Psychological problems are known to degrade mental faculties and this phenomenon even seems to afflict nations. Pakistan is one such country, where this malady seems to have acquired incurable proportions and history is replete with instances of how the habit of those who matter invariably end up putting their foot in their mouths by an uncontrollable urge to score a point. While former Pakistani Prime Minister and President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto using the UN Security Council podium in 1965 to declare a “1000 year war” against India is but one such example let’s confine ourselves to the present.

In the aftermath of New Delhi’s August 2019 decision to abrogate Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, Pakistan approached the UN to declare this move null and void on the grounds that it violated UNSC resolutions on Kashmir. As Islamabad’s contention lacked legal or material substance, the UN didn’t respond positively, and hence Pakistan’s “iron brother” Beijing cobbled a face-saving “informal” discussion on Kashmir in which neither would the proceedings of the meeting be recorded nor would any joint declaration or statement be issued.

By outrightly refusing to entertain Islamabad’s request for intervention on the Kashmir issue, it’s apparent that the UNSC outrightly rejected Islamabad’s untenable Kashmir narrative and selectivity in applying provisions of UNSC resolutions on Kashmir. And by ruling that no statement would be issued after the meeting, the UNSC once again buttressed India’s logical stand that Kashmir is, and will forever remain a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan with no scope of any third party intervention.

So it’s no big surprise that Islamabad’s incredulous decision to challenge the right of a democratically elected government to legally amend the constitution of its own and then expect the UNSC to intervene in what’s clearly an internal matter of a sovereign nation, failed. Islamabad did try to conceal its abysmal failure at the UN by rejoicing that Kashmir had come up for discussion at UNSC even though it yielded no results.

How did Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry make such a big diplomatic blunder?

Islamabad knew all along that nothing would come out of its much hyped decision to take the Article 370 abrogation issue to the UN. In fact, even before the meeting was held, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi forewarned his countrymen that "You should not in live fool's paradise [since] nobody will be standing there [at UNSC] with garlands in hands...Nobody will be there waiting for you." So, by approaching the UN on the Article 370 abrogation issue, didn’t Pakistan put its foot into its own mouth?

Qureshi’s pompous declaration that the Government of Pakistan had “decided to take the Kashmir case to the International Court of Justice [ICJ]" is another manifestation of the ‘foot in the mouth’ syndrome.

Readers would recall that Pakistan’s ICJ lawyer Khawar Qureshi went on record to say that this could be only be done in case of a genocide but there wasn’t any significant evidence to support Islamabad’s claims of genocide in Kashmir. He concluded that "In absence of these evidences, it is extremely difficult for Pakistan to take this case to the ICJ." So, while the idea of going to ICJ did Pakistan no good, it definitely helped India by unmasking Islamabad’s false propaganda on alleged genocide in Kashmir.

A month later, during the Asian speakers’ summit on Achieving Sustainable Development Goals [SDG] hosted by the Maldives Parliament, the Pakistani delegation created an avoidable embarrassing situation by raking up the completely unrelated Kashmir issue.

However, leaders at the South Asian Speakers' Summit "unanimously" felt that Kashmir was an "internal matter" of India and so Pakistan’s attempt to embarrass India came to naught as the reference to Kashmir was expunged from the record of proceedings. Furthermore, this issue expectedly found no mention whatsoever in the Malé Declaration leaving Pakistan with its foot in its mouth.

During a virtual meet of the 57 member Organisation of Islamic Cooperation [OIC] in May 2020, Pakistan’s UN Ambassador Munir Akram accused India of promoting Islamophobia, and with great flourish called upon on member states to create a “small informal working group” for ensuring concerted action against New Delhi at the UN. Islamabad probably thought that by arousing religious passions, it could beguile OIC members into collectively supporting its puerile and self-serving interests. However, its expectations of scoring a spectacular diplomatic victory were dashed to the ground.

The Permanent UN Representative of Maldives outrightly rejected Islamabad’s puerile suggestion stating that "Targeting a specific country will be like side stepping the real issue.” And with her perceptive observation that “singling out India, the largest democracy in the world and a multi-cultural society and home to over 200 million Muslims, alleging Islamophobia would be factually incorrect," Islamabad once again ended up with its foot in its mouth.

Regrettably Islamabad refused to learn any lessons from its Maldives fiasco and just days later it once again demonstrated scant regard for the stipulated agenda by raising the issue of rights in Kashmir at the UNICEF South Asian Parliamentarian Conference on Children Rights Convention in Colombo. Pakistan probably expected that despite being irrelevant it could drag the Kashmir issue into this meeting. However, its hopes of being supported by the other members proved delusional as no one showed any interest in the out-of-place mention of the Kashmir issue and Pakistan was left with egg on its face.

Just the other day Pakistan experienced yet another ‘mother-of-all’ foot in the mouth moment, thanks to UN Watch, a Geneva-based non-governmental organisation that monitors performance of the UN “by the yardstick of its own Charter." During a discussion on the recent Israeli attack targeting the Hamas leadership in Qatar at the UN, its human rights lawyer and executive director Hillel Neuer questioned the UN’s double standards.

When Neuer highlighted UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s unbounded praise for the 2011 killing of Al Qaida founder Osama bin Laden in Pakistan by the US and his criticism of Israel’s recent targeted attack on leaders of the Hamas terrorist group in Qatar, he was brusquely interrupted by the Pakistani delegate. Apparently stung by the reference to Laden’s extermination in Pakistan, he asked the UNHRC chairperson to ensure that no speaker violated the UN Charter principles and territorial integrity of member states while rejecting what he claimed were “unfounded accusations and allegations.”

Once the Pakistani delegate finished speaking, the UNHRC chairperson asked the UN Watch speaker to continue, reminding him that he had just four seconds to complete his speech. Undeterred, Neur used this inordinately short time window allotted to deliver the coup de grâce by concluding “Mr President, Pakistan is another state sponsor of terror.”

In retrospect, the Pakistani delegate must have realised that since Neur had never made any accusations or allegations against Pakistan and what he said was just an undeniable statement of fact, silence would have been more appropriate. Perhaps he may even have been admonished by his superiors for an intervention that seriously embarrassed Pakistan.

But when the top leadership in Pakistan itself is suffering from foot in the mouth disease, why blame the poor delegate for shooting off his mouth and inviting a brutal verbal response that made Islamabad the laughing stock within the international community c  creating a foot in the mouth situation. Didn’t Pakistan’s army chief and the country's de facto ruler Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir’s recent “dump truck” remark do the same?

  Email: -------------------------------------nileshkunwar.56@gmail.com