Ebola Outbreak-The deadly Epidemic

The United Nations was founded in 1945 after the League of Nations had failed to preserve peace. Its Security Council was designed for the world that emerged from the Second World War, with five permanent members holding the veto and a small number of elected seats. That basic architecture has scarcely changed since 1965, when the non-permanent membership rose from six to ten. The veto was meant to keep the great powers inside the system and to prevent open conflict among them. Eight decades later the organisation still carries the imprint of 1945 while the membership of the United Nations has grown to 193 states and the global population exceeds eight billion. The Council’s composition therefore no longer reflects the international community it is supposed to serve. In 2008 the General Assembly launched the Intergovernmental Negotiations to consider reform. The discussions have centred on five linked questions: categories of membership, the veto, regional representation, the size of the Council and its working methods. Africa still has no permanent seat. Latin America, South Asia and large parts of the Muslim world remain under-represented. The present arrangement is widely seen as a remnant of the colonial order that concentrates power among a few states. Many argue that emerging powers and significant regional actors—Pakistan, Brazil, Egypt, South Africa, Nigeria, Indonesia, Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, Mexico and India among them—ought to enjoy greater weight if the Council is to regain legitimacy and effectiveness. Yet the debate is locked. The Group of Four seeks permanent seats for itself and two for Africa. The African Group demands two permanent seats with full veto rights. France and Mexico urge the permanent members to refrain voluntarily from using the veto in cases of mass atrocity. The Uniting for Consensus group, led by Pakistan and supported by Italy, Mexico, Argentina, Canada and South Korea, rejects any enlargement of the permanent category. It proposes instead an expansion of elected seats that would be longer-term and renewable. The rival camps cancel one another’s majorities, leaving the process stalled. Enlarging permanent membership would not reform the Council so much as entrench new privileges. Additional veto-holders would multiply the occasions on which national interests can block action. The repeated American vetoes that have shielded Israel and allowed the destruction of Gaza to continue illustrate how a single permanent member can nullify the will of the rest. More permanent members would introduce further competing interests and raise the risk of paralysis. Once granted, permanent status is effectively irreversible; the new members would be free to obstruct any future attempt to revise the arrangement. India’s claim to a permanent seat invites particular scrutiny. Permanent membership requires sustained confidence in a state’s fidelity to the Charter. India’s refusal to implement successive Security Council resolutions on Jammu and Kashmir, its rejection of a United Nations-supervised plebiscite and its unilateral constitutional changes in the territory sit uneasily with that standard. Concerns about human-rights practices in the disputed region and elsewhere, the suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty, reports of transnational repression, the Citizenship Amendment Act, the treatment of Rohingya refugees and a foreign policy that has offered strategic comfort to Israel all raise legitimate questions. India’s status outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty adds a further layer of unease. Germany’s candidature faces different objections. Europe already holds two permanent seats. Adding a third would deepen regional imbalance. Recent German positions on Gaza have been criticised as inconsistent with the very humanitarian principles permanent members are expected to uphold. The country’s failure to secure even a non-permanent seat in a recent election suggests that its aspirations do not command the necessary breadth of support. The Uniting for Consensus proposal offers a more measured path. Expanding the elected membership from ten to twenty would open opportunities for Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean without creating new permanent centres of power. Periodic elections would keep members accountable to the wider membership. Rotation would allow more states to contribute to the maintenance of peace and security. Broader participation could improve the quality of deliberation on intractable questions such as Palestine, Ukraine and other long-standing disputes, without multiplying vetoes that have so often produced deadlock. Reform should strengthen the Council’s legitimacy without sacrificing its capacity to act. Expanding permanent membership would create additional privileged seats, heighten the risk of institutional paralysis and make subsequent change more difficult still. Wider geographical representation is better achieved by enlarging the elected ranks. The Uniting for Consensus approach preserves the existing institutional framework, enhances inclusivity, promotes accountability through regular elections and reflects the interests of the membership as a whole. Sustainable reform therefore lies in widening participation and reinforcing regional balance rather than in extending permanent privilege and the veto.

