Nawaz Sharif’s dream of ‘free’ J&K is just that
For a leader who claims to want an amicable settlement of the Kashmir issue between Pakistan and India, Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has been making little meaningful effort in that direction. On the contrary, he has been positioning himself as a hardliner on the subject. His recent address to the so-called Azad Jammu and Kashmir Council in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir betrays his real intent to keep the pot boiling. An official Press statement quotes him as having said that he wished to see Jammu & Kashmir “free from Indian occupation and desired that this dream could turn into reality during his lifetime”.
The dream is not going to be realised in this lifetime of his or any other subsequent lifetime. There is no doubt that Pakistan, with the help of elements in its Army and the notorious Inter-Services Intelligence, and its supporters in Kashmir valley, has been working diligently to pull Jammu & Kashmir out of the Indian Union. It has mounted many offensives to that purpose but failed on each occasion, ending up with a bloodied nose. It had been expected that Mr Sharif, having made the right noises during his recent election campaign, about writing a new chapter in India-Pakistan relations, would work towards that goal. But perhaps one had expected too much, especially given that the Pakistani Prime Minister's track record in his earlier term in office had given us enough reason to suspect that he had been mollycoddling anti-India elements in his country.
For all his grand talk, it appears that he is unable to exit the orbital gravity of his Army and the ISI, whose very existence seems to rest on the hate-India platform. Mr Sharif's remark before the Azad Jammu and Kashmir Council that the unresolved Kashmir issue could lead to a fourth war “at any time” between the two countries — although this did not form part of the official statement — is perhaps meant to warn India that it must fall in line. India has never begun a war with Pakistan; the aggressor was always Pakistan. Mr Sharif must not forget that those wars — including the Kargil misadventure which Pakistan initiated during his earlier tenure — ended in humiliation for his country.
Even if we assume that Mr Sharif was playing to the gallery in PoK, it still does not justify the outright lies which he let loose on the audience there. He claimed that Pakistan had been “drawn into an arms race by India”. The truth, as he well knows, is that Pakistan had begun the arms race by cajoling and coercing US Administrations in the past, particularly during the Nixon-Kissinger early 70s era, into supplying it a large amount of military hardware in the form of weapons and warplanes. The equipment was used against India and to suppress the freedom movement in what was then East Pakistan. Many bipartisan experts, including Pakistani commentators and authors, have acknowledged this fact. Mr Sharif must shed his delusions.