Those who had high hopes in Pakistan PM Imran Khan might want to reconsider his political sanity in asking Trump & the US to intervene between India & Pakistan to settle the ‘issue of Kashmir’. Trump’s response was that two weeks ago Modi had already asked him to mediate between India & Pakistan to resolve the conflict & that he “would love to be a mediator.”

What’s glaringly wrong with that scenario? How about the absence of Kashmiris? Where would the citizens of Kashmir who have been fighting for 70 years for self-determination have a say in the ‘resolution of this conflict’? Their voices are the only ones that matter in how this issue is mediated & resolved since they have seen their leaders, activists, citizens disappeared, jailed, tortured, raped, hung, beaten, their homes razed to the ground in hunt to kill operations, thousands of their young people disfigured, disabled, blinded, demoralized by pellet guns.

After the screwing the US has given Palestinians in the Camp David Accords, the Oslo Accords, & the ‘deal of the century’, is any Kashmiri willing to put their fate in the hands of Trump & the US? Who would play the role of Jared Kushner? Indian Army chief Bipin Rawat who is heading up hunt to kill operations in Kashmir? Or possibly Major Leetul Gogoi, the guy who tied a young Kashmiri man to the hood of a jeep & paraded him around as a human shield? Or maybe one of those saffron Hindutva monks who belongs to the BJP? How could anyone imagine that the US would deal more equitably or reasonably with Kashmiris fighting colonialism & occupation than it does with Palestinians? How could anyone imagine that Trump & the US care any more about the human & democratic rights of Kashmiris than it does about Rohingya, African, Central American, Syrian, Afghan refugees?

How exactly would Trump & the US resolve the issue of Kashmir? The same way they do Israeli colonialism & occupation? By sending in more CIA operatives than they already have in Kashmir? By training paramilitaries to counter Kashmiri militants when Israel already has that covered? By building barrier walls between Pakistan & Kashmir & India & Kashmir? By introducing or bankrolling carpet bombing like the Pentagon does in Gaza, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen? By moving in Hindutva settlers to take over Kashmiri lands like they do Zionist settlers in the West Bank?

Kashmiri popular resistance is central to their struggle for self-determination & any proposal that leaves them out, that compromises on their full demands, or tries to make an end run around self-determination doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of resolving the conflict. These young protesters are resting after the funeral procession of a teenage boy killed by Indian occupying forces. If, after fighting for self-determination, they are left out of the resolution process, it isn’t worth a rat’s ass.

(Photo by Dar Yasin/AP is undated but is from between 2016 & 2019)