A leader weeps. Mehbooba Mufti’s Tears spill not from weakness, but from a place deeper than words can reach. They slice through bone and memory, exposing a wound that this land has carried for generations. It is not just her grief. It is the collective grief of a people made to walk barefoot across the shards of broken promises. It is the ache of a homeland drained dry, not by time, but by betrayal dressed in diplomacy, decade after decade.
Pakistan’s violence is not spontaneous. It is institutionalised, engineered, calibrated, and served cold under the guise of strategy, wrapped in the cloth of struggle, sanctified by false prophets of liberation. But that cloth is soaked in the blood of civilians. The empire it feeds is not built on borders; it is built on funerals.
Her tears do not belong to her alone. They are an archive. They belong to every mother who pressed her face into the soil over her child’s grave, every home that became rubble, every quiet plea that was drowned by the sound of shelling.
Peace? Dialogue? These are words now stripped of meaning, so contorted, so weaponised, that they land like blows. We have spoken of peace for decades, but every conversation ends with a body count. Dialogue? No. It is theatre. Every act ends the same: a press release, a photo op, and another funeral. You cannot reason with a state that has made terror its national religion.
We have passed microphones like offerings at a shrine.Click Here To Follow Our WhatsApp ChannelWe have arranged chairs in hotel conference rooms and called it diplomacy. Held talks in air-conditioned rooms with tea and nameplates, while outside, children were being wrapped in shrouds. Meanwhile, across the border, the guns are always awake. The missiles, drones, and artillery do not sleep. And every time we tried to talk, Pakistan answered not with words, but with war.
They have perfected the performance, playing victim while playing god with Kashmiri lives. And we, the audience, are instructed to clap. Or worse, to forgive. And those who defend this farce have perfected silence, an art form unto itself. A theatre of inaction.
Pakistan has built its national identity on the corpses of Kashmiris. It has monetised mourning, trafficked in trauma, and called it resistance. Every peace overture ends in fresh graves and burnt flags.
So how long must we kneel at the feet of those who wield only bullets and deceit? How long must we offer olive branches to hands that hold matches?
No more appeasement. No more performance. The pain is ours, but so is the clarity. The blame, the bullets, the cowardice. Those are Pakistan’s legacy.
Her grief is not a moment. It is a mirror. And in it, she must finally see the truth she has long refused to name.
Written by: Mir Junaid
President, Jammu and Kashmir Workers Party