A senior UN peacekeeping official has rejected assertion that missions such as the UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) are doing nothing, saying they are valuable and performing on the basis of ground realities in “frozen conflict” areas. Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Bintou Keita was asked during a press briefing in Washington about “frozen conflicts” where peacekeeping missions stay forever. She was asked about missions such as UNMOGIP, United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP), UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) in the Golaan Heights and that these missions are “sitting there doing nothing”. Keita was asked how these frozen conflicts can be addressed and mandates reactivated to achieve results. She said the “rhetoric that because there is no peace process moving then they are doing nothing, I would say that we would need to reframe this because all the reduction of violence, which can escalate actually, they are dealt with by the peacekeepers, by the mission.”
Keita said all these UN peacekeeping missions have their value and they are “rendering and performing on the basis of what is going on there.” She stressed that the missions are “frozen because of the dynamics that are going on at the local, regional, sub-regional (levels), which have to do with politics and the mission is a tool at one point to support the political process.”
Keita underscored that ways would have to be found to right the underlying causes of the conflict and “not what I will call sometime using the mission as a scapegoat because it is a shared responsibility so the performance of the mission has to be looked at with the performance of all the stakeholders.”
The UN has long maintained an institutional presence in the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir and over the past several decades UNMOGIP has been monitoring the situation across the Line of Control besides reporting the developments that could lead to ceasefire violations. On the other hand India maintains that UNMOGIP has “outlived its relevance” after the Simla Agreement, which was signed by India and Pakistan in July 1972 and the consequent establishment of the LoC. But the fact remains that the UNMOGIP’s presence in the region speaks volumes about the disputed status of the Jammu and Kashmir that happens to be the fulcrum of India-Pakistan dispute in the region. The Indian establishment from day one has been highly concerned about the internationalization of Kashmir dispute as it feared that in such a scenario pressure would subsequently mount on it to implement the UN resolutions on Kashmir and that is the reason that BJP government had asked the UN team on Kashmir to vacate its offices from New Delhi. And the motive behind this move was obviously to put Kashmir issue off the international radar. On the other hand Pakistan has been hosting the UN peacekeeping missions – the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) since a long time and this Mission has played crucial role in monitoring peace along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir but it is quite unfortunate India had not allowed it to fully function in Occupied Kashmir. At a time when ceasefire violations by Indian forces across the line of control have become a routine phenomena there is dire need that the UN should further strengthen the role of UNMOGIP in the region so that it could be able to deal with the rising tensions in the disputed region. It is also imperative that the world body should take necessary steps to reduce the escalating tensions in the region by exerting pressure on India to resolve the long running dispute peacefully in accordance with the UN resolutions. No doubt that the UNMOGIP has a restricted mandate that is to supervise the ceasefire in Kashmir but its presence in the region points to the long outstanding conflict that awaits a just and equitable solution.