A rare photograph can sometimes preserve more history than an official archive. The one below brings together six extraordinary men. In the front row, from left to right, stand Zafar Iqbal Mirza—our beloved ZIM—Shafqat Tanvir Mirza, Dada Ameer Hyder and I.A. Rehman. Behind them are Major Ishaq Muhammad, remembered for the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case, and Professor Amin Mughal. None sought celebrity. Together, they represent a moral and intellectual republic that Pakistan never formally acknowledged. An extraordinary assembly of Pakistan’s progressive tradition. Front row, from left: Zafar Iqbal Mirza (ZIM), Shafqat Tanvir Mirza, Dada Ameer Hyder and I.A. Rehman. Second row: Major Ishaq Muhammad and Professor Amin Mughal The photograph is remarkable not because all six belonged to a single organisation or followed an identical political line. They did not. Its power lies in the coexistence of different traditions of resistance: the revolutionary organiser, the dissident soldier, the journalist, the editor, the defender of human rights, the custodian of Punjabi language and the teacher who connected all these worlds through conversation. Amin Mughal, standing quietly in the second row, provides the key to reading the photograph. His position is almost symbolic. He does not occupy the centre, although he belonged at the centre of the intellectual relationships represented in it. He appears as he lived: present, observant and connected to everyone, without needing to establish precedence over anyone. Much has already been written after his passing in London on August 12, 2026. A chronological retelling of his life—his teaching, political activity, imprisonment, journalism and exile—cannot explain what made him exceptional. His real contribution lay in creating intellectual continuities. He connected the organised Left of Dada Ameer Hyder and Major Ishaq with the democratic journalism of ZIM and I.A. Rehman, the linguistic and cultural resistance of Shafqat Tanvir Mirza, and younger people like me who entered journalism without fully comprehending the inheritance placed before them. I worked with Amin Sahib at the weekly Viewpoint between 1979 and 1984. Its modest premises at 4-Lawrence Road, Lahore, were my real university. As recalled in “Remembering Viewpoint & its stalwarts” [Minute Mirror, March 23-24, 2026], Mazhar Ali Khan had gathered people for whom journalism was an ethical commitment rather than a route to influence, wealth or political patronage. Amin Mughal belonged naturally to that environment. He did not separate editing from teaching, political analysis from literature, or intellectual disagreement from personal affection. The men in this photograph remind us that the Left was once far more than an electoral label. Dada Ameer Hyder had travelled the world as a worker and revolutionary before most Pakistanis had encountered the language of globalisation. Beginning as a coal-boy on a ship, Dada experienced labour, empire and racial hierarchy directly. His memoirs, Chains to Lose, reveal a world stretching from Bombay and Moscow to New York, Shanghai and Buenos Aires. He organised workers across borders long before international solidarity became the vocabulary of funded conferences. I had the rare honour of meeting Dada at Viewpoint. He carried no theatrical aura of revolutionary greatness. His authority arose from struggle endured, not status claimed. Official histories largely excluded him because he challenged both colonial power and the class order that succeeded it. The state could accommodate elite leaders of independence; a worker who asked what independence had delivered to other workers remained dangerous. Major Ishaq represented another uncomfortable history. A soldier capable of thinking beyond military obedience, he was implicated in the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case and repeatedly imprisoned. After Hasan Nasir’s death in custody, he pursued the matter when silence would have been safer. Major Ishaq later organised peasants and workers, treating revolution neither as romance nor slogan but as the slow construction of collective capacity. Even paralysis could not end his political work. His life contradicted the convenient division between soldier and dissident, patriot and critic. Shafqat Tanvir Mirza—STM—resisted through language. Journalist, trade unionist, historian and scholar, he understood that the marginalisation of Punjabi was not a literary accident. It reflected the estrangement of a people from their own cultural memory. STM’s  scholarship on Punjabi literature, history and the Sufi poets restored dignity to a language spoken by millions but frequently denied serious institutional space. His commitment earned imprisonment and professional hardship, but never displaced his willingness to engage