ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly suspended all other agenda items on the first day of its monsoon session to take up the issue of state aggression in India-held Kashmir — criticising the government for its failure to keep the Kashmir issue alive at the international level and not doing enough for a cause that is central to the nation’s raison d’être.

Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle, including pro-government parties, demanded that the lower house be allowed to formulate a policy on Kashmir, something nearly everyone agreed had so far been missing, or inconsistent at best.

Even Maulana Fazlur Rehman, one of the staunchest allies of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), had to admit that Pakistan’s treatment of the Kashmir cause over the past 15 years had seen its highs and lows.

Speaking on the adjournment motion on Kashmir, he declared that Pakistan would be prepared to entertain international mediation if India did not come to the table to discuss Kashmir, adding: “There must be some [country] out there willing to call a spade a spade.”

“We need a well-defined policy, which seems to be lacking at the moment,” he concluded.

Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf’s (PTI) Shireen Mazari took the Foreign Office (FO) to task for what she termed the “tunnel-vision approach of babus”, also throwing shade on the inactivity demonstrated by the Kashmir committee.

“It was India that originally took the Kashmir dispute to the United Nations, so how can they claim today that it is an internal matter,” she thundered, demanding to know why this line of argument was not being employed by the FO.

“[India] moved the UN under chapter six of its charter, not chapter seven. This means they did not name Pakistan as the aggressor,” she recalled. Chapter Six of the UN charter deals with ‘Pacific settlement of disputes’, while Chapter Seven is titled, ‘Action with respect to Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace, and Acts of Aggression’.

Lawmakers identify FO shortcomings, gaps in Kashmir policy; NA passes four resolutions

Talking about the plebiscite in Kashmir, envisioned by UN Security Council Resolution 47, 1948, she chided diplomats for not conveying Pakistan’s standpoint across world capitals. She also lambasted the government for not taking up India’s use of deadly pellet guns — that violate the Geneva Convention — with the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

“I don’t know what pressure the government and Foreign Office is under not to raise this issue,” she concluded in disgust.

Saying the FO’s handling of the issue left a lot to be desired, Jamaat-i-Islami’s Sahibzada Tariqullah pleaded with the house to “not let this issue be buried”, and asked the government to empower the Kashmir committee so it could take concrete steps towards framing a consistent policy on the disputed region.

PTI’s Arif Alvi reasoned that the government had already lost the ‘image’ war on Kashmir to India and criticised them for not effectively employing the mainstream and social media to support their cause. “We should’ve raised hell across the globe over the use of pellet guns,” he said, comparing the lethal ammunition to the cluster bombs used in the first Gulf War.

Imran Zafar Leghari of the Pakistan Peoples Party pointed out that by occupying Kashmir, India was in fact staking a claim over the source of Pakistan’s water supply.

He adopted a more personal line of attack, reminding Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of his Kashmiri ancestry. Mr Leghari also accused the prime minster of having vested interests with India and called on him to abandon those concerns. “How many more bodies are you prepared to sacrifice for the sake of diplomacy,” he jeered.

It was left to Sartaj Aziz and Birjees Tahir to defend the government’s position.

Going first, the PM’s adviser on foreign affairs summarised the actions taken in response to the developing situation in India-held Kashmir, saying that letters were being written to the heads of UN Security Council permanent member states. He said he had personally briefed 11 foreign ministers on Pakistan’s stance and informed the house that the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation planned to send an observer mission to the valley.

Winding up the discussion, Kashmir Affairs minister Birjees Tahir asked why plebiscites could be held in restive East Timor or South Sudan, but not in Kashmir. He also claimed that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s roadmap for peace in India-held Kashmir was disrupted by the Kargil misadventure in 1999, adding that for the next decade, the issue had lain dormant.

The house then adopted a resolution condemning the recent atrocities in India-held Kashmir, which called upon the government to pressurise India and the international community to stop human rights violations in the valley, repeal laws that provided legal cover for extrajudicial atrocities, release political prisoners, lift media restrictions and implement UN resolutions promising Kashmiris the right to self-determination.

The house approved an amendment to the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in the National Assembly, formally incorporating senators into the composition of the Public Accounts Committee. It also passed a resolution felicitating Turkey for defeating an attempted coup, as well as separate resolutions, condoling the demise of humanitarian icon Abdul Sattar Edhi and qawwal Amjad Sabri.

Published in Dawn, August 2nd, 2016