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Updated August 19th, 2019 at 12:07 IST

'Pakistan an illegal occupier of J&K, has no locus stand,' says European Think Tank

A European think tank has objected to Islamabad's stand on the Kashmir issue, calling them an illegal occupier and that it has no locus standi on the matter. 

Reported by: Digital Desk
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A European think tank has objected to Islamabad's stand on the Kashmir issue, calling them an illegal occupier and that it has no locus standi on the matter. 

Amsterdam based European Foundation for South Asian Studies (EFSAS), in its research paper after the abrogation of Article 370 from Jammu and Kashmir, said, "As questionable as the Indian moves to alter the constitutional status of the State of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) and to bifurcate it were, especially the clampdown that is currently in place in Jammu and Kashmir, how Pakistan has a locus stand on the matter is difficult to comprehend." 

It also quoted American scholar C Christine Fair, an expert on South Asia, as recently asserting that "Pakistan also has no locus standi on this issue."

"India has an Instrument of Accession, according to which Pakistan is in illegal occupation of territory seized in the 1947-48 war and which it illegally ceded. Not content with the parts of the princely State of Jammu and Kashmir that it had seized illegally in 1947-48, Pakistan made several other military attempts to illegally grab even more territory from Jammu and Kashmir, most notably in 1965 and in 1999," said EFSAS.

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It was regularly rewritten at Rawalpindi (where the Pakistan Army is headquartered), over the past seven decades. Kashmir and civilian supremacy are the two fronts where the Pakistan Army has waged all its wars, simultaneously, albeit it never succeeded.

However, these wars have had mutual casualties, with Pakistani military brazenly misusing the Kashmir conflict to nourish its jihadist assets, that maintained hegemony over the national exchequer.

By establishing a radical Islamist umbrella linking Kashmir and Afghanistan, the Pakistan military establishment kept the two regions geostrategically interconnected, with Rawalpindi (Pakistan Army's headquarter) exercising decisive influence over this multipronged jihadist corridor.

Subsequent to 9/11, the United States persuaded General Pervez Musharraf's military regime to outwardly shun jihad as an ally in the War on Terror.

This established the now notorious "Good Taliban, Bad Taliban" approach, were globally banned, groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Muhammad, and Hizb-ul-Mujahideen continued to be backed by Pakistan to wage terror against India.

"That eventually culminated in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, which signaled the death knell for Pakistan's Kashmir position on the international arena", said the Think Tank.

Pakistan has, meanwhile, not covered itself in glory in its handling of the parts of Jammu and Kashmir forcibly and illegally held by it for over seven decades. While strongly protesting the Indian move to withdraw the autonomy that the J-K enjoyed and arguing that it would lead to demographic changes, Pakistan has totally lost sight of the fact that the Constitution that it drew for Pakistan occupied J-K prohibited "any opinion or action" that questioned the region's "accession to Pakistan".

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The Pakistani military clamped down brutally on any sign of dissent, and residents were subjected to repeated violations of human rights.

"The severe restrictions that were placed on the media allowed Pakistan to enjoy the impunity", said EFSAS. Pakistan further divided Pakistan occupied J&K into the so-called 'Azad' (Free) Jammu & Kashmir (AJK) and Gilgit Baltistan regions.

(With ANI inputs) 

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Published August 19th, 2019 at 11:53 IST

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