in dialogue. ZIM embodied another form of courage: fidelity to professional standards when both censorship and commercialisation encouraged surrender. In my tribute to him, I recalled him as my teacher and mentor. He was a master sub-editor, stylist and conversationalist. When Mazhar Ali Khan, I.A. Rehman and Amin Mughal were arrested in 1981, ZIM helped ensure that Viewpoint appeared without interruption. His authority came from mastery of craft joined with an unshakable belief in free expression, equality and human dignity. I.A. Rehman carried those commitments into the organised defence of human rights. His life demonstrated that opposition to injustice need not produce bitterness. He spoke softly, listened patiently and remained firm. At a PIDE memorial, I recalled that he spoke the truth although it sent him to prison twice. Rehman sahib, as we all call him with respect and affection, suffered without complaint because, for him, sacrifice was the natural cost of professed principles. His advice that the struggle for human rights was “a marathon, not a sprint” remains essential in an age addicted to instant victories and equally instant despair. What, then, distinguished Amin Mughal among these giants? He was the interpreter between their worlds. From Dada and Major Ishaq came the imperative of structural change; from STM, the inseparability of culture and emancipation; from ZIM, professional integrity; from I.A. Rehman, the defence of every person’s dignity. Amin Sahib absorbed these traditions without turning any of them into dogma. Amin Mughal possessed a rare capacity to disagree without diminishing another person. His questions could dismantle a weak argument, but never the dignity of the person making it. For younger colleagues, this was an education in democratic conduct. He taught us that progressive politics without intellectual honesty becomes another orthodoxy,

In the space of a single year, Pakistan has moved from the periphery of Middle Eastern diplomacy to its center. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and army chief Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir have positioned the country as both a mediator between Washington and Tehran and, more recently, a formal treaty partner of Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The result  the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement, signed on August 7 in Islam’s holiest city  marks one of the most consequential shifts in South Asian foreign policy in decades. Yet it also raises hard questions about who is really steering Pakistan’s course, and at what long-term cost.   A war that reshaped the region   The backdrop is a war between the United States and Iran that erupted on February 28, drawing in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Iraqi militias and Yemen’s Houthi movement, and disrupting roughly a fifth of the world’s seaborne energy supplies through the Strait of Hormuz. Missile and drone exchanges reached Saudi cities, unsettling a region that had spent years trying to de-escalate after the 2015 nuclear deal’s collapse.   Pakistan, one of the few states with working channels to both Washington and Tehran, stepped into the gap. Sharif’s government hosted preliminary contacts that produced the so-called Islamabad Memorandum, under which Iran signalled it would not pursue nuclear weapons  a pledge it had already made under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the 2015 accord  in exchange for a mechanism allowing it to dilute stockpiles of highly enriched uranium. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian later thanked Islamabad for its “constructive engagement” in securing a ceasefire and agreed to send negotiators to further talks in the Pakistani capital. Analysts at the Washington-based Stimson Center have noted that Munir personally staked considerable political capital on the diplomacy, given how easily it could have collapsed.       The Makkah pact   That mediating role fed directly into last week’s agreement. Saudi Arabia, repeatedly struck during the war by Iranian missiles and by Tehran-aligned forces in Yemen and Iraq, had already signed a bilateral defence pact with Pakistan in September 2025  struck, notably, just over a week after an Israeli strike on Hamas negotiators in Doha rattled Gulf capitals’ confidence in American security guarantees. The Makkah agreement extends that arrangement into a trilateral pact with Turkey, declaring that an armed attack on any one of the three signatories will be treated as an attack on all.   Pakistani officials describe the pact as purely defensive. Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said this week it was “not directed against any country” and remained open to other regional states. President Asif Ali Zardari called it a reflection of “shared resolve for peace and security,” while Sharif credited Munir’s “tireless efforts” in securing an arrangement he said had been years in the making. For Riyadh and Ankara, the pact offers a hedge against dependence on any single outside power at a moment when American commitments to the region look less certain than they once did. For Pakistan, it offers closer ties with two wealthy allies, a symbolic role as guardian of Islam’s holiest sites, and outsized influence for a country whose economy remains fragile.   Praise, and pointed scepticism   The agreement has been celebrated in much of Pakistan’s domestic media as evidence that the country’s leadership  civilian and military alike  is finally translating decades of geopolitical positioning into tangible strategic weight. Supporters point to a similar dynamic in May, when a brief but intense military confrontation with India ended within days, after which the government promoted Munir to the rare, largely ceremonial rank of Field Marshal, only the second officer in Pakistan’s history to hold it.   But that same promotion has drawn sharp criticism from analysts who see it as part of a broader consolidation of power by the military at the expense of elected institutions. Munir, appointed army chief in November 2022, has presided over a period in which  according to critics including jailed former prime minister Imran Khan’s supporters  courts, the media and Sharif’s own coalition have operated increasingly under military direction, a system some commentators have dubbed a “hybrid regime.” The Middle East Institute has described Munir’s elevation as “a thunderous declaration of the military’s unassailable supremacy,” while other analysts note that his growing role in foreign and economic policy  well beyond the traditional remit of an army chief  blurs the line between civilian governance and military command in a country with a long history of that line collapsing altogether.   What comes next   None of this diminishes the immediate diplomatic achievement: a ceasefire process that, however fragile, has held; a new pact that binds three influential Muslim-majority states more closely together; and a Pakistan that finds itself, for now, indispensable to great-power diplomacy in a region convulsed by war. Whether that translates into durable stability  for the Gulf, for the broader Middle East, or for Pakistan’s own democratic institutions  remains an open question. The coming months, as the Islamabad talks resume and the Makkah pact’s practical implications become clearer, will test whether this new era represents a genuine diplomatic breakthrough or a further tightening of military control dressed in the language of strategic necessity.

By General Ghulam Mustafa (Served in different staff and command assignments, commanded a Corps, raised and commanded Army Strategic Force Command) & Engineer Arshad H Abbasi, Co-founder, Energy Excellence Centres at NUST and Engineering University Peshawar, International Transboundary Water Expert  Prime Minister Sahib, With the deepest respect, and as one voice among the 260 million you lead, we write to you today not to doubt your resolve, but to place before you what we believe you deserve to see in full — because a nation that trusts its Prime Minister also trusts him to be given the whole picture. On August 13, 2026, on the eve of our Independence Day, you stood at the inauguration of the Yadgar-e-Fatah monument in Islamabad and gave voice to what every Pakistani feels in their heart. “I declare in clear terms that every single drop of Pakistan’s water is our red line,” you said, warning that if India “does not come to its senses,” it would be “responded to directly.” We were moved by those words, Sir, as was the nation. It was the latest chapter in a warning you have repeated for over a year, since India placed the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance following the April 2025 Pahalgam attack — a treaty that had, for six decades, survived three wars precisely because water was once considered too sacred, too existential, to be weaponized. It is with humility, then, and not with any wish to add to your burdens, that we ask you to consider what has been happening quietly at the river’s source while that red line was being drawn. What Has Been Happening in Ladakh: Almost two and a half months before your Independence Day address, on May 27, 2026, India inaugurated what it proudly called a first: the country’s inaugural Rock Check Dam, built across the Indus itself near Upshi village in Leh district, at 11,400 feet. Built in a mere seven days from 180 metric tonnes of interlocking riverbed boulders, without a gram of cement, it now holds back a 1,500-foot pool capable of storing 40 million litres — roughly 200 acre-feet — of Indus water. We respectfully submit that it may be something more: