Daily Times Editorials 22nd August 2026

Kashmir Calling

US Ambassador to India Sergio Gor has called India-held Kashmir “an important part of India”. This statement has rightly upset many people. Kashmir is not a settled matter. It is a disputed territory. The United Nations has said so for decades. No single ambassador can change that fact with one comment during a visit to Srinagar.

AJK President Chaudhry Latif Akbar has called the remarks deeply regrettable. He is correct. Simply controlling land does not decide who owns it legally. The Kashmir dispute has stayed on the UN Security Council’s agenda for many years.

Several UN resolutions have promised the Kashmiri people a chance to decide their own future through a free vote.

America itself once supported this idea. It even backed the appointment of a UN official to run a plebiscite in Kashmir. Washington’s own old policy papers show it once considered asking the International Court of Justice for a legal opinion on the matter. So this history cannot be ignored now.

The Jammu and Kashmir Council for Human Rights has rightly asked Washington to look back at its own record. Just because a promised vote never happened does not mean the dispute has been resolved. Silence and delay are not the same as a final settlement.

Other voices have joined this criticism too. They warn that taking one side damages America’s credibility as a fair partner in resolving the dispute.

The message here is simple. Kashmir’s future belongs to Kashmiris. It cannot be decided by India, Pakistan or any foreign diplomat’s passing remark. Real peace will only come through a fair and impartial process, not through statements that ignore history and international law.

Balochistan Bells

Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir has once again placed Balochistan at the centre of the national conversation, stressing the province’s permanent bond with Pakistan, the promise of its youth and the danger posed by foreign-backed militancy. The remarks become all the more important considering how Balochistan today sits at the intersection of Pakistan’s hardest security challenge and some of its largest economic ambitions. The question, however, remains whether the state can convert its military resilience into political confidence and economic ownership.

That Baloch youth do not lack talent cannot be stressed enough, but neither can the fact that they lack pathways into the economy and the state. Education, technical training, local hiring, business credit and a visible share in major projects should not and cannot remain peripheral to policy. Development is both a constitutional obligation and a strategic necessity.

At the same time, grievance cannot become a euphemism for terrorism. Groups that pull passengers from buses, murder labourers, attack policemen and soldiers and sabotage infrastructure are not advancing Baloch rights. They are shrinking the very economic space in which those rights can acquire substance. Political grievances belong in politics. The army and law-enforcement agencies are therefore performing the indispensable function of preserving the security without which politics, investment and ordinary life become impossible.Booking Historical Guided Tours

Nor is foreign sponsorship somehow disproved by the existence of local discontent. External actors rarely need to invent fault lines as they exploit those already available. Balochistan’s coastline, minerals, borders and role in regional connectivity give Pakistan’s adversaries obvious incentives to keep the province unstable.

But this is precisely why the state must examine its own vulnerabilities. Too much of Balochistan’s deprivation is also the product of weak provincial governance, patronage, elite capture and development spending that does not reach the citizen. It is convenient to blame Islamabad for every failure, just as it is convenient to blame every grievance on foreign manipulation. Neither explanation, on its own, is sufficient.

At the risk of sounding repetitive, these pages must once again remind those at the helm that the real test begins after a security operation succeeds. The army can clear territory and dismantle networks but civilian institutions must then fill that space with courts, schools, policing, health services and accountable local government. Otherwise, tactical victories remain vulnerable to political relapse.