Kashmir On The Brink, But Nowhere To Go

As ordinary Kashmiris take over the fight on angry streets, Pakistan sits back and fine-tunes its new policy

- Pranay Sharma

There was a time when it could be argued that Pakistan’s Kashmir policy depended on who ran the country—a democratically elected civilian government or a military ruler who, by definition, could take the army’s endorsement for granted. A premier, wary of public perception and being unsure of how the army top brass—the final arbiter of all things Indian—would react, invariably adopted a more hardline position. And ironically, a general in charge could afford to show more flexibility in tackling that old bone of contention, Kashmir, confident that such an endeavour would have the approbation of the Pakistani ‘deep state’.

For instance, both Zia-ul-Haq and Pervez Musharraf, the latter despite being the ‘villain’ of the Kargil misadventure, tried to think in out-of-the-box ways to deal with Kashmir and thus de-freeze the tense impasse in Indo-Pak ties. Sharif, despite his campaign promise to regularise relations with India, trembled and dithered before the ‘India question’, even after Narendra Modi showed political ingenuity aimed at the same ends.

That distinction is no longer valid, with significant regional and global changes prompting a tough stand by India. This stance got a sharper focus ever since the Modi government started dealing with the separatism in Kashmir exclusively via a security prism. But in the process, it has also started making Pakistan’s Kashmir policy appear more effective than what seemed possible say, even two years back.