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?