Discussion in DC
By Mowahid Hussain Shah
On a sublime Saturday evening in the Washington area, called “DC” by Washingtonians, I was asked to give a keynote talk hosted by a newly formed group, The Discussion Forum. Its facilitator is the energetic Jamal Baluch, and the colloquium is ably moderated by Dr Zulfiqar Kazmi, an activist in the field of interfaith amity. The event attracted media presence along with representatives from academia, business, and embassy officials.
The vigorous discussion centered on the burning issues connected with US-Pakistan relations and surrounding dynamics.
When the illicit Indo-US nuclear deal (which was at variance with the NPT) was being transacted, Islamabad, instead of challenging its legality, in effect, absorbed the deal by unwisely asking for the same deal.
Notably absent is Israel, as well as any pressure on other nuclear-weapon states, like the United States, to examine their own obligations of nuclear disarmament under Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Pakistan has a powerful case on Kashmir. The January 5, 1949, UN resolution, urging a fair and free plebiscite under UN auspices for the Kashmiri people to self-determine their own fate and to break the shackles of Indian occupation, is valid international law that has not been implemented.
Islamabad’s non-serious approach has been one factor. Second is the big power logic of expediency and duplicity that has dictated the need for unseemly policy choices. Consequently, the diagnostic lenses of big powers are too warped to discern the genetic roots of terror. Thereby, their policies do not have their intended impact. The roots of unrest cannot just be wished away by bypassing them.
On October 30, “The Siege,” a new book on the 2008 Bombay attacks was given high-profile salience by the New York Times. There is nary a word about “Danger in Kashmir,” the seminal book 60 years ago by Dr Josef Korbel, Chairman of the UN Commission on Demarcation for Kashmir. The book, published by Princeton University Press in 1954, is perhaps the most credible and impartial account of how India was able to usurp the legal rights of the Kashmiri people. Several years ago, I met his daughter, Madeleine Albright, who was then the US Secretary of State, who disclosed that she did research work for that book – a fact not well known to much of Islamabad officialdom. Josef Korbel was also the mentor to former Secretary of State Condi Rice at the University of Colorado at Denver.
Many of the problems roiling Pakistan and the larger Muslim world are derivative from elite misjudgments. The classic example is the Dacca debacle of 1971, the accurate diagnosis of which has been blocked by those who benefited from the break-up. The malignant tumor inside thereby continues to metastasize.
It is the task of leadership to inject optimism. Plutocracy has hijacked democracy.
Meanwhile, the suborned and unruly media is keeping the public distracted, amused, and ill-informed with the spectacle of escapism and paranoid style of politics, while overlooking issues that matter.
It was the consensus of the discussants that, for matters to improve, civil society has to step up to break the shackles of defeatist inertia.
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