Some days back, a closed-door meeting was organised by the UNSC (United Nations Security Council) regarding the recent events in Jammu and Kashmir. This meeting was organised on the request of China who is also one of the five permanent members of the Security Council. The meeting required both, the representatives of India and Pakistan to be present. The Indian delegation was headed by Syed Akbaruddin and Pakistani delegation was headed by Maleeha Lodhi.
One more thing that we should note is that this meeting was a closed-door meeting which means we cannot know what went on during the meeting and there are no official records of the conversations that occurred except for the statements made by the people who were present.
After the meeting ended, the representatives of India, Pakistan and China gave a statement to the media. I took the opportunity to listen to the statements of all the representatives and started to analyse what may have been the situation during the meeting. As per my thinking, the Indian representative sounded more confident than the Chinese and Pakistani counterparts.
In my opinion, the Indian representative, Syed Akbaruddin, presented a very strong case regarding the situation in Jammu and Kashmir by stating that Jammu & Kashmir is an internal matter and other countries (indicating towards Pakistan and China) should not interfere.
As far as the Pakistani representative is concerned, Maleeha Lodhi also made a statement that they were successful in bringing the issue of Jammu and Kashmir into the international arena but if we observe the body language of Maleeha Lodhi, the success was not quite visible.
Is this an indication that the objectives of the Pakistani delegation were not fulfilled? This also makes me think why the UNSC decided to conduct the meeting in the first place. According to me, the answer is because of China, otherwise, if it was just Pakistan, maybe the UNSC would not have even considered entertaining their request. Anyway, looking at the statements and body-language of the representatives, I could only say that out of 15 members of UNSC, it was only China that was endorsing Pakistani perspective and maybe other members were endorsing a bilateral solution.
The Question Arises “What Now?”
Following this meeting, I have been watching Pakistani media coverage of this meeting as well as also monitoring the social media accounts of Pakistani hardliners. One thing I observed is that although there is a perspective that they were able to internationalise the issue, again they also agree that just the pitching of “internationalisation” means they were not able to capitalise on the UNSC meeting and none of the members supported them.
Even the Pakistani hardliners in their posts have started discrediting the United Nations as they were not able to get a desirable decision. Hence, maybe the Pakistani intelligence agency (I.S.I) have moved to their other plan which can be termed as ‘next-generation warfare’ which means to use social media and their expats in other countries. Even Arif Alvi, who is the current President of Pakistan, has called for a social media war against India and if we go through some recent events, it proves that Pakistani intelligence has already initiated this warfare.
Some events that occurred recently are also noteworthy:
Indians who were celebrating Indian Independence day in the Indian embassy (located in the United Kingdom) were attacked by a mob allegedly consisting of Pakistanis and other groups.
The other incident that took place was in Seoul, where again, a group allegedly consisting of Pakistanis were shouting abusive slogans but were confronted by Shazia Ilmi who is also a member of BJP.
The other part of this warfare is the use of social media where apparently, it was noted that many Pakistani politicians were posting doctored or old videos on social media.
The Indian government has taken up this matter with social media platforms and many accounts which are posting such material are being suspended.
Hence, during this sensitive period, when Pakistan is not getting much support in the international arena, I believe they will try every method to make the Indian case weak even if it means using their expat population to create a ruckus in other countries. But the fact is by doing all these activities the right-wing or politicians who are against immigration might get more justification for their policies as they would see this as an opportunity to show how the immigrant population compromises their relations with other countries.
In conclusion, I would also say that Pakistani intelligence might try to break the unity among Indians, so it is our responsibility that no activity takes place which acts as a threat to our national unity.
I am of the opinion that Pakistan will never sit idle and will always be active and looking at an opportunity to weaken India’s case, so I also hope that the Indian Government and its officials ensure that this does not happen and take every action required to prevent it.