the opening move of the Sindhu Jal Samriddhi Abhiyan, a Ladakh-wide water campaign launched by Lieutenant Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena. It does not stand alone, Sir. It sits alongside the newly restored 43-kilometre Igoo–Phey canal; the Mahey Tokpo–Raldho canal at 14,000 feet, drawing from Yaya Tso Lake; the Brakdongthang Bodh Kharbu canal in Kargil; solar-powered lift-irrigation schemes at Latoo and Karsha; and Project Him Sarovar, a plan for fifty to one hundred small reservoirs across Leh and Kargil, unveiled on April 10, 2026, to capture glacier melt that would otherwise flow downstream toward us. We ask this humbly: for whom is all this water truly being gathered? Leh district is home to barely 160,000 people. It is also home to the Western Air Command’s most strategically dense high-altitude military footprint on India’s borders — Leh Air Force Station, the newly upgraded Mudh-Nyoma fighter base, Thoise Air Force Station feeding the Siachen front, and the world’s highest airstrip at Daulat Beg Oldi. Add the XIV “Fire and Fury” Corps and the newly raised divisions garrisoning eastern Ladakh, and a different picture may be emerging — one where the deepest beneficiary of this irrigation campaign is not the Ladakhi farmer but the soldier and the forward base that no longer wishes to depend on a single vulnerable mountain road. The massive military presence, characterized by extensive garrisons and airbases in the fragile Siachen and Ladakh regions, acts as a primary catalyst for glacial retreat, directly exacerbating climate vulnerabilities in downstream Pakistan We say plainly, Sir, out of fairness: under Annexure E of the treaty, India is permitted non-consumptive storage of up to 0.40 million acre-feet on the Indus main stem in the Ladakh sector, and a 200-acre-foot check dam, judged alone, is a small thing against that number. Our concern is not any single dam. It is the pattern — check dams, canals, lift schemes, and a hundred small reservoirs, each defensible on its own, together forming a system capable of holding back water at precisely the moment a suspended treaty leaves India no obligation to release it. You declare that Pakistan will not cede a single drop of water, yet the reality is otherwise. The diversion of Indus waters—driven by a stated Indian policy of zero flow to Pakistan—is already underway. Regrettably, your own ministries have taken this matter to global forums, even as the people of Ladakh bravely oppose this very diversion into their fragile permafrost lands.   Respectfully, we also note that your own minister is now questioning the very stability of governance in Pakistan. If that is so, Sir, we urge you—with humility and candour—to look inward before raising your voice outward. And downstream, Sir, is where our entire modern economy waits. Tarbela Dam alone generates close to 4,888 megawatts today, with capacity meant to rise toward 6,418. The 4,500-megawatt Diamer-Bhasha Dam and the 4,320-megawatt Dasu Dam were built on the assumption of a river that keeps flowing. To choke that flow at its source, even gradually, even in the name of a farmer’s canal, is to threaten the affordability of electricity for a nation already straining under its cost — and the food and economic security bound up with it. We wish to be clear: this is not written against Ladakh’s own people, or their right to a better harvest. It is worth remembering, respectfully, that Ladakh’s own most prominent son, the engineer and activist Sonam Wangchuk, our friend too, has spent years warning — through repeated hunger strikes over Ladakh’s fragile ecology and constitutional status — that his homeland’s landscape is being reshaped less for its own people than for priorities decided in Delhi. He has carried that protest in his own body, across multiple fasts since 2024. A Humble Word on Timing- We say this, Prime Minister

By Ahmad Hassan “The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other… Elaborate euphemisms may conceal your intent to kill, but behind any use of power over another the ultimate assumption remains: ‘I feed on your energy.’” When Frank Herbert wrote those words in his novel Dune Messiah, he observed that elaborate euphemisms are often used by the state to conceal the raw mechanics of power. In Pakistan, August 5 is observed as Youm-e-Istehsal to condemn the 2019 revocation of Article 370 and its supplementary provision, Article 35A. This act of the Indian government removed Kashmir’s separate constitution, its flag and its control over its own affairs. Last week marked seven years since that day. What began as a dramatic constitutional rupture has now, by design, become quietly normalized. Jammu and Kashmir joined India in 1947 on defined terms. The Maharaja handed over defence, foreign affairs and communications. Everything else stayed