Incorrigible Pakistan gets roundly rebuffed
Having lost out on both the credibility and the perception fronts, an increasingly isolated Pakistan is now resorting to exercises in brinkmanship to save face vis-à-vis India. Unfortunately for Islamabad, these efforts have backfired and pushed Pakistan further into the abyss of a failed state. The anti-India resolution that the Pakistani National Assembly passed unanimously on Friday is only the latest in this series. Moved by the Prime Minister's Adviser on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz, it condemns India for “unprovoked and indiscriminate” firing along the line of Control and the International Border, and calls upon the Government to seek UN intervention in the Kashmir dispute. The resolution is hardly worth the paper it is printed on. Even as symbolic protest gesture, it means little given that the resolution does not have the diplomatic heft to raise hackles in New Delhi and perhaps pressurise the Government here to take a step back. No, the Pakistani resolution has been ignored by India, and rightly so. In these past few months, Pakistan has been repeatedly rebuffed by almost every friend and forum where it has pleaded its case. Yet, it does not seem to have learnt its lesson. Why else would the National Assembly rake up the Kashmir issue yet again in its Friday resolution when the UN has already made it clear that it will not intervene in the matter which must be resolved bilaterallyIJ Besides, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had also sought to play the same Kashmir card at the UN General Assembly in September and failed miserably. He was given the cold shoulder by one and all. Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi, supposedly a warmonger, did not bite the bait.
More recently, former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has sought to rake up a controversy by stating in a media interview that India has taken a hardline position against Pakistan, especially since New Delhi opposed Islamabad's talks with Kashmiri separatist leaders. While that in itself may have been somewhat of an acceptable critique coming from the Pakistani side, General Musharraf's other comments on Prime Minister Modi being “anti-Pakistan” and “anti-Muslim” takes away all his credibility. This is also true for Mr Bilawal Bhutto whose incredulous Twitter rant about taking back “all of Kashmir” made one wonder if the Oxford-educated Prince of Pakistan ever took a history lesson. Furthermore, his cheap name-calling of Mr Modi only underlined the fact that the Pakistan Peoples Party young chief, who will possibly be Prime Minister some day, has no diplomatic sense. like his Prime Minister and his former President, the young Bhutto is yet another desperate Pakistani politician.