It is a matter of great satisfaction that Russia, one of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, has offered to mediate between Pakistan and India. President Vladimir Putin is said to have told Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on the sidelines of the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organization's summit in the Kazakh capital Astana that his country was willing to mediate between Pakistan and India to help resolve their bilateral disputes. South Asia is critical to Russia due to a combination of factors, one being the US has begun to lose its influence in the region, and Moscow seeks to forestall the march of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in the South Asian region. ISIL has already found a strong reception in Afghanistan and is seeking to establish its footprints in Pakistan. Through such mediation efforts Russia clearly seeks to enhance its status while pursuing a policy aimed at exploiting unstable situations around the world. It is generally argued that in its quest to position itself as a key player, Russia seeks to exploit the tools and relative advantages it has secured since the Cold War era, including its growing nuclear arsenal.

The fundamental difference between the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev and Vladimir Putin is that while both are known for instigating crises, the latter has the proven capability of both instigating and managing crises. The handling of the Russia-Georgia conflict and the Chechnya crisis and dealing effectively with the civil war in Syria speaks volumes about Putin's political astuteness.

That the situation in Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir has warranted multilateral or global diplomatic intervention is a fact because there are credible reports suggesting that New Delhi is considering the launch of a false-flag operation, or staging a terrorist event to justify a heavy military action to kill stone-pelting Kashmiris on a mass scale. The Foreign Office has pointed out that the recent statements of Indian army chief Bipin Rawat and Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Pravin Togadia have expressed such dangerous intentions. The Indian army chief's remarks being compared with that of a "gali ka ghunda" (street urchin) by a senior Congress (I) leader only reinforces the argument that India under Narendra Modi is seeking the annihilation of occupied Jammu and Kashmir. Moreover, the Indian media, which is strongly sympathetic to the worldview of the Sangh Parivar, has been vociferously carrying out the character assassination of the Kashmiri protesters. Not only is India's media carrying out 24/7 Pakistan-bashing, it is also denigrating all those Indian politicians and others, including Bollywood celebrity Salman Khan, who advocates the need for resumption of stalled India-Pakistan talks.

The incumbent BJP-led coalition government seems to have begun to understand the critical challenge to its advantage it seems to have secured through the Simla Agreement, which calls for the resolution of all disputes between India and Pakistan bilaterally and rules out any multilateral intervention. That Russia, which still has strong relations with India despite New Delhi's growing closeness with the US, has offered to mediate between the two nuclear-armed neighbours is a fact that clearly indicates the enormity of pressure that India faces due to the volatile situation in occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2017