An agitated Pak

The Western neighbour has been far more than flustered over India's move to make inoperative the contentious Article 370 and is virtually leaving no stone unturned to lobby the international community against India over the Kashmir matter, albeit to little effect. Pakistan's desperation to have a group of third parties gang up against India may be understood as potential existential crisis glaring in the face of the Pakistani state. A country founded on the basis of religion, a homeland for Muslims of the Indian Subcontinent, has since its inception pegged its ideological war against India on the Muslim-majority Kashmir region, seeking to claim the entire earstwhile princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. In a recent development, UAE and Saudi Arabian foreign ministers extended their presence in Pakistan to calm tensions over Kashmir. The very reported purpose of their visit is somewhat of a diplomatic travesty given India's fast developing and strengthening relations with the Gulf region, particularly with Saudi Arabia. Seeking to internationalise the historic Kashmir issue at the behest of India's internal move to disempower Article 370 has not so far gone down very well with world leaders and global powers, as most of them officially maintain the stand that what India did was its internal matter and any dispute with Pakistan over this is a bilateral issue between the two neighbours and it is for them to resolve it. The global stand also affirms India's clear position to disallow any third party intervention in its discord with Pakistan. Saudi Arabia and the UAE sending their top diplomats to Pakistan to help defuse tensions over Kashmir may be a necessary diplomatic exercise at their end but when Pakistan's PM Imran Khan asks Saudi Arabia and the UAE to urge India to reverse its decision on Kashmir, their persistence to involve international forces over Kashmir only gives away their desperation a little more with every new effort.