Pakistan’s overdrive has backfired six months after the abrogation of Article 370 and the change in the status of Kashmir. The failure of its bumbling diplomacy ~ of the Imran Khan variety ~ against what is intrinsically an internal issue of India was reaffirmed on Thursday when Saudi Arabia declined to concede Islamabad’s request to immediately convene a meeting on Kashmir of the Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

This is a double whammy after the failure of the Pakistan foreign office to influence the United Nations on the issue. Its Prime Minister’s bluster hasn’t taken the country very far, most outrageously the threat of a nuclear war over Kashmir. In a sense, the 57-member Islamic bloc has forced a mildly theocratic country to play on the backfoot.

Advertisement

On closer reflection, it is a severe rebuff for Mr Khan who had very recently in Malaysia expressed his frustration over the silence of the OIC on Kashmir. “The reason,” he said, “is that we have no voice and there is a total division amongst us. We can’t even come together as a whole on the OIC meeting on Kashmir.”

It is pretty obvious that his volley and thunder over Kashmir, both at home and at international fora, doesn’t quite fit into the perspective of the OIC in the wider canvas. In relation to Kashmir, he is arguably ploughing a lonely furrow. The agressiveness of the cricket pitch does not work in the context of geostrategy. The failure of foreign policy is a reflection too on the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i- Insaf. The message from Saudi Arabia must resonate in the echo chambers of Islamabad and the Rawalpindi GHQ; save Pakistan, the other 56 members of the concert of Islamic countries are loath to interfere in India’s policy towards Kashmir.

Ever since India revoked the special status of Kashmir in August last year, Pakistan had articulated its pitch for an OIC foreign ministers’ meeting. Its foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, had recently said that such a conference was necessary to send a clear message from the ummah on the Kashmir issue. For any move at the OIC, support from Riyadh is considered essential not the least because the entity is dominated by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries.

As it turns out, the Islamic bloc, helmed by the palace in Riyadh, has conveyed a strident message to Islamabad. The desert kingdom reportedly made several proposals to Pakistan to avoid the CFM. It had even suggested a joint meeting on the Palestine and Kashmir issues, but Islamabad has stuck to its proposal for a CFM meeting…and on the terms set by Imran Khan. To use the language of the metaphor, his attempted Yorker has turned out to be a low full toss.