Muslim India

TOP ARTICLE | Kashmir Is Not The Issue

17 Jan 2009, 0010 hrs IST, Gautam Adhikari

secretary David Miliband. He wrote in The Guardian on Thursday that "resolution of the Kashmir dispute would help deny extremists one of their main calls to arms and allow Pakistani authorities to focus more effectively on tackling the threat on their western borders''. Really? Well, here's why that's unlikely to happen. 

To start with, let's review a bit of history. The Kashmir issue was in fact `resolved' i.e. signed and, many assumed, `sealed' when the Simla accord between India and Pakistan was initialled in 1972 following the Bangladesh war. The two nations agreed that the line of actual control separating them in India's Jammu and Kashmir state would be a de facto border. Not de jure, alas, because legend has it that when Indira Gandhi and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto went for a walk in the hills, the Pakistani leader convinced the Indian prime minister that making the Line of Control a real international border would not only make his political survival in Islamabad impossible, it would surely bring the army back in power. 

And peace did reign between India and Pakistan no war, no cross-border terrorism for 17 long years. Until 1989, when the Pakistani security forces began to send mujahideen as well as other jehadi elements to fight on the Kashmir front since the lads were suddenly unemployed after the end of the Afghan war against the Soviet army. Soon after, the ISI also created the Lashkar-e-Taiba comprised mostly of non-Kashmiris as a special outfit to create trouble across the Line of Control. 

Now, we should acknowledge that the Indian authorities did a few stupid things in that tinderbox of a region in the late 80s. New Delhi allowed a state election in 1987 to be rigged, creating resentment in the local population; the security forces cracked down far too hard on various protesters in the next couple of years and popular anger grew. 

It would be quite fair to criticise Indian tactics and for human rights activists to point out reported atrocities committed by Indian security forces. And many did criticise, including several voices fromIndia. But how does that give Pakistan a licence to intervene by sending jehadis across a mutually agreed border from 1989 onwards till today with not even a compelling refugee crisis to justify such intervention? 

Over the years, there have been other instances in Indian border states Gujarat and Punjab, for example of perceived or real official mistreatment of minorities. But does that mean that Pakistanwould have had a case for sending jehadis into, say, Gujarat following the 2002 massacre of Muslims? No. But Kashmir is special, isn't it? 

It is, because it's a leftover of the bitter fallout of India's partition into two nations in 1947. But the issue must be understood clearly for what it is by all those in the rest of the world who insist that a `resolution' of the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan is a precondition for tackling terrorism emanating from Pakistan today. 

Without recounting a long story about its origin, Kashmir is a partition-era dispute between Indiaand Pakistan for possession of a former princely state. It is not about `independence' of Kashmir. There are some Kashmiris who want national independence; but India and Pakistan are fighting over absorption of the state. One problem of global perception is that Pakistan has successfully sold a line to the world tacitly accepted by many, especially in the US and UK, for tactical reasons in the Cold War era that the fight in Kashmir is all about independence and Pakistan supports that cause. 

A ruse that Islamabad uses to make its case is to call the portion under its control `Azad' or independent Kashmir. The truth is that neither India nor Pakistan argues for Kashmir's independence, not even under the UN plebiscite resolutions. Therefore, a solution of the dispute between the two cannot have independence of Kashmir as an option. In fact, the only viable solution would be to improve the Simla agreement and make the Line of Control a real border, with a measure of flexibility to allow cross-border movement and commerce. That solution was seriously being considered until terrorism blew a hole in it. 

The point to ponder is: Is any solution of the Kashmir dispute acceptable ultimately to the Pakistani military establishment and the ISI? If it is, what prevents Islamabad from, first, coming down hard on terrorists on its own since jehadis now threaten Pakistan's own stability and integrity and separately to allow talks on Kashmir to proceed with India? Why should any terrorist be allowed to operate from its soil by citing the Kashmir cause? 

Unfortunately, the reality of power in Pakistan is too grim to cover up by simplistically citingKashmir as a root cause of terrorism in the subcontinent. The reality is that the Pakistani military actually keeps itself in control of affairs instead of helping Pakistan to become truly democratic by citing a constant external threat. Those with influence over Pakistan must ask whether the time has come for the world to call the military's bluff. A democratic Pakistan and a democratic India can live together in peace and, eventually, in economic prosperity. But, for that to happen, first drive the Pakistani army back into the barracks to make that country safe for the region and the world.