While addressing a press conference at the UN in March 2023, Pakistan’s then Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari lamented that “We face a particularly uphill task to try and get Kashmir onto the centre of the agenda at the United Nations.” Given the fact that Pakistan continues to repeatedly peddle its monotonous Kashmir narrative with missionary zeal, the Bhutto-Zardari scion’s admission raises the obvious question- why doesn’t Islamabad’s extraordinary effort to garner international support for its take on Kashmir succeed?

The answer isn’t too hard to find.

The biggest negative in Pakistan’s Kashmir narrative is that rather than being based on a holistic analysis of facts and logical deductions thereof, it’s a typical product of cherry-picking as well as relies heavily on presumptions and is thus fraught with inaccuracies and distortions. To make matters worse, Islamabad is under the wrong impression that rhetoric and bombast can make up for the factual deficiencies of its Kashmir narrative. This explains why Pakistan’s Kashmir discourse doesn’t find many takers.

Despite its weak position on the Kashmir issue, Islamabad probably believes in the “repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth” hypothesis propagated by Nazi Germany’s infamous Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. However, many analysts feel that while Islamabad knows that its Kashmir narrative is untenable, domestic compulsions force it to keep raking up this issue. Whatever be the reason, Pakistan needs to be complimented for not giving up.

Pakistan’s Foreign Office [FO] supported by Pakistan army’s spy agency Inter Services Intelligence [ISI] continue to work overtime in peddling Islamabad’s weak Kashmir narrative. Islamabad has in the past used a variety of means like sending parliamentarians to various countries to to apprise them about alleged human rights abuses in J&K” and even organising a fully paid trip for a US Senator to Pakistan occupied Jammu and Kashmir [PoJK].

On its part, ISI has contributed substantially by ‘cultivating’ people of Kashmiri origin like Kashmir to lobby on behalf of pro-Pakistan separatist groups in Kashmir as well as Government of Pakistan. Readers would recall that in 201, Kashmir born founder of American Council Ghulam Nabi Fai pleaded guilty for concealing the receipt of USD 3.5 million from ISI to lobby and influence the US Government on siding with Islamabad on the Kashmir........

© Eurasia Review