Pakistan has failed to project the Kashmir issue in Muslim world
As India annulled the special status of the Jammu and Kashmir State, Pakistan launched a diplomatic offensive against the move and sought support from various quarters of the international community. For some time, Pakistan has faced a certain degree of political isolation on the world stage owing to its alleged support of the Taliban movement within Afghanistan, and the most recent manifestation of this separation has been on the platform of the terror-financing watchdog, the Financial Action Task Force, where Turkey and China were its sole supporters.
Yet, when Pakistan began highlighting the extraordinary situation in Kashmir, the message did get recognition from international media outlets and independent human rights organizations. Pakistan was also successful in garnering nine votes in a UN Security Council discussion on the matter and the discussion was only terminated when a permanent member used its veto on the behest of India.
Islam remains the central point of Pakistan’s ideology and the Muslim world has always remained an important pillar of support for the country in every crisis. Pakistan had maintained cordial ties with almost all Middle Eastern power players and has remained specifically close to the Gulf countries. Still, as Islamabad looked towards its support base in the Gulf in the wake of India’s abrogation of Kashmir’s special autonomy, the response was rather muted.
In its history, Pakistan has been at the forefront of every Muslim cause. Its support for the Palestine cause has been firm from the very start and it has considered it a huge issue for the entire Muslim world. Yet, the fact of the matter remains that immediate stakeholders in the Palestinian issue have always been the Palestinians and Arab States.
Pakistan’s strategy of linking Kashmir with the Palestinian issue garners support from countries like Turkey but fails to get dividends when it is directed toward Arab Gulf states.
Umer Karim
Recently, the Middle East is seeing a departure from more traditional political trends, where countries are now drifting towards foreign policy choices based on their immediate political and security concerns.
Still, Turkey has emerged as a new player in terms of highlighting Muslim causes like Kashmir and Palestine, since this discourse gives legitimacy to its leadership claim.
Thereby, Pakistan’s strategy of linking Kashmir with the Palestinian issue garners support from countries like Turkey but fails to get dividends when it is directed toward Arab states.
This critical change in the geo-politics of the Middle East and its impact on the political field hasn’t been understood and assessed properly within Pakistan’s policy circles.
Secondly, Pakistani audiences fail to understand the intensity of the political threat posed by Iran toward Saudi Arabia and its allies. Pakistan’s decision to sit out of the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen had no doubt impacted, earlier, the bilateral ties with the Kingdom and UAE.
Perhaps Pakistan’s reluctance to take an active stance against Iran has played into the measured response of these two important players to openly support Pakistan on Kashmir and condemn India. Similarly, Qatar, Oman and Kuwait have chosen to remain silent on the matter.
Indian economic engagement with Gulf countries has taken new form and India enjoys political and strategic ties with most of them. Additionally, India’s status as a prime market for energy consumption makes it a lucrative client that is difficult to ignore or condemn for the energy giants of the Gulf and puts a further check on any possible political contingencies arising vis-à-vis Pakistan.
However, Pakistan has managed to highlight the issue on the stage of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and all the Muslim countries that have maintained silence in their individual capacities have in fact supported Pakistan on this collective platform. Even though this is a positive development, it needs to be understood that the OIC remains a largely symbolic body and although its statements make valuable news headlines, they don’t often transform into political pressure on any of the concerned parties.
Pakistan must also adopt a multi-faceted approach and revise its outdated Ummah-centred foreign policy perspective. At the end of the day, it’s the nature of Pakistan’s bilateral ties with various Muslim states and the level of shared interests that will prove critical in getting support for Pakistan’s position on Kashmir.
– Umar Karim is a doctoral researcher at the University of Birmingham. His research focuses on the evolution of Saudi Arabia’s strategic outlook, the Saudi-Iran tussle, conflict in Syria, and the geopolitics of Turkey, Iran and Pakistan.
Twitter: @UmarKarim89
