AS about a dozen Kashmiris fall prey to the barbarities of the Indian security forces and lay down their lives in the struggle to shake off New Delhis hold, 150 are injured and hundreds are sent behind bars in the process during the past four weeks; Maulana Fazlur Rehman somehow believes that the terrorist phenomenon has put the Kashmir dispute on the backburner. As Chairman of the Kashmir Committee of the National Assembly, one had expected him to keep an eye on the events in the Occupied State and seen the unflagging enthusiasm of the people to attain their goal of freedom from India against all odds, including the crude labelling of all liberation movements as terrorism done by the Americans following the shock of 9/11. If anything, it is the government of Pakistan that has shown unforgivable slackness and ineptitude in handling the issue and bowed to the foreign pressure to talk of peripheral issues like prioritising the resumption of trade with India. Maulana Fazls JUI-F, being a coalition partner of the government, should explain to the public the logic of ignoring the central issue of Kashmir. This lingering dispute has given rise to another existential threat to the country: the water theft by India with the purpose of rendering fertile regions of Pakistan a vast desert. It should be kept in mind that without its just resolution any attempt at normalising relations between Pakistan and India would come to a dead-end. Repeated experience of untying their knotted relations through other approaches has come to naught. Confidence building measures, people-to-people contacts, even holding apparently serious negotiations on other irritants between the two countries i.e. the peace process, hit a snag when Pakistan wanted to take up the crucial component of the process, the Kashmir dispute. Another recent attempt, Amn Ki Aasha, launched by some interested parties has begun to totter before even properly taking off. The people of Kashmir are doing their bit to keep the issue alive. It now rests with Pakistan to disentangle the Kashmiris freedom struggle from terrorism in the minds of the international community, which to all intents and purposes is another nomenclature for the Americans when it comes to policies towards the third world. New Delhis commitment to self-determination given to the UNSC, plight of Kashmiris and climate of tension in the region that the persistence of the dispute creates, have all to be brought to the notice of the US and the international community at bilateral and international levels, till they realise that without a just and fair solution things would continue to get worse.