By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn
AS attention in Pakistan was focused on the elections held in the country last Thursday, it was inevitable that the results of the polls held next door in the disputed Indian-occupied Kashmir, which came in the same day, were all but ignored. This was partly because our own electoral exercise was on and left little time and even lesser interest in what was emerging on the political stage across the Line of Control.
Continue reading After the polls in Kashmir
By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn
AS the war clouds on the South Asian horizon thicken and thin out in a cyclical pattern, the peacemakers on the political front have stepped up their efforts to bring about a modicum of normalization between India and Pakistan.
True, incidents, such as the recent skirmishes in the Gultari sector on the LoC, come as a rude reminder that the armies on the two sides continue to be in an eyeball-to-eyeball state of mobilization. War cannot be ruled out. But mercifully the focus has shifted to the political/diplomatic dimension of Kashmir.
Continue reading How we can help the Kashmiris
By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn
IN his recent “neighbourhood diplomacy” which took him to Dhaka and Colombo, President Pervez Musharraf took a major step in his bid to muster support for Islamabad in the region. He expressed “regrets” at the “excesses” committed 31 years ago by the Pakistan Army in what was then East Pakistan.
Thus he emerges as an army general with the moral courage and dignity to concede the wrongs done by his predecessors, the power-hungry rulers of the day who unfortunately also happened to be men in uniform. Earlier in 2001, he had released the Hamoodur Rahman Commission report, which exposed the wrongdoings of those at the helm in 1971.
Continue reading Time to say sorry
By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn
Continue reading The confusion in our minds
By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn
WAS the Conference for Interaction and Confidence Measures in Asia (CICA) summit at Almaty a failure? That is how many in Pakistan feel.
If the expectation was that diplomacy on the sidelines of the summit would bring India and Pakistan rushing immediately to the negotiating table to discuss the future of Kashmir, CICA was a disappointment. But this organization which has been born after a long gestation period of a decade has achieved more than one could have hoped for in its very first high-level moot.
Continue reading Message from Almaty