10 August 2001
Inter Press Service
By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI: Far from creating detente on the 52-year-old Kashmir issue, the mid-July Indo-Pakistan summit may actually have triggered a new phase of intensified violence now unfolding over the divided territory.
A joke which did the rounds during the three-day summit, held in the historic former Mughal capital of Agra, put the Kashmir issue in a nutshell: Pakistan has the issue and India has Kashmir.
Soon after a grim-faced Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf flew out of the northern Indian city of Agra at midnight on Jul. 16 with nothing to carry home, the big guns began booming again across the Line of Control (LoC) that runs through divided Kashmir.
Likewise, the general was true to his word that if dialogue failed, then “other means” would have to be used to settle the Kashmir issue — assuming he meant intensification of a 10-year-old, low-intensity proxy war that Pakistan is accused of waging in the territory.
On the ground, there has been a marked rise in “jehadist” attacks since Musharraf’s rather unceremonious exit from Agra and an equally determined response by the Indian army and police forces both in the Kashmir valley and outside.
According to police figures, nearly 250 people — 95 civilians, 133 militants and the rest security personnel — have died in violence since the three-day summit ended in complete failure.
Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee finally revealed in Parliament this week what transpired during the one-on-one sessions he had with Musharraf in the hope of a breakthrough.
Musharraf, said Vajpayee, showed an unusually keen interest in the hauntingly beautiful Kashmir valley, which forms just 11 percent of the area of the Indian-held part of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir.
The unstated suggestion was that in any possible deal that could be struck, the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley, in which the winter capital of Srinagar falls and where violent separatism is concentrated, would go to Pakistan.
A third of the kingdom was seized by Pakistani razakars (tribal irregulars) in 1949 and is now called Azad (free) Kashmir. Srinagar, the capital situated in Kashmir valley as well as the Ladakh and Jammu regions, remained with India with the Linoe of Control (Loc) separating the divided parts.
Vajpayee said that during the summit, Musharraf showed little interest in the Hindu-dominated Jammu region that lies to the south of the Kashmir valley or the Lamaistic plateau of Ladakh which lies to its east. So what exactly is in dispute is now known.
According to Lt. Gen. Madan Mohan Lakhera, a former Indian army commander in the area, it is not very well appreciated that the Kashmir valley has 11 percent of the area of Jammu and Kashmir and 54 percent of the state’s population.
Thus, the elected chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Farookh Abdullah, finds it necessary to emphasize that he not only leads Muslims in the Kashmir valley but also Hindus in Jammu, Buddhists in Ladakh as well as nomadic tribes and shepherds that range through the territory.
Vajpayee made it clear that India would under never countenance another partition along religious lines on a pattern under which Pakistan itself was created out of British India in 1947. Musharraf, for his part, went into the July summit declaring that Kashmir was the unsettled agenda of the Partition.
Officials here say that since India is economically more resourceful and militarily more powerful, as demonstrated in three wars, Pakistan is left with the option of continuing sponsor terrorism in Kashmir — although Islamabad says it is only giving moral support for an indigenous freedom movement.
The last formal war fought in 1971 resulted in the dismemberment of East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh and the post-war Shimla Agreement, which recognized the LoC as the de facto border.
In a sense, what froze the Line of Control even more than the Shimla agreement was the series of rival nuclear tests that both countries set off in May 1998.
While the tests brought international focus on the sub-continent, opinion in world capitals swung overwhelmingly in favor of respect for the Shimla Agreement which was to India’s advantage.
It was the Pakistan army’s frustration over this turn of events which led to the Kargil war in the following year and that in the middle of a peace initiative by Vajpayee involving a symbolic bus ride to the Pakistani city of Lahore.
The war at Kargil involved a massive armed intrusion over the mountainous LoC by jehadist fighters backed by Pakistani army regulars, which was beaten back by use of conventional arms — air power, heavy artillery and a naval feint.
India ignored repeated calls by Pakistan for international intervention to prevent a nuclear conflagration, but was itself careful not allow its forces to stray across the LoC.
The international community responded to Kargil not by intervening in the Kashmir, but by identifying Pakistan as the source of the problem and prevailing on it to withdraw the aggression whether by its army or by jehadists, behind the LoC.
At Agra, Musharraf had no qualms in openly justifying Pakistan’s support for jehadism in Kashmir as paying India back with the same coin for arming and supporting the Mukti Bahini (freedom fighters) who liberated Bangladesh in 1971.
For India, the main concern is the fact that a genuine and popular freedom movement in Kashmir has become enmeshed with Pakistan’s ambitions — with one feeding on the other.
Likewise, the fact that successive governments in New Delhi have failed to provide good administration and credible democracy but routinely flouted democratic and human rights have helped the jehadists and their supporters across the border.
Yesterday’s extension of emergency rules across the entire territory minus Ladakh was, according to most political observers, a failure of the Indian government’s policy in Kashmir — including the decision to invite Musharraf for an “unstructured” summit.
“Extending the Disturbed Areas Act to most of the state symbolizes a military response to an issue which calls for a political solution,” said well-known human rights activist Gautam Navlakha.
Navlalkha said there were fears that the Disturbed Areas Act, which provides for unquestionable powers of search, detention and shooting, would be misused.
According to Ravi Nair, director of the independent South Asia Human Rights Documentation Center (SAHRDC), the state already has adequate powers under the Public Safety Act, the Armed Forces Special Powers Act and the Indian Penal Code to deal with the situation in Kashmir.
“The state cannot arm itself with laws that undermine the basic democratic character of the constitution and the fundamental rights chapter of the constitution,” Nair said.