with the state. The United Nations later called for a plebiscite. It never happened. Instead, over decades, the protections that were supposed to stand in its place were worn down piece by piece, until August 5, 2019, when the government removed what remained in a single stroke. The method deserves more attention than it usually gets. Article 370 was not directly changed. First, the government reached for Article 367, which was intended to aid in the interpretation of the Constitution, and used it to redefine one phrase: “Constituent Assembly” became “Legislative Assembly.” Kashmir had no sitting assembly at the time, and the state was under President’s Rule. So, the government’s own appointee, the Governor, signed off on the change. India’s Supreme Court had already ruled, in 1959 and again in 1969, that Kashmir’s constitutional status could only be changed after the approval of the Constituent Assembly of Kashmir. When that body no longer existed, no institution had the standing to give that consent on Kashmir’s behalf. New Delhi decided that its own Governor could stand in for the people he had not been elected by. That is not consent. It is a government consenting to itself. The Indian government argued that Kashmiris had lived for decades under an insurgency that killed tens of thousands and emptied the Valley of its Pandit community in 1990. It left the region isolated from the investment and policing coordination. That argument would carry more weight if the method had matched it. What followed the revocation was not the language of integration. It was a total communications blackout, landlines and mobile networks and the internet all cut at once. Independent estimates put the troop presence at 600,000 to 800,000, roughly one soldier for every ten Kashmiris. Even pro-India politicians, former chief ministers among them, were placed under detention. Perhaps a security argument can justify counter-insurgency operations. It cannot by itself justify dissolving a state’s constitutional status, its legislature and its statehood in one move. That too with no elected Kashmiri voice given the chance to object. Jawaharlal Nehru warned Parliament about exactly this shortcut in 1952, while Article 370 was still being drafted. No clause in a constitution, he said, could substitute for the will of the Kashmiri people. Real integration, in his words, comes from the mind and the heart, not from a clause imposed from outside. Actually, there is a longer, quieter project behind the legal manoeuvre. Article 35A once barred outsiders from buying land or settling permanently in Kashmir. Since its removal, more than 3.2 million domicile certificates have gone to outsiders, most of them non-Kashmiri Hindus. This alarming thing is that wherever a disputed territory’s demographics are reshaped before its people are asked what they want, the eventual vote, if one ever comes, no longer reflects the population whose future was originally in question. None of this required an invading army, or an open declaration of intent. It required a redefined word, a signature from an appointee, and a great deal of time. The convoluted legalisms that Herbert warned about have become policy in Kashmir: development, integration, correction. Each euphemism has quietly done the work that an honest admission of purpose could never have achieved. Seven years on, Kashmir’s assembly has voted decisively against the BJP that carried out the revocation, and passed its own resolution demanding the restoration of its special status. New Delhi can easily ignore them. Yet, that very power to ignore an elected legislature proves, beyond any doubt, that the “consent” obtained seven years ago was always a legal fiction

Kashmiris including men, women, youth and children who underwent the second longest lockdown, complete curfew, for a pretty long time, are observing it as the second darkest day in their history on August 05, 2026. On August 05, 2019, the Indian Government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi had quite unexpectedly, illegally and unilaterally scrapped the special status of Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution making it an integral part of the country. These measures had ended the occupied territory’s limited autonomy and sought to alter the internationally recognized disputed status of Jammu and Kashmir in blatant violation of the United Nations Security Council resolutions and international law. The second darkest day in Kashmiris’ history is now better known and is observed every year on August 05 as Youm-e-Istehsal (Day of Exploitation). The observance of Youm-e-Istehsal not only serves as a reminder of the continued sufferings of the Kashmiri people but also reaffirms Pakistan’s unflinching solidarity with their just struggle for the realization of their right of