Since India’s move to abolish article 370, South Asian region has plunged into war of debates as who will mediate or arbitrate in the case of any impending war. As Pakistan won’t abandon its support to the beleaguered and bereaved Kashmiris and certainly won’t relinquish its legitimate right over its rightful territory of Kashmir. What seems most certain is that it won’t sit idle whilst Fascist India will persecute, annihilate or try to exterminate Kashmiri people, now the dilemma is, if the war starts between two nuclear nations that have renounced the policy of NFU (No first use) as Pakistan did that from the very start and India did that after they announced their Joint Indian Armed Forces Doctrine in 2017. So if the conventional war escalates to the level of Nuclear War who will intervene and stop this Nuclear Holocaust. Well what seems quite explicit from Imran Khan’s parliamentary address is that they will to their best try to avoid any scenario of such sort and will try to engage International powers and UN to do what they are supposed to do or were created to do i.e. to stop a war whose flames in meantime will encompass the entire world if not prevented.
This noble thought is although very much genuine, thoughtful and sanguine but also naive at the same time as it lacks the amount of cynicism and pragmatism to realize that UN has countless times failed to prevent such disasters in the past. As we glance in the past UN have undertook 13 peacekeeping missions from 1948 to 1988 which had been mostly influenced by cold war politics. This could be reckoned from the number of times Soviet Union vetoed United Nations Security Council resolution with respect to Kashmir. On June 22nd 1962 Soviet Union vetoed Irish resolution to prise the disputed territory from India’s control and hand it to Pakistan. This game of cold war cost Kashmiris dearly as rivalry of super powers outweighed the right of Kashmiris to self-determination.
From 1948 to 1965 Security Council passed 23 resolutions which were countered by Soviet Union. After India’s 1965 walkout UN body passed just one resolution (Resolution 307, December 21, 1971) calling on India and Pakistan to “respect the ceasefire line” after Bangladesh war.
Kashmir isn’t the only victim of injustice. In 1993 Somalian Conflict resulted in a disaster when US forces intervened into Somalia it was the first of Humanitarian interventions but it soon escalated into full fledge conflict that resulted in death of 18 Army Rangers in an attempt to capture a warlord. This incident’s repercussions overshadowed UN’s operations in Rwanda which resulted in one of the most brutal genocides of 20th century, killing more than 800,000 Tutsis because of withdrawal of 2,500 UN peacekeepers.
UN’s failure didn’t stop here on July 11th 1995, towards the end of 1992-1995 Bosnian war. Bosnian Serbs massacred 8000 Srebrenican Muslim men and boys dumping their bodies into pits. This genocide was carried right in front of 600 Dutch Infantrymen placed under auspices of UN peacekeeping forces to protect Bosnian refugees. Their mission was to provide safe area to war refugees and this vile act was carried out at a place declared by UN peacekeeping forces as safe zone.
UN has closed its eyes and turned its head many times before. One of the recent examples is Rohingya’s Muslim massacre by Myanmar military known as Tatmadaw. Although Head of Human Rights Fact-finding Mission on Myanmar urged Security Council to ensure accountability for serious violations against Rohingya’s Muslim population but nothing has been done so far.
Another example of blatant disregard of International Law is gross mass atrocities committed in Syrian Civil War 2011, and again UN and its security council turned blind eye towards the gross violation of human rights although individual actions were taken against Syrian regime of Basher-Al-Asad.
It is not just the incompetence and inability of UN to act on time to prevent such atrocities and genocide, but inability to act or prevent powerful nations to defy international laws that makes United Nations obsolete. Example of such incidents is 2003 Invasion of Iraq codenamed “Operation Iraqi Freedom” in the garb of disarmament of Iraq from weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). UN never sanctioned approval for this war but United States went to war anyway similarly to India going for annexation of Kashmir into its territory illustrating the fact that might is indeed right and superpowers are not obliged to abide by the very rules they promulgated at the very first place.
Pakistan and India are at crossroads at this juncture in time. Any decision that is to be taken will reverberate throughout the history of mankind. Foreign mediation and International interventions couldn’t solve this dilemma for more than 70 years and what appears is that they won’t be able to solve it until or unless the parties involved conduct dialogue, sit on tables, abdicate any presumptions, suppositions and biasness towards each other, think objectively for the betterment and future of South Asian people and think subjectively about the deprived and bereaved people of Kashmir. Think on the sacrifices and losses that they have made all these years and have compassion, empathy and sympathy for the generations to come. As repression, suppression and subjugation will further exacerbate the rebellion and this rebellion will consume the South Asian region.
