By Asghar Ali Mubarak
Islamabad: Caretaker Prime Minister Anwar-ul-Haq Kakar is ready to highlight the issue of Kashmir in the United Nations and in this regard the Caretaker Prime Minister has reached New York, where he is leading the Pakistani delegation in the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly. About 150 world leaders will participate in the General Assembly meeting.
The Prime Minister will be the first caretaker Prime Minister of Pakistan to address the General Assembly session on September 22.
On the occasion of the high-level meeting of the Assembly to be held from September 19 to 26, massive security measures have been taken in and around the United Nations premises. It is expected that caretaker Prime Minister Anwarul Haq Kakar will present Pakistan’s point of view on several regional and general issues including the Jammu and Kashmir conflict in his address.
The Caretaker Prime Minister was received at the John F. Kennedy International Airport by Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Ambassador Munir Akram, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United Nations Masood Khan, Consul General in New York Aamir Ahmed Atuzai
and other officials. He will also elaborate on his administration’s efforts to stabilize the country’s economic recovery and stimulate domestic and foreign investment. Apart from this, the Prime Minister will hold bilateral meetings with the counterparts of different countries, heads of international organizations, welfare organizations and corporate leaders. Foreign Minister Jalil Abbas Jilani has already arrived in New York. In a news briefing in New York last week, Pakistani Ambassador Munir Akram said that Prime Minister Anwar-ul-Haq Kakar will also participate in the Sustainable Development Goals Summit during his visit to the United Nations headquarters. Ambassador Akram said that Prime Minister Sustainable Development will talk about mobilizing financing for the goals of.
The Pakistani ambassador added that the prime minister would also deliver a keynote address at another summit on financing for development where he would talk about mobilizing private sector finance for development.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will not attend this year’s meeting. Instead, his Foreign Minister S Jaishankar will address the Assembly on September 26.
It is important to remember that the Kashmir issue is a dispute between Pakistan, India and the Kashmiri libertarians over the ownership of Occupied Kashmir. This problem is coming from divided India.
There have been three wars between Pakistan and India over the issue of Kashmir. The first war was fought in 1947, the second in 1965 and the third in 1971 and the last fourth in 1999. Apart from this, shelling has also been exchanged on the border of Occupied Kashmir and Pakistan, which is called the Line of Control. In which mostly the Pakistani civilian population has been targeted.
Both Pakistan and India claim Kashmir. During the partition of India, Jammu and Kashmir was a state under British rule. 95% of whose population was Muslim. When India was being partitioned, the Muslim majority areas were given to Pakistan and the Hindu majority areas to India. But the majority of the population in Kashmir were Muslims, but the ruler here was a Sikh and the Sikh ruler wanted to be with India. But the leaders of Tehreek-e-Pakistan rejected this. Even today, Pakistan believes that there are more Muslims in Kashmir, so it is a part of Pakistan
On October 24, 1947, the government of Azad Kashmir was established, after which only two days later, on October 26, 1947, the Maharaja of Kashmir annexed the state of Kashmir to India.
According to the plan of partition of India on June 3, 1947, the Muslim-majority areas were to join Pakistan and the Hindu-majority areas were to join India, but there was no plan about the states to be divided on the basis of religion. The main reason for this was that 11 provinces of India were directly under British control, but 562 states were internally independent, which had the power to remain independent or merge with either Pakistan or India.
After the establishment of Pakistan, dozens of states joined Pakistan, but the Hindu Maharaja Hari Singh of the 70% Muslim-majority state of Kashmir acted decisively, which exhausted Pakistan’s patience. Due to its geographical importance, Pakistan and India wanted Kashmir to belong to them, while 95% of Kashmiri Muslims also hoped to join Pakistan.
On July 28, 1947, an armed independence movement against the Dogra state began, consisting mostly of fighters from the tribal areas, who had the full unofficial support of the Pakistan Army. According to tradition, Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan started the war of independence by killing three Dogra soldiers on that day. Rebel forces in the western districts of Jammu were organized under the leadership of Sardar Ibrahim, the leader of the Muslim Conference, who occupied most of the western parts of the state by 22 October 1947. On October 24, the Provisional Government of Azad Kashmir was established.Due to the successive successes of the Mujahideen, the Dogra forces were confined to Srinagar. To save himself, Maharaja Hari Singh requested for accession to India.
On October 26, 1947, this agreement was signed and the very next day, India landed its army in the valley.
Quaid-i-Azam rejected the annexation of Kashmir to India and the Indian military intervention and ordered the Acting Army Chief General Gracey to take immediate military action, but instead of obeying this order, the Joint Supreme Commander of the Pakistan-India forces, Field Marshal General Complained to He came to Lahore on the second day and forced Quaid-e-Azam to withdraw his decision. General Aucon Lake’s position was that under his command, how the two forces would fight and even if it happened, the Pakistan Army would not be able to succeed due to lack of resources. Despite this, the Pakistan Army continued to help the Mujahideen of Kashmir. On September 15, 1947, the state of Junagadh announced its accession to Pakistan, which was accepted by Quaid-i-Azam. He also expected that apart from the state of Hyderabad in the south of India, the state of Kashmir in the north would also join Pakistan, but it did not happen. Allegedly, in July 1947, Quaid-e-Azam made an attractive invitation to the Maharaja of Kashmir to join Pakistan, but he refused.
On November 1, 1947, the former Viceroy of India, Lord Mountbatten (who was then the Governor General of India) had a meeting in Lahore with the Governor General of Pakistan, Quaid-e-Azam, in which it is said that he suggested that the disputed states i.e. Hyderabad Deccan An impartial referendum should be held in Junagadh and Kashmir on which two countries they want to join, but Quaid-e-Azam rejected this proposal. On January 1, 1948, Indian Prime Minister Nehru took the Kashmir issue to the United Nations. He expected that the United Nations would recognize the legality of the accession of India and Kashmir. Kashmir had a special status in the Indian constitution approved on January 26, 1950, in which Article 370 stated that
This article specifies that the state must agree in the application of the laws of the Parliament of India, except those relating to communications, defense and foreign affairs. The Central Government cannot exercise its power to interfere in any other sphere of administration of the State.
In January 1951, in the annual meeting of the commonwealth, the United Kingdom proposed that a special opinion should be held in Kashmir under the supervision of the joint army of Pakistan and India on the issue of Kashmir. Pakistan accepted this proposal, but India rejected it. On July 24, 1952, in a meeting between the Indian Prime Minister Nehru and the Chief Minister of Kashmir, Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah, this constitutional clause was applied, but in 1953, Sheikh Sahib’s conscience woke up and He rebelled against the Indian government, on which he was dismissed from the post of Chief Minister and put in jail. In July of the same year, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru changed his mind and agreed to hold a referendum in Kashmir. Pakistan’s happiness was short-lived because in 1954, when the United States began providing heavy military and economic aid to Pakistan under a long-term agreement, Nehru took a U-turn and flatly refused to hold a referendum in Kashmir. In 1962/63, Pakistan And there were six rounds of negotiations on Kashmir between India, which were led by Foreign Minister Soran Singh from India and Foreign Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto from Pakistan. In 1965, Pakistan tried unsuccessfully to liberate Kashmir. Disappointed by Pakistan’s defeat in the 1971 war, Kashmiri leader Sheikh Abdullah joined India in 1975. Since the mid-1980s, there have been large-scale militancy in Occupied Kashmir. In 1984, India also occupied the Siachen Glacier. Even the Kargil war in 1999 could not be a solution to Kashmir. In 2020, India abolished the special status of Kashmir by abolishing Article 370 and integrated the state into the Indian Union. Afghan ruler Nadir Shah Durrani conquered Kashmir in 1752. In 1819, Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Punjab captured Kashmir. Raja Gulab Singh of the Dogra dynasty of Jammu occupied Kashmir in 1840. In 1946, the British conquered Kashmir but sold it to Gulab Singh, whose Dogra family ruled Kashmir until 1947.
The state of Kashmir is a Muslim-majority region where, according to the 1941 census, the population of the state of Kashmir was 77 percent Muslim, 20 percent Hindu, and 3 percent other. Muslims are 95 percent in Kashmir Valley alone, while Hindus and Buddhists are the majorities in Jammu and Ladakh respectively. However, Muslims are 100 percent in Pakistan’s Kashmir. Currently, India has 55% of the state of Kashmir and Pakistan has 30%
India refuses to give Kashmiris their basic right of self-determination. On the recent worst state violence, the Secretary General of the largest organization of the United Nations, including the OIC, has also raised his voice to find a solution to the Kashmir issue. The brave Kashmiri people have told the world that they will not back down from their basic human rights by sacrificing millions of lives and innocent lives. No matter how much they have to pay for it. Pakistan considers the movement of Kashmiris as a movement of fundamental human rights and makes it its duty to provide every moral support to the oppressed and helpless Kashmiris and also strongly advocates for their rights all over the world. Therefore, caretaker Prime Minister Anwar-ul-Haq Kakar is ready to raise the issue of Kashmir in the United Nations.
