Crimea & Kashmir
By Mowahid Hussain Shah
The unilateral annexation of Crimea through a dubious ‘referendum’ by Russia is an indirect reminder of the unfulfilled plebiscite, under UN auspices, pending in Kashmir. The key difference is that the plebiscite on Kashmir is a part of international law via applicable UN resolutions. But, through a combination of mishandling and international indifference, Kashmir’s plebiscite has remained in limbo.
The West has raised considerable outcry about Russian actions in Ukraine and in the Crimean peninsula. But, when death and destruction were being unleashed in Chechnya, the West opted to keep quiet because of geopolitical pragmatism. Cannily, Putin struck before Ukraine could join NATO.
Significantly, India did not vote to condemn the Crimean ‘referendum’ at the UN while, at the same time, India shows little hesitation to stall and block the holding of a plebiscite in held-Kashmir.
Kashmir’s cause has suffered due to Pakistani policy elites’ non-serious and lackadaisical view of it. Lacking, therefore, in passion and persuasion, the worthy cause of Kashmir has faltered in the international arena through poor advocacy and ill-management. It is equivalent to the manner in which young amateurish policy circles in Washington stumbled and fumbled their way through the Ukraine crisis, thus playing into Putin’s hands.
Similarly, the carnage in Chechnya was allowed to be portrayed to the world through Russian lenses, just as Islamabad’s ineptness allowed Kashmir to be viewed abroad through Indian lenses. Kashmir, as well as Chechnya, has been radicalized through brutal state action.
The West can cry about Crimea, but nothing much can be done about it now. But a lot certainly can be done about Kashmir. There is no reason why educated Pakistani youth, reared on and addicted to social media, cannot be galvanized to inundate cyber space through constant tweets and chat about happenings in Kashmir. The situation in Kashmir is so desperate that youth there prefer death over detention.
Despite the back-up of UN resolutions, the West now opposes a referendum in Kashmir but, ironically, it had no problem in urging referendums in Timor and South Sudan, which led to their secession, respectively, from Indonesia and Sudan.
There is verifiable evidence of the stigmatizing of Muslim causes.
The horrors inflicted on the Burmese Muslim Rohingya community, as a matter of record, is a humanitarian blot to which Burmese Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has remained cravenly quiet. Then there is devastation of Muslims in the Central African Republic, who have been subjected to massacres and even cannibalism.
There is to-date no coherent voice or a cohesive force to articulate collective Muslim legitimate aspirations on the global stage. This is due neither to lack of size or limitation in resources. Thus far, the Muslim world has been kept busy in ‘ethno-centric’ and sectarian strife, which has blocked the emergence of a vibrant leadership that can grasp the strategic big picture.
But, in all of the above, there is a silver lining. A US-Russian rift suits both Pakistan and Iran in roughly keeping a balance of power instead of a lop-sided unanimity, which historically has hurt the Muslim world since the fall of the Berlin wall.
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