By Romana Rubeo  

In an exclusive FloodGate conversation, the former President of Azad Jammu and Kashmir draws historical links between two peoples resisting occupation, from forced displacement to demographic engineering. 

In this powerful episode of The FloodGate, Ramzy Baroud and Abdulla Moaswes sit down with His Excellency Masood Khan, former President of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, for a timely and unapologetic conversation on Palestinian resistance, Kashmiri self-determination, and the colonial entanglements linking the two. 

Over the course of the interview, Khan, who is also the former Ambassador of Pakistan to the United States, China, and the United Nations, offered a candid and uncompromising perspective on history, solidarity, and the failures of the international order. 

Here are six takeaways from that conversation.

Kashmir’s Historical Struggle

The Kashmir story begins in 1947, when the British partitioned India and Pakistan and left the fate of princely states unresolved. Jammu and Kashmir, ruled by a Hindu Maharaja despite its Muslim majority, became the stage of immediate rebellion. 

Khan recalled how ordinary people, not outside armies, resisted both the Maharaja’s rule and India’s attempt to coerce accession.

“In 1947 this territory called Jammu and Kashmir was ruled by a Maharaja… he preferred accession to India but the population rebelled because they wanted to join Pakistan,” Khan explained. 

“There was a war waged by the people of Jammu and Kashmir… and they constituted this state called Azad Jammu and Kashmir on October the 24th, 1947.”

This framing challenges the dominant Indian narrative that Kashmir was legally and willingly integrated. Instead, Khan situated Azad Kashmir’s existence as the direct outcome of a popular uprising, born in defiance of both autocracy and colonial coercion.

Severed Ties, Shared Wounds

Khan described Azad Kashmir and Indian-occupied Kashmir as “one organism… dissected forcibly by India.” 

The depth of that dissection is best understood in the long shadow of violence. He pointed to the massacres of Muslims in Jammu in late 1947 as a foundational trauma.

“There was a genocide in Jammu… The population of Muslims used to be about 62%. Now it is 28%. The bulk of them were killed in the months of October and November 1947… about 250,000.”

The human connections across the Line of Control persisted for decades despite division. Families visited one another, and trade moved across the border. Yet in 2019, India’s unilateral revocation of Kashmir’s limited autonomy ended even those fragile lifelines. 

“Both these links were severed in August 2019 because of India’s reoccupation of the territory,” Khan said. What remains are fragments — mediated through social media or print publications — and the enduring aspiration of Kashmiris “to reconnect and to continue to communicate with each other.”

Kashmir and Palestine: Parallel Trajectories

Throughout the interview, Khan returned to the parallels between Kashmir and Palestine. Both struggles reached the United Nations in 1948. Both produced resolutions affirming the right of self-determination. Both remain unimplemented due to obstruction by the occupying powers.

“Both these issues, Palestine and Kashmir, were referred to the Security Council in 1948… both sets of resolutions have not been implemented because of the adamant attitude of India and Israel,” he said.

He drew further connections: Palestinians face mass killings in Gaza today, while Kashmiris endured their own ‘Nakba’ beginning in 1947 and continuing with mass disappearances and massacres. 

Both are subject to demographic engineering — Israeli settlements in Palestinian lands mirrored by India’s policy of issuing domicile certificates to Hindus to alter Kashmir’s Muslim-majority character.

And yet, a crucial difference remains, according to Khan: Palestine has global recognition and observer status at the UN, while Kashmiris “do not have, for instance, representation at the United Nations or… the kind of support that Palestine enjoys in the European Union.” 

Competing Aspirations, Enduring Unity

The political aspirations of Kashmiris are complex and often fractured. Khan did not shy away from acknowledging this. Some demand accession to Pakistan, others call for full independence. 

India, he noted, exploits this diversity by branding calls for independence as treason internally, while simultaneously encouraging such rhetoric in Azad Kashmir to weaken pro-Pakistan forces.

“Despite all the atrocities committed against them, there is a significant pro-Pakistan component in the Valley of Kashmir. If they didn’t have that aspiration, the issue of Kashmir would have been wrapped up long ago,” he said.

He invoked figures like Yasin Malik, who once argued that a plebiscite should be held first, after which Kashmiris themselves could decide between independence, accession to Pakistan, or accession to India. 

And he recalled Syed Ali Shah Geelani, whose uncompromising slogan — “We are Pakistanis… Pakistan is ours” — still resonates among many. For Khan, these differences do not erase the fundamental unity of a people long denied the right to decide their own fate.

India, Israel, and the Colonial Playbook

Khan devoted significant time to highlighting what he sees as a deepening convergence between India and Israel. The two countries, he argued, collaborate on strategy, arms, and intelligence in their shared attempts to suppress resistance.

“There was ample evidence that India and Israel were collaborating… They are very close partners… Israel has been supplying arms to India. India has been learning strategic and tactical ways to face the challenge in Kashmir… India attacked Pakistan with these Israeli drones called Hog, and they came here in big numbers.”

This cooperation, in Khan’s view, goes beyond military hardware. It reflects a shared colonial playbook: demographic engineering, repression of dissent, and the framing of indigenous resistance as terrorism. 

International Order on Trial

Perhaps Khan’s most sobering reflections concerned the failures of the international system. 

He contrasted Palestine’s constant presence on the global agenda with Kashmir’s relegation to the background, blaming Pakistan’s decision at times to “bilateralize” the issue with India.

But he also widened the lens: both struggles expose the hollowness of the global system itself. 

“Palestine is testing and challenging the world order… If it can’t save a population which is being exterminated before your eyes, there’s something wrong with the system — whether it is your international judicial system, the Security Council, or the United Nations as a whole.”

For Khan, this is more than a political question; it is a civilizational one. The massacres in Palestine and the repression in Kashmir are not only human tragedies but indictments of the very structures that claim to safeguard human rights. 

“Where is humanity going?” he asked, leaving the audience with a question that underscores both urgency and despair.

(The Palestine Chronicle)