There’s an old saying that ‘desperate times call for desperate measures’ and Islamabad’s situation after New Delhi abrogated Article 370, which provides special status to J&K is, to say the least, despairing. For Prime Minister Imran Khan, who after his recent US visit thought that with President Donald Trump’s mediation offer on Kashmir, he had “returned with the World Cup,” this sudden development was even more embarrassing. 

On the domestic front, Khan was so badly ridiculed for the government’s inaction on the Article 370 abrogation issue in the Senate that in a fit of sheer exasperation he blurted, “What can I do? Do you want me to attack India?” But that’s not all. A few days back, a video surfaced in which opposition leader and Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP) chairman Bilawal Bhutto can be heard mocking Khan by saying, "Earlier, Pakistan's policy on Kashmir was on how we will take Srinagar. Now, under Imran Khan's government, we have been forced to think on how we will save Muzaffarabad!"

As far as the international arena is concerned, Islamabad’s high decibel pitch against abrogation of Article 370 ended in an inaudible whimper after it failed to gather global support against this move which Khan described as an “illegal” and “unilateral” step. What made matters even worse was that the UNSC meet on Kashmir that Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi had hailed as “Pakistan’s big success at diplomatic front” and which according to him “had landed India in utmost panic,” didn’t even result in a communiqué or statement being issued on what transpired during this ‘closed door’ meeting.  

With the UNSC refusing to comment on the recent developments in Kashmir, Islamabad’s allegation that abrogation of Article 370 was in was in violation of UNSC resolutions on Kashmir fell flat. Pushed into a corner by its own diplomatic intransigence, the only recourse left for Rawalpindi that actually formulates Pakistan’s Kashmir policy was to start beating the war drum with military precision. The first thing Khan did (or, rather instructed to do by the army), was to play ‘victim’ by claiming that he had definite information that India would orchestrate a ‘Pulwama-type false flag operation’ in Kashmir to give it an excuse to carry out a pre-meditated attack in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK).

Though this plot seems to have been lifted straight out of a John le Carré novel, yet there were chances that it could still have gained some sort of acceptability had it not been for two major blunders that Pakistan made. The first was that during his maiden US visit, Khan had himself dubbed the Pulwama car-bomb suicide attack as an "indigenous thing” and went on to justify his allegation by saying "A Kashmiri boy was radicalised after the brutalities of the Indian security forces and he carried out the attack.” But just within two months, he suddenly made a U-turn and started accusing New Delhi of orchestrating this attack and tried to raise a “false flag operation” bogey without even furnishing any evidence to substantiate his allegation.

The second (and bigger) blunder was made by Pakistan army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa himself, when just a day after New Delhi abrogated Article 370, he declared that "Pakistan Army firmly stands by the Kashmiris in their just struggle to the very end. We are prepared and shall go to any extent to fulfil our obligations." What does the commitment of an army chief to “go to any extent to fulfil our obligations" imply needs no elaboration and so, if the international community chose not to side with Pakistan on the Article 370 issue, Khan and Gen Bajwa have only themselves to blame. But instead of learning a lesson, losing the diplomatic battle seems to have sent the Generals who dictate Pakistan’s Kashmir policy into an overdrive and perhaps this is the reason why they directed Khan to start beating war drums by claiming that India was looking for an excuse to attack PoK.