Pakistan, India and The Disputed Region of Kashmir

Any country’s foreign policy is determined by myriad factors that includes geographical position, relations with other countries, domestic and international affairs and along strategic dimensions. Pakistan is no other exception to this; now this thought paper will discuss what sort of flaws are there is Pakistan’s foreign policy regarding the undisputed territory: Kashmir. The long conflict ravaged part which has caused several wars between India and Pakistan.

Pakistan, ever since its inception, has been proclaiming a right on the territory of Kashmir. Indeed Jinnah argued that “the new nation would be incomplete without Kashmir…and the ‘K’ in Pakistan stood for Kashmir,” While we hear Pakistan’s commitment to help the poor Kashmirs, time and again and how the Pakistani side want self determination for the people of Kashmir, however Pakistan doesn’t seem to hold a very fixed and coherent approach as to how to tackle the problem. Every ruling party seems to reiterate the same passionate diatribes done before by the previous parties; the only difference is that every party has a different way to approach this issue and present it to the emotional masses. The Kashmir policy suffers from systematic flaws and has almost a chaotic, erratic feel about it. There has been no visible structured Pakistani policy to work out a resolution for this cause.

The decision to use certain religious groups as proxy to handle the interests of the Kasmiri people has done more chaos than anything for their benefit. Thomas P. Thornton elaborates, “The Taliban, for its part, had essentially been created and brought to power by Pakistan and other Jihadi remnants…were supplying many of the shock troops of the Islamist rebellion within Indian-held Kashmi...

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...at the Kashmiris really want and what is the best outcome for our country.

Works Cited

Blank, Jonah. “Kashmir: Fundamentalism Takes Root,” Foreign Affairs 78, no. 6(November/December 1999)http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/55602/jonah-blank/kashmir-fundamentalism-takes-root

Thornton, Thomas P. “The ongoing Conflict: Pakistan and India,” in Pakistan on the Brink: Politics, Economy and Society. ed. Craig Baxter. Karachi: Oxford Press, 2004, pp. 26.

Pervez Hoodbhoy and Zia Mian, Crossing the lines: Kashmir, Pakistan, India (Eqbal Ahmad Foundation, 2004), Video.

Thornton, Thomas P. “The ongoing Conflict: Pakistan and India,” in Pakistan on the Brink: Politics, Economy and Society. ed. Craig Baxter. Karachi: Oxford Press, 2004, pp. 28.

Pervez Hoodbhoy and Zia Mian, Crossing the lines: Kashmir, Pakistan, India (Eqbal Ahmad Foundation, 2004), Video.