On Pakistan's part, it is a clear-sighted policy to seek peace with its neighbours, especially India with which it has a long-standing dispute over Kashmir. The then prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, made several overtures to his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi, but to no avail. Soon after assumption of PM's office, Imran Khan also offered an olive branch to the Modi government, saying if it took one step, Pakistan would take two. And contrary to a mistaken view, in seeking amity with India both the civil and military leadership are on the much-clichéd 'same page'. In his recent address at the Naval Academy's passing-out parade in Karachi, Army Chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa said, "our new government has extended a hand of peace and friendship towards India with utmost sincerity, but it should not be taken as our weakness. Peace benefits everybody." Wars, Gen Bajwa noted, only "bring death and destruction for the people; and ultimately all issues are resolved on the table through negotiations. That is why we are trying very hard to help bring about a lasting peace in Afghanistan by supporting an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned peace plan." True, no two situations are exactly alike. What the Afghan example shows is that military power alone cannot overwhelm a determined resistance.

Occupied Kashmir is the world's most militarized zone, yet bloody repression has not helped India stifle the Kashmiri people's relentless struggle for freedom. The day Gen Bajwa delivered these remarks, six freedom fighters were martyred in a confrontation with Indian forces in the state's southern Tral area. Such incidents have been happening with ever-increasing frequency since the July 2016 killing, in an encounter with security forces, of Burhan Wani, young hero of the Kashmiris fight for freedom from Indian rule. Unfortunately, the Modi government refuses to acknowledge the facts on the ground, blaming Pakistan for its troubles, resorting to belligerent rhetoric and repeated violations of the Line of Control as well as the Working Boundary that have caused the loss of scores of innocent lives. Its claim of Pakistani intervention is routinely contradicted by the local people as they regularly come out in large numbers during resistance fighters' clashes with soldiers to protect them at the risk of their own lives; hundreds of thousands turn up at the martyrs' funerals to pay them homage. In the current year alone, as many as 550 people have been killed, countless others injured, many blinded in one or both eyes from pellet gun wounds. Arrests, torture and custodial killings are a routine matter. What is happening in the Indian occupied Kashmir is an unmitigated human rights disaster.

As pointed out by sane elements within India, including veteran BJP leader and former external affair minister Yashwant Sinha, the Kashmiri youth have lost fear of Indian forces; they are ever more eager to die resisting. He and some others have advised PM Modi to resolve the Kashmir situation through dialogue with the Kashmiri people as well as Pakistan. But considering that he has built up his career as ultra-right Hindu politician, and also that his first act on becoming prime minister was to try, albeit unsuccessfully, to change the special status Indian constitution gives Kashmir, Modi cannot be expected to pay heed to sensible advice. One can only hope the upcoming elections in India will bring about a change for the better.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2018