Focus: Kashmir

Daily Times - August 06, 2006
POSTCARD USA: Yet another Kashmir conference — Khalid Hasan

There have been more Kashmir-related conferences held by various Track II outfits than anyone can count between lunch and afternoon tea. What good have they done, except that they have afforded a variety of retired generals and civil servants the opportunity to broaden their minds and look up their grandchildren through travel

Yet another pointless Kashmir Conference has just ended in this conference-weary city, now suffering summer temperatures the like of which no one remembers having seen. A Pakistani doctor — yet another cardiologist — who has lived here for forty years says there never has been a summer like this one. Two more such summers and Washington may have to be renamed Jacobabad. Who knows, Al Gore may after all be right. The earth really is heating up.

If there is one thing Kashmir does not need, it is another conference. Had it been for conferences, Kashmir would have been free long ago. Nothing is gained by these vacuous, wasteful and self-defeating exercises. Hardly anything new is ever said at them or learnt. Governments, which hold Kashmir and the Kashmiris by the jugular, pay no attention to them, although it is they who finance them for the most part. Saadat Hasan Manto said it best: government is but another name for folly (Hakoomat himaqat ka doosra naam hai.) Why otherwise would government outfits pay for conferences, seminars and workshops to whose proceedings and outcome they have no intention of paying the least attention.

There have been more Kashmir-related conferences held by various Track II outfits than anyone can count between lunch and afternoon tea. What good have they done, except that they have afforded a variety of retired generals and civil servants the opportunity to broaden their minds and look up their grandchildren through travel to various cities! What strikes me as the most amusing aspect of these Track II (when all that matters is Track I) events is that some of their leading lights were once in positions where they could have done something to bring the suffering of the Kashmiri people to an end, or at least provided them with a measure of relief.

Track II conferences on Kashmir have had many backers; everyone, including Charlie’s aunt knows, about them. Some of them, notably the United States, could well have used its muscle and money to bring the Kashmir dispute to resolution. Why has it not done that? The last time the United States took an earnest and genuine interest in resolving the Kashmir issue was during President Kennedy’s time, although there are those who maintain that the effort was insincere, mounted only to get India off the hook after the 1962 military debacle at the hands of China. Once the situation was stabilised, US interest disappeared faster then the Cheshire cat, leaving not even a smile behind.

The Kashmir conference just concluded in Washington was mounted, as every year, by Ghulam Nabi Fai’s Kashmiri American Council, whose new letterhead bears a full colour image of the US Capitol dome with the American flag in the background. Who knows, next year, the name of the Kashmiri American Council may have changed to the American Council. Nothing happens just by itself. Logos don’t change unless the marketing people say so. What the Council tried to sell at this meeting this year, no Kashmiri can possibly buy. The final “declaration”, which it is not competent to issue since those attending had been handpicked and did not represent anyone except themselves, refused to even mention the words “self-determination.” This omission is not new on the Council’s part; it has done that more than once in the past. If you take “self-determination” out of Kashmir, what are you left with, the Council should be asked. The head of another sponsored Kashmir outfit (this one is in Brussels, if you please) read a paper on self-governance for Kashmiris. Not self-determination, but self-governance. Even municipal committees have self-governance, M Yusuf Buch has pointed out. Yasin Malik (where is he coming from, I have begun to wonder?) wanted self-determination to be kept out as he feared it would affect the India-Pakistan peace process. Peace process! That surely is a joke.

The links between the Council and certain sponsored Kashmir outfits in London, Toronto and Brussels are too well known for me for a listing here. It is time this charade was brought to an end and the agencies (or more accurately The Agency) masterminding them were to begin to concentrate on the work for which it/they were originally set up. It is quite clear that unless the “Invisibles” get out of the act, we will keep sinking deeper into the morass in which we find ourselves. The damage done, some feel, is already beyond repair, so let The Boys pick up their hats and their gadgets and leave by the nearest exit without saying goodbye.

The Washington conference, sixth in a row, has now become an annual feature, which may be good news for some who travel long distances to attend it, or the caterers and hoteliers who provide the required hospitality, but it does no good to Kashmir. The same people come — with some changes for the sake of variety — every year and say the same things they said the year before. More emotional adjectives are hurled about than are good for anyone’s health and when the talking shop ends, Kashmir remains exactly where it was and the Kashmiris exactly where they were — in hell on earth.

The best thing the organisers of these events can do is to donate the money spent on staging them to Kashmiri children. A Kashmiri doctor, who spoke at the conference, recalled the shocking state of Srinagar’s hospitals, which lack even basic facilities. Would it not be better to gift what is to be spent on next year’s Kashmir conference to a Kashmiri hospital?

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent. His e-mail is khasan2@cox.net