(Abdul Basit Alvi)
Since 1947, Pakistan has positioned the Kashmir issue as central to its national identity, security outlook, and moral responsibility, shaping its foreign policy around support for Kashmiri self-determination in line with UN resolutions. It presents its administration of Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan as evidence of a rights-based and representative approach, while contrasting this with what it describes as repression, human rights abuses, and instability in Indian-administered Kashmir, particularly after the revocation of Article 370. Within this framing, Pakistan portrays its stance as historically grounded, ethically driven, and geopolitically significant, emphasizing empowerment and political rights for Kashmiris.
Beyond politics, Pakistan describes its relationship with Kashmir as deeply cultural, religious, and historical, fostering a strong sense of shared identity and generational solidarity. This connection is publicly reaffirmed each year through Kashmir Solidarity Day on February 5, observed nationwide and by diaspora communities through rallies, prayers, educational events, and political statements. Despite heightened repression in Indian-occupied Kashmir since 2019, shifting global attention, and efforts to marginalize the issue internationally, the annual observance is presented as a powerful symbol of enduring unity and resolve. It underscores Pakistan’s claim that time, geopolitical pressure, and disinformation have not weakened its commitment or Kashmiri resistance, but instead have intensified collective determination and kept the issue alive in international diplomatic discourse.
The demonstrative national unity so prominently, intentionally, and meticulously displayed on Kashmir Solidarity Day also reflects, for any astute observer, a broader, more transcendent historical and moral truth: that the foundational relationship between Pakistan and the Kashmiri people is intrinsically rooted in a common, civilizational quest for justice, security, and the preservation of identity, nurtured by shared values and historical experiences, not in the transient calculus of state convenience or the crude mechanics of state coercion. It demonstrates to a watching world that the Kashmiri struggle for self-determination, far from being extinguished, remains vibrantly alive in the hearts, minds, political discourse, and collective memory of millions across South Asia and its diaspora, and that Pakistan, irrespective of its own internal political changes, economic challenges, or shifts in regional alliances, will continue to stand diplomatically, morally, and politically by the Kashmiri people at every relevant international forum and in every conceivable circumstance, as a matter of stated national doctrine. As long as Kashmiris are denied their fundamental, UN-mandated right to a free and fair plebiscite and are subjected to a regime of systematic oppression, demographic change, and political disenfranchisement, Pakistan’s voice of advocacy, its diplomatic missions, and its moral suasion, it is consistently vowed by leaders across the spectrum, will not fall silent, waver, or be bargained away.
In the face of formidable and growing adversity, including India’s rising international stature as an economic and strategic partner to the West, Pakistan’s own acute economic vulnerabilities, and the frequent relegation of the Kashmir issue in global media priorities, this unique, historically forged unity between the people of Pakistan and the people of Kashmir serves as an indispensable, internal source of ideological strength, political purpose, and external hope. It reassures the besieged, traumatized Kashmiri population that they are not alone, forgotten, or abandoned in their long and painful struggle, and it reminds the often-distracted, interest-driven international community that unresolved historical injustices, sustained violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, and the denial of foundational democratic principles cannot be permanently erased or legitimized through the unilateral application of military force, legal sophistry, demographic engineering, or strategic silence. The shared, solemn, and massive annual observance of Kashmir Solidarity Day thus serves to reaffirm, in the most public manner possible, a simple but politically potent and enduring truth: that Pakistanis and Kashmiris are bound together by inextricable threads of shared history, common faith, contiguous geography, and an unshakeable collective belief in the ultimate, inevitable triumph of justice over force, and that no future attempt to divide them through physical barriers like the LoC fencing, military dominance, information warfare, or economic inducements will ever truly succeed in its ultimate objective of severing this deep, affective, and politically charged connection.
