For UN to stay relevant
Where is the international framework of rights and
justice? Is the UN dead, and its charter buried? The
people of Kashmir have long been promised the chance
to decide their destiny but now the UN is silent and the
US says that "East Timor is not Kosovo __ nor is
Kashmir another East Timor.'' This is in explanation of
why US interest in the Kashmir crisis is limited to
forcing Pakistan into submitting itself to the Indian
hegemony and in Timor to "humanitarian concerns and
strategically located sea-lanes."
The US, however, is mistaken. The reason the world
has a problem with East Timor and Kashmir is that
they are other Kosovos but in different part of the world.
Timor did not begin that way, but that is what it has
become. Whereas Kashmir has actually begun that
way. All the western governments have trouble
explaining why they cannot do anything effective about
India's conduct in Kashmir. Where are their incautious
announcements about the arrival of a new age of
"humanitarian wars'' for doing justice? Where are their
unguarded forecasts about the significance of NATO's
victory over Serbian ethnic cleansing in Kosovo?
President Bill Clinton announced that beleaguered
minorities everywhere in the world no longer had to fear
Kosovo-style ethnic cleansing. He said the
"international community" would protect them. Many
argued that a new humanitarian internationalism had
been created, which in the future could stop and punish
ethnic cleansing, mass deportations, state terrorism
and war crimes. The age of sovereign nations would
yield to an international sovereignty. Clinton informed
"the people of the world'' that a new era had dawned.
"Whether you live in Africa, or Central Europe, or any
other place, if somebody comes after innocent civilians
and tries to kill them en masse because of their race,
their ethnic background or their religion, and it's within
our power to stop it, we will stop it,'' he said.
The Kashmiris are experiencing a new kind of apathy
from the so-called international community which
forces them to think if they should forget about their
rights in the new world order and wait for deliverance
from India's fascism till the day when their valley would
become as important to Eurocentric NATO as Kosovo.
For a fair deal, should they now depend on the
compulsions of the states of India and Pakistan, and
the narrowly defined interests of the powerful
international community, rather than an international
framework of rights and justice? Given the historical
baggage and hostilities, it is useless to expect that
Pakistan and India would sort it out between
themselves.
It is extremely surprising that the leading powers are so
willingly accepting India's weak position on the issue in
terms of international law. The fact is that Kosovo is
still recognised as a part of sovereign Yugoslavia
whereas Kashmir is a UN-recognised disputed territory
awaiting a just and final settlement. By exhorting
Pakistan and India to treat an unjust and unresolved
UN cease-fire line as if it was as inviolable as divine
revelation, and approaching the precarious situation in
Kargil as an isolated instance of such unthinkable
violation, the so-called international community and the
UN have only eroded their credibility. Surely, the
present-day upholders of human rights and values of
justice and democracy should be able to look beyond
the line.
The champions of human rights, who were propelled
into action because of ethnic cleansing of the
Kosovars, have chosen to disregard the even more
serious repression in Kashmir. They have chosen to
disregard the ever-increasing number of Indian troops
that enforce Indian control through terror, torture, rape
and murder. The US, its allies and the UN are
accomplices in Indian genocide for they are doing little
more than parroting the Indian refrain, and disregarding
the unpardonable crimes of India against innocent
communities in the valley. It was everybody's business
when the Serb forces did these things in Kosovo on a
much smaller time and human loss scale. The Kashmir
issue urgently requires a just settlement that could
only be brought about with the involvement of the UN.
Peace in Kashmir and hence the region could only be
achieved if the process starts with putting the people of
Kashmir before any strategic, commercial or political
advantage of the powerful international club or Pakistan
or India. At the moment, it seems that the UN has no
power of its own. And this fact has had lethal
consequences in Kashmir, when combined with the
UN's promise that its people could become
independent if they so chose. The Security Council
thus far has declined to support the promise made in
its name.
Nothing short of the credible threat of a Kosovo-like
military intervention, combined with international
economic and political reprisals against India, seems
likely to end the crisis. If we agree with the western
propaganda, such as published in the Washington
Post, that "no solution can be achieved under the
threat of military action," the question arises that what
were then the US and its allies trying to achieve
through bombing Yugoslavia for more than two months
in a row?
The Indian campaign to terrorise supporters of
independence and cleanse Kashmir of its Muslim
population approaches a successful conclusion. It has
to be reversed. The Indian defiance and mockery of the
UN is intolerable and destabilising. The UN has to act,
as it is no more than what its members make of it, but
its existence and action are indispensable to a
minimally civilised international order. If its members
expect any progress toward a new and muscular
humanitarianism, they must back the world
organisation against those who flagrantly defy it. A line
has to be drawn, and in Kashmir, the Indians
themselves have drawn it.
On the other hand, the western press is encouraging
UN's inaction by treating the Kashmir crisis as an
unimportant case than others around the world.
According to the Washington Post, for example, "if the
world powers, having staked their prestige on
self-determination for East Timor, can so easily allow
their will to be flouted, the 'security and strategic
consequences' will be immense, and they will resonate
far beyond Indonesia," but no such views are
expressed about Kashmir where the situation is more
volatile than East Timor. The Post instead sides with
India and writes that it "is rightly demanding that
Pakistan help in removing the guerrillas as the first step
toward defusing the current crisis" and that "India has
so far shown commendable restraint."
With more than half a million soldiers in Kashmir, it is
wrong to assume that India is exercising restraint.
However, the UN and US should accept that Kashmir
issue can never be settled in a cul-de-sac. It shall be
settled either through force or through international
intervention and pressure __ the possibility of the latter
is apparently remote, although efforts should continue
in this direction. But nothing can be achieved solely
through bilateral negotiations, bypassing the people of
Kashmir and ignoring their wishes and sentiments.
India would not be prepared, it seems, for any kind of
talks unless it is under real pressure from the people
and the freedom fighters.
The British daily Financial Times in its issue of May 28,
1999 writes under the heading "War in Kashmir": "The
nuclear dimension means the outside world has much
at stake too. India has always sought to avoid
internationalisation of the conflict but the world has a
common interest in keeping it in check. This is
precisely the kind of problem for what the multilateral
approach of a strong UN is needed." And that needs
approval from Washington, which may not come until
we face a nuclear holocaust on the sub-continent.
The Independent in its editorial of May 29, 1999, after
mentioning the UN intervention in Kosovo and Iraq, its
peace-keeping efforts and the accountability of crimes
against humanity, wrote: "And this is a doctrine that
could be applied to the Kashmir conflict, which was
never a simple border dispute between the UN member
states, or even an argument about to which of them a
province belonged.... The UN has some standing in
Kashmir, too, as the guarantor of the referendum once
promised by the Indian government......... In the case of
Kashmir, however, the UN is probably the only hope of
peaceful resolution." This is why the UN has to prove
that it means to do more than just looking after the
interests of the powerful. It has to act alone on the
issue of Kashmir if not allowed by Washington.
India has all along opposed the deployment of UN
peace force and the monitoring of LoC by UN
representatives, and this is a clear proof of India's mala
fide. India's case on Kargil is flimsy and full of
contradictions. But here again Pakistan has failed to
bring round the world opinion. Woe to the
self-appointed custodians of international morality who
are looking the other way at this premeditated
massacre as if the Kashmiri blood is less sacrosanct
than the blood of the Kosovars and inhabitants of East
Timor. This callousness has already convinced the
bruised people in Kashmir that they are victim of the
UN, US and its allies' double standards of human rights
and morality and that the aphorism that 'might is right'
is as relevant in the game of power in the closing
stages of the twentieth century as it was in the Gothic
ages.
The continuing crisis in Kashmir is provoking calls for
UN action. But with the UN unwilling to intervene
without the American and Indian permission there is
little leverage left to stop Indian occupation and
oppression in the occupied Kashmir. During the period
of struggle, 70,000 hapless Kashmiri freedom fighters
have been gunned down and thousands are facing the
same fate. The sole crime of the victims is that they
demanded their inalienable right to self-determination to
decide their future through a UN-supervised plebiscite
promised to them by the United Nations as well as by
India and Pakistan. But where is the UN?
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