It takes a truly exceptional human being to become one of the worst Prime Ministers a country has ever had only halfway through his first term. Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has managed to achieve this feat by committing one blunder after another which has made Pakistan a global laughing stock. As even traditional allies like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, who quite literally financed Pakistan to keep the country afloat, have been antagonised by Imran Khan and his Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, it is looking like that Qureshi will be thrown under the bus for the Kashmir issue in a desperate bid to shield Imran Khan’s failures.
Imran Khan’s close aide and Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari has severely criticised the Pakistan Foreign Ministry over its handling of the Kashmir issue. Yes, as comical it may sound, Pakistan does have a Ministry of Human Rights. Acting as a faithful confidante, Mazari came down heavily on the country’s Foreign Office as she claimed that Qureshi’s office had “let Kashmiris and Prime Minister Imran Khan down” in their struggle for the Kashmir cause.
She then went on to sing endless praises of Imran Khan as she claimed that it was Khan’s “single-handed efforts” that the narrative surrounding Kashmir was brought to global limelight.
“If the Foreign Office had carried forward the prime minister’s narrative, the situation would have been vastly different today,” said Mazari as she lamented the Foreign Office’s lack of action as no one is listening to Pakistan.
In the clearest signal yet that Qureshi is all set to be thrown under the bus, Mazari lambasted the Foreign Office as she questioned how a small country like Burkina Faso “has more diplomatic clout” than Pakistan.
Pakistan with the help of its all-weather ally China has time and again tried to raise the issue of Kashmir at the UNSC and has been left with an egg on its face every time it has tried to bring up Kashmir on international forums.
Recently, a meeting was convened by China at the behest of Pakistan in the United Nations to discuss and internationalise the Kashmir issue. The meeting was held behind closed doors under ‘Any Other Business’. However, the meeting ended up being a dud affair for the two parties as other countries refused to take up the Jammu & Kashmir issue citing it as a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan.
In a tweet, India’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Tirumurti said, “Another attempt by Pakistan fails! In today’s meeting of UN Security Council which was closed, informal, not recorded and without any outcome, almost all countries underlined that J&K was a bilateral issue & did not deserve time and attention of Council.”
Mazari perhaps miffed at Pakistan’s failure to internationalise the issue of Kashmir accused the country’s diplomats of whiling their time away at the expense of taxpayers. She said, “Our diplomats chose leisurely hotel stays, dressing in three-piece suits and heavily starched clothes and speaking over the telephone.”
While Mazari has launched a passionate defence for Imran Khan and praised him for his “single-handed” role in bringing international limelight on Kashmir, the truth is that Pakistan has reduced itself to the role of an irritant and a mockery of a county only because of Imran Khan’s incompetence as it seems that Qureshi will be used to whitewash Imran Khan’s gross incompetence.