The latest press conference of Lt General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, Director General of the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR)—the public information arm of the Pakistan Army—was unintentionally comedic. While discussing last year's four-day skirmish with India (variously known as Operation Sindoor or Marka-i-Haq, terminology heavily inflected with religious connotations on either side), he looked overstimulated, like a compass with a broken needle in a hurricane.
(Your) English, (My) Vinglish
For a start, he seemed pretty worked up, not by the content of his adversary's public statements, but by the fact that the Indian spokesperson, Air Marshal A K Bharti, spoke in English. "Why are they speaking English? Is it because you want to tell the world what happened?" Chaudhry fired his own salvo at the journalists gathered to witness the anniversary of the supposed victory spectacle.
The style and substance of Chaudhry created an impression, too glaringly, as if he was auditioning for some award from his own boss, a man completely in thrall to himself since he elevated himself to the position of Field Marshal (a colonial relic) after the supposed victory named Marka-i-Haq, or "the fight for the truth." Regardless, Asim Munir now has the distinction of being one of only two current Field Marshals; the other is General Birhanu Jula Gelalcha, Chief of General Staff of the Ethiopian Army.
The irony provoked by Chaudhry is almost too thick to cut. A top-ranking military official, presumably educated and representing a nation on the global stage, is questioning another country's military spokesperson for using English to address the world. To Chaudhry's credit, and it must be acknowledged with distinction, he correctly identified the audience that the Indian Army was pandering to.
Chaudhry's ineptness was galore, and his daftness in calling out the use of English was all the more evident. Pakistan extensively employs English in its courts, constitution, parliament, and education system. Even its military leadership often resorts to English while lecturing in-house or addressing local audiences in colleges and universities. In yet another moment of public gaze, Chaudhry looked less like a strategic mastermind and more like a confused neighbour yelling over the fence about the colour of his addressee's shirt while dressed in the same attire.
Perhaps realising his faux pas, intended or otherwise, Chaudhry tried to veneer it over with Kashmir. In a moment of rhetorical gymnastics, General Chaudhry invoked Masala-e-Kashmir. In a performance of abject derangement, he laid claim, from inside a heavily guarded military compound, that the rivers flowing through Kashmir belonged exclusively to Pakistan, totally excising the legitimate claims of the Kashmiri people. The spectacle would be laughable were its implications not so grim.
Who’s Weaponising Water?
The assertion that Kashmir's water resources belong to Pakistan ignores not only international law but also the basic fact that the region is home to millions of Kashmiris whose rights, aspirations, and livelihoods are treated as mere footnotes in Islamabad's geopolitical calculations. The irony is staggering.
While Pakistan's military insists in press conferences that "Kashmir belongs to Pakistan" and that "Kashmiris support Pakistan," the same institution oversees gross exploitation of water resources in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, entirely for the benefit of Punjab, the military's heartland.
Consider the Mangla Dam. Originally constructed in the 1960s, its massive expansion in the early 2000s involved the displacement of over 40,000 Kashmiri families from the Mirpur district, besides the over one million already displaced in 1960s. The water stored behind Mangla Dam is channelled primarily to irrigate Punjab's agricultural heartland and generate electricity for Punjab's cities. Kashmiris, whose ancestral lands now lie beneath the reservoir, were given patchy compensation and resettlement—a classic case of Pakistan's military establishment treating Kashmir as nothing more than a colony.
The DG ISPR's claim that "six rivers originate from Kashmir" and that "if Kashmir joins Pakistan, India becomes a lower riparian state" reveals the military's true ambition: not the so-called liberation, but acquisition. This is not about Kashmir's oft-regurgitated self-determination; it is about Pakistan's strategic calculus to control water flows. The military speaks of Kashmir as a chess piece, a geographic asset that would give Islamabad upstream leverage over India. The Kashmiri population is merely inconvenient furniture in this mansion of military ambition.
After 75 years of this rhetorical theatre about Kashmir, the tactic has exhausted its utility. It now provokes laughter and ridicule, not just from Kashmiris on the Indian side, but from within Pakistan-administered Kashmir and even among Kashmiri migrants scattered across Pakistan.
The problem with Pakistan's military is that it lives inside a fantasy bubble—a hermetically sealed world of posh cantonments where honey and milk flow, where bagpipers play at celebratory dinners, and where walls are still adorned with photographs of British monarchs. This colonial hangover is more than aesthetic; it reflects a mindset. The officer corps has more in common with Raj-era British administrators than with the Pakistani peasant or the Kashmiri labourer whose poverty sustains their lifestyle. They dine well, retire to lavish colonies, and issue threats via press conference from air-conditioned studios—a class as inept as it is privileged.
For every contingency, India remains the perpetual bogeyman and is lavishly invoked whenever domestic crises threaten the establishment's grip. Yet when an opportunity for actual conflict with India arises, the Generals look up to America to broker a quick truce. The Pakistani military, as a matter of choice, refuses to fight real wars; instead, it produces songs that issue veiled threats or project otherworldly gimmicks with vague and untested promises.
In his latest public salvo, the DG ISPR described last year's skirmish as a "battle of truth" and claimed "India will never forget our response." The Indian response—with strikes deep inside Pakistani territory, including at the Pakistan Air Force Base, Noor Khan, in the vicinity of the capital Islamabad—was as lethal as the Pakistani strikes that brought down Indian military planes. By any measure, it was not a military victory for either side.
Kashmir as a Punching Bag
Perhaps that is why the Generals are talking Kashmir, yet again. But the tactic is too worn out to sit with public sentiment. As a Kashmiri, I felt it is cheap and extremely offensive, a sentiment reflected by the majority of citizens living on either side of the divide. It is time that Kashmiris stood firm and challenged the Pakistan army over its use and abuse of Kashmir and Kashmiri sentiments. Such a ruse must be condemned, as it unnecessarily drags Kashmiris into yet another conflict that Pakistan's Generals might be planning to foment for their own petty reasons.
This is not to dismiss Pakistan's water crisis, which could impact millions of people in the region. The Indus Waters Treaty, signed in 1960, remains the only framework governing cross-border water sharing. India has placed it in abeyance following the Pahalgam attack, declaring that "blood and water cannot flow together." This is certainly an overreach, given that there is no proof of Pakistan’s direct involvement in the terror attack. But that the treaty is fraying is a no-brainer. Worse, the Pakistani response is nothing but performative sabre-rattling and rhetorical overreach.
Kashmiris must actively and resolutely resist this new effort by the Pakistan military to draw them into their tactical battles. The latest claim on Kashmiri aspirations serves just one purpose: diversion. It primarily seeks to divert public attention from economic collapse, from political implosion, from rising separatist sentiments in Baluchistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, from the cost-of-living crisis within the towns and suburbs where even the middle-class can barely survive.
The Masala-e-Kashmir that the Pakistani army served in its latest press conference is nothing but a spicy fiction of grandeur—entertaining to consume but ultimately hollow. As for the water wars, they are real but nothing to do with Kashmiris.
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