THE Kashmir issue has been central to Indo-Pak relations since the independence of India from British rule and the creation of Pakistan in 1947. It has led to several wars between the two countries, and since 1990, Pakistan’s sponsorship of terrorism essentially in the Kashmir Valley – under the label of jihad or what it officially insists is a freedom struggle – has led to many more casualties than all the earlier conventional wars.

But the victims of this territorial battle between the many proxies of Pakistan and the security forces of India have largely been innocent Kashmiris, and even though Kashmir has been politically vital for India and for the projection of India’s secular credentials, for Pakistan it is of even greater significance. As the sectarian divides within Pakistan in recent years – between Sunni and Shia or Baloch and Punjabi – or the breaking away of Bangladesh in 1971 has shown, Islam doesn’t hold Pakistan together but anti-Indianism does, and the rivalry over Kashmir is Pakistan’s strongest binding adhesive.

To understand the causes of the dispute over Kashmir one must go back to the events at the time of India’s Partition. Given the choice to join India or Pakistan by 15 August 1947, Pakistan was disappointed as none of the princely states of India initially opted to join Pakistan, the Nawab of Junagadh’s claim notwithstanding. Its gaze thus settled on Kashmir with which Pakistan enjoyed many advantages, such as a longer boundary than India had with the two major roads to the Kashmir Valley – from Sialkot via Jammu to the valley, and from Muzaffarabad to Srinagar coming in from what became Pakistan – and a predominantly Muslim population in the valley that Pakistan laid claim to, formed as it was on the premise of a new home for the Muslims of the subcontinent. But it was the waters of the Indus and its rivers that flowed from Kashmir that lay at the heart of its strategic agenda to annex Jammu and Kashmir even though it has rarely asserted this claim publicly, since that would overshadow its pro-Muslim assertions.

It was, however, the indecisiveness of the ruler (Maharaja) of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) on whether he would join the Union of India or Pakistan – as all princely rulers were required to do – that gave Pakistan room for involvement in J&K. Pakistan thus entered into a 90-day standstill agreement with the Maharaja – which India didn’t – until 15 October 1947. And when on its expiry the Maharaja still continued to dither, a local revolt in the Poonch area of J&K (adjoining Pakistan) against the poor administration of Maharaja Hari Singh gave grounds to Pakistan for involvement in support of the locals.

 

It soon pushed in a proxy force of irregulars led by its regular army officers under the pretext of tribal fighters coming to the aid the locals, not just in Poonch but also into Baramulla, with the intent of taking over the valley. India, however, responded militarily only after the Maharaja formally acceded to the Indian Union on 26 October 1947, but by then Pakistani forces had already covered most of the areas now known as Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (in Pakistan as Azad Kashmir). The stage was thus set for a clash between the armies of India and Pakistan from the border areas near Jammu to the mountainous heights overlooking Ladakh. Fierce battles followed along what came to be eventually known as the Ceasefire Line, and now after 1972, as the Line of Control (LoC). India decided to take the Kashmir issue to the United Nations in December 1947.

The debates in the UN and the resolutions that followed led to the basic negotiating position which both sides would adopt in the future. For Pakistan, a selective interpretation of the resolution on Kashmir has, however, become an article of faith. (India now insists the Shimla Accord supercedes the UN resolutions, and the issue is a bilateral one). The UN Security Council resolution of 13 August 1948 called, first, for an immediate ceasefire, which was formalized on 01 January 1949. It then asked Pakistan, as the aggressor, to withdraw all its regular and irregular forces from Jammu and Kashmir, while India could retain troops in J&K. And finally, only after the withdrawal of Pakistan’s forces, ‘the future status of J&K shall be determined according to the will of the people…’

 

This came to be known as ‘plebiscite’. But it was to be undertaken only after Pakistan completely withdrew its tribesmen and its nationals from the disputed area ‘prior’ to a progressive reduction of Indian forces. Also there was a call for the holding of a joint plebiscite. India considered a joint plebiscite unacceptable (and so did