The burning souls of Kashmir

Kashmir has been burning once again since July. Since the murder of 22-year-old Burhan Wani by Indian security forces on July 8, the soul of Kashmir has been up in flames. 

According to the scarce, independent information leaking out of the region, Wani's funeral drew over 200,000 people despite a curfew declared by the government. Since July 8, in what Kashmiris claim to be the "Kashmir Spring," at least two people have fallen victim to security operations every day.

Pakistani Ambassador to Turkey Sohail Mahmood hosted a dinner last week in honor of two special representatives of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to brief Turkish leaders about the latest situation in Indian-held Kashmir. Conversations during the dinner with special envoys Muhammad Pervaiz Malik and Mohsin Shahnawaz Ranjha gave me an emotional revisit to Kashmir. My sole and last visit to Srinagar, or Indian-held Kashmir, was in 2003. Though I made perhaps more than two dozen trips to Pakistan over the past decades, I unfortunately could not visit the Pakistani section of the divided Kashmir. Repeated attempts to make a visit to Pakistani Kashmir failed for various reasons, be it political problems in Turkey or a devastating earthquake that not only shattered lives in Pakistan and Kashmir but our hearts here as well.

It must be up to the people of Kashmir to decide the future of their land and themselves - so ruled the United Nations Security Council decades ago, back in 1948. Since then, however, the troubled and disputed territory has remained a source of immense pain for the Kashmiri people and a permanent source of trouble between India and Pakistan. Irrespective, of course, of how many times a day India might declare the portion of Kashmir it has been occupying for so long...

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