The Kashmir trap

Daily soaps now a days are getting interesting. While there is an overall storyline (or at least one believes there is), each episode or a set of episodes is driven by viewer’s response which are easy to capture courtesy social media. So just when dedicated viewers are getting dejected or bored by the usual ‘wins’ of the antagonists, our protagonists hand over a blow enough to rejuvenate  the spirits of viewers. So on goes the story with repetition of this sequence year after year! Moral of the story is (what I am trying to say! Not the moral of the television series! Nobody knows that!) -  A single story line doesn’t drive the series. Narratives are added based on external influences. And just in case you are wondering if I happen to watch any of these soaps- Well I do!
Now back to our topic.  Kashmir is simmering for the past month and more with several civilian and army casualties.  Life has been severely impacted due to the continuous curfew and unrest. It is hard to believe that this very place was ‘almost normal’ and safe for tourists until a couple of months back. So what caused this?  Simple answer is the killing (or martyrdom from the terrorist’s- yes that’s what I call them, perspective) of Burhan Wani. He was the face of the insurgency at least as far as social media is concerned and consequently popular. His death was bound to create an impact and some amount of the initial disturbance is certainly attributed to spontaneous response from his supporters in the valley.  But 40 days and on??  That’s ridiculous given that a huge amount of resources and money are required to manage such a prolonged movement.  The other simple answer- Well Pakistan is supporting the insurgency with unlimited financial, political and all other means possible. And Pakistan has ideologically (and even otherwise) always supported the Kashmiri cause. So thats kind of the story line.
But then here’s where the simple story line crumbles. Barring the extreme instances like 1989 and a few thereafter, there have been terrorists killed, captured in Kashmir all along.  Agreed, there have been reactions leading to disturbances, curfew, and condemnation by Pakistan. But this time, Pakistan seems to be going all out to complicate the situation and obviously making the most of it. It has pitched up the diplomatic efforts to escalate the Kashmir and even tried to involve UNHRC.  The question is why? What is making Pakistan go all out at this point?  And that too, against a backdrop of a goodwill visit by Modi in December last year, followed ( or preceded) by Foreign secretary level talks , NSA talks, India’s ‘restrained and mature’ response even after the Pathankot attacks . Intruding indeed!
Let’s now start to modify the usual ‘Pakistan supports independence of Kashmir ‘narrative to get to the current version of the story.   A few months back India made an all-out effort in its bid to get NSG membership and did not succeed.  Well, why India needs to do so is my basic question. But that’s for another discussion. So this bid as we know was effectively foiled by China.  While Pakistan has been making its own diplomatic efforts to prevent India from getting into NSG, it’s anybody’s guess where they would have landed, but for the effective blocking from ‘friend’ China.  Net net, the whole episode was a diplomatic failure for India and consequently a win for China/Pakistan.
Getting into a little more details of this whole NSG episode, we need to analyze the reasons (well real ones, not the official ones) for opposing India’s bid.  As for Pakistan, which was not even a party, the reason was simple – It has always sought parity with India in all forums. So Pakistan’s effort was not to ‘negate’ India’s bid directly, but to present it’s own case and try to dissuade India’s case by drawing analogy with its own. But either ways, the reasons for Pakistan’s opposition are simple – if I can’t, so can you not!.   What about China?  Well, contrary to beliefs of many, India does not figure out as significantly in China’s foreign policy as we think it does! What I mean is – Apart from the traditional rivalry and competition, China has no significant reason to block India’s NSG bid. They did back out of opposition in 2008 when India was given the waiver. So there was no reason for China to not back us twice. The support would not have been incoherent, since China did support in 2008.  Of course, there would have been price to pay for India in terms of diplomatic maneuvers and financial biddings etc. But it was not impossible. Chinese are pragmatic to that extent.  To turn down a personal request from the Indian PM to the Chinese President does warrant a very strong reason. And that reason is China’s friendship with Pakistan. In nutshell, China played the hard ball since it was covertly pushing its friend’s agenda and didn’t have anything worth its salt to gain from India to change its position.
Cut the crap now- You must be saying!. Well let’s do it .  So this guy Wani was killed on 8-July.  The initial violence as I earlier said was spontaneous. But then?   Well, Then came the ruling by the tribunal rejecting Bejing’s claims on 12-July!. Beijing tried to put a brave face and show that they are least concerned about the decision. But fact of the matter is –it matters. China, no matter how strong they are, are still far away from capturing ‘the other pole’ opposite to the USA. With majority of ASEAN nations against it (as far as the claim over South China Sea is concerned), China has very few friends on this topic.  To add to this, is the meeting of G20 leaders, which may lead to a huge diplomatic embarrassment for China if there are reactions from member nations on the ‘South China’ topic. China risks being isolated. This realization dawned the Chinese pretty early and even as they were officially rejecting the decision from Hague, the diplomatic outreach had already started. In comes India!!  There seems to be an effort to support India’s NSG bid  in return of buying its ‘silence’ over South China, or still better, India supporting a  ‘bilateral resolution of issues stance’ !.  So obviously, China is leaving Pakistan to fend on its own as far as the NSG opposition to India is concerned.
To add to this is a bit of geo-politics in Pakistan. The all-powerful Gen Sharif is set to retire in a few months.People are already gossiping within the Pakistani establishment about a possible military coup. Now that the US has stopped financially supporting them , there’s nothing to lose for the military. Also, PM Sharif has been on the receiving end since his name popped up in the Wikileaks cables.  So a diplomatic failure on NSG at this point would be a death knell for him.
So what does Pakistan do? Well the usual narrative.  Rake up the Kashmir issue, try and create a war like situation. Use Nuclear blackmail , enough to get the western governments worried and use the whole situation to prevent India’s NSG bid.  The other angle is that this plan could be well aided by the Chinese . Since they are now required to ‘officially’ negotiate with India, there’s no harm in opening a ‘second line’ with plausible deniability!.
Net Net, the current crisis are an attempt to drag India into a ‘India-Pakistan’ dual and in the process create enough fear to kill India’s NSG bid. Not to mention, all other fallouts of the Kashmir violence are a byproduct and icing on the cake for Pakistan.
India needs to be careful and guard against falling into this trap. So for all those jubilant minds ( well PM Modi mentioned Balochistan and POK in his I-day speech !),  NSG membership and Energy sufficiency are more important and achievable at this juncture than freeing up  pieces of Pakistan !