakistan has closed the door on talks
Kashmir CM Mehbooba Mufti and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who saw a role for himself in the multilateral approach he advocated on Kashmir.
Television clips of schoolchildren including girls taking to streets against troops had lately prompted saner civil society voices to advocate dialogue to cool things down. Among them was former external affairs minister Yashwant Sinha, who led a Track-2 initiative in the restive State.
It’s that element of sanity the Pakistani atrocity on the LoC sought to kill or discredit by mauling dead soldiers. The incident is another shot in the arm for the hawks and a blow for peaceniks. Waging peace never looked an idea so impossible in our increasingly jingoistic milieu.
The ‘appropriate’ response our army has promised to avenge Pakistan’s “un-soldierly act” might come sooner than later. Given that the talks between Directors General of Military Operation (DGMO) weren’t to our satisfaction, the retributive strike will be par for the course.
When bilateralism fails or is abandoned, retaliation is the answer, not third party arbitration or intervention that Islamabad or the likes of Erdogan are prone to propose. The leader from Turkey is unaware perhaps that India doesn’t even recognise the United Nations Military Observers’ Group on India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) that could have played the referee.
The UMOGIP is allowed a “holiday posting” in India because the UNSC resolutions (39 and 47 of 1948) under which it was constituted haven’t since been amended.
From the Indian standpoint, the military observers’ mandate became fructuous post1971 when the UN brokered ceasefire line became the bilaterally negotiated Line of Control (LoC). That position is strengthened by the letter and spirit of the 1972 Shimla Accord the sum of which is that all pending India-Pakistan disputes will be addressed bilaterally.
Be that as it may, Kashmir looks destined for a long summer of discontent—and crossborder attrition. Rawalpindi’s aggressive posturing could be on the nudging of Beijing that has heightened its stakes in PoK with the ambitious China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. It’s unhappy as much with the paradigm change in India’s Balochistan policy and the Modi dispensation’s refusal to keep the Dalai Lama from visiting Arunachal.