WHILE governments in the West and the Muslim world are being condemned for their overt and covert support to the worst genocide in human history being carried out by Zionist Israel, not much attention is being paid to their similar role in another potential genocidal power waiting in the wings.

India has continuously flouted several United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions to resolve the dispute over occupied Jammu and Kashmir with Pakistan. Besides, India has territorial disputes with China as well over the Tibetan plateau and some part of what India insists on calling Arunachal Pradesh.

It will not be wrong to say that these disputes are highly volatile nuclear flashpoints, because all the three parties to these disputes happen to be nuclear-armed countries.

The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, a body of Nobel Peace Prize-winning individuals, and the Physicians for Social Respon-sibility, a physician-led body in the United States, released a study in April 2012, predicting that a nuclear war between Pakistan and India would set off a global famine that could kill two billion people, and effectively end human civilisation.

Add to that the possibility of another 1.3 billion people in China being at risk, and that will clearly be the end of civilisation as we know it today.

Even if limited in scope, a conflict with nuclear weapons would contaminate the atmosphere and devastate crop yields, said the report. Who will be responsible for all this? The common factor in the two disputes is India, which in itself is the answer to the question. The UN General Assembly has asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague to consider legal consequences for Israel over its continued occupation of Palestinian territories.

The UN should also call on the ICJ to determine all the legal consequences that are arising from the continuing violations by India of the right to self- determination of the Kashmiri people, and the various measures it has taken in recent years aimed at altering the demo- graphic composition, character and status of India-occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

Abid Mahmud Ansari
Islamabad

Published in Dawn, April 16th, 2024