self-determination. Pakistan’s civil and military leadership has all along been extending moral, diplomatic and political support to the Kashmiris in their just and indigenous freedom struggle. Kashmiris on both sides of the Line of Control (LoC), around the world as well as the Pakistan government and the people are observing yet another Youm-e-Istehsal on August 05, 2026 to mark the 7 years of quite regretful, deplorable Indian siege of its illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir valley and denying the Kashmiris their birth right of self-determination in accordance with the UN Security Council resolutions. Needless to mention here that Kashmir conflict continues to remain as perhaps the oldest lingering and unresolved international dispute dating back to 1947. It also continues to be recognized by the world body, the United Nations, as an issue requiring peaceful settlement in accordance with its Security Council resolutions and the wishes of the Kashmiri people who were engaged in one of the longest unarmed struggles for freedom from the Indian shackles. Kashmiris in the occupied valley, on both sides of the Line of Control, in the world over are observing August 5, 2026 as the second darkest day of their history. The first one being observed every year on October 27 is to continue marking their protest and agitation against illegal and forcible occupation of their territory by India on this day in 1947 after its last Dogra ruler Maharaja Hari Singh, one of as many as 565 princely states, had an Instrument of Accession signed in Delhi, had opted to join India in accordance with the provisions of the Sub-Continent Partition Plan against the wishes and aspirations of the valley residents. Following this ugliest development, India had airlifted its security forces into the occupied territory. Since August 05, 2019, India has accelerated its efforts for consolidating its control over its Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) through a series of political, legal, and administrative measures. The Indian Government was also making attempts, which are a great source of concern for everybody, to engineer demographic changes in its occupied territory through the issuance of forged domicile certificates to non-Kashmiris, mainly Hindus, changing the land ownership laws, and electoral delimitation measures which were designed to arbitrarily alter the region’s demographic and political landscape. There were reports that in pursuance of Indian PM Narendra Modi’s devilish intentions of promoting Hindutva more than 350,000 fake and forged domicile certificates have been issued to non-Kashmiris (Hindus) enabling them to settle in the occupying territory since August 05, 2029. These measures, quite obviously, were a crude attempt to dilute the identity of the indigenous Kashmiri population, undermining their political representation, and creating irreversible changes to the disputed territory in flagrant violation of all international laws and the Fourth Geneva Convention. The years following August 5, 2019, have also witnessed a worsening and quite alarming human rights situation in IIOJK. Reports of arbitrary detentions, extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, custodial torture, women’s rapes, restrictions on freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, and systematic curbs on media freedom continue to surface and emerge frequently. Observance of another Youm-e-Istehsal on August 05, 2026 as such is not only a painful and tragic commemoration of August 05, 2019 events but also a reminder of the ongoing challenges being faced by the Kashmiris but will also highlight the urgent and dire need for the international community to take cognizance of the situation in IIOJK and exert pressure on India to respect international law and human rights and firmly support the efforts aiming at achieving a just and peaceful resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute. Observance of the Youm-e-Istehsal by the government and the people of Pakistan is also a renewed commitment of Pakistan to continue extending political, diplomatic and moral support to the Kashmiris until they are enabled to exercise their inalienable right of self-determination in accordance with the UN Security Council resolutions. Kashmiris all over the world earnestly believe that their observance of the darkest days on August 5 and October 27 besides other protests and rallies in occupied territory and elsewhere will sooner or later awake the sleeping conscience of the international community and they will be getting their birth right of self-determination in accordance with UN Security Council resolutions and they will be free to either stay with India or join Pakistan. They are hopeful that this will happen but are unable to say surely as to when this is going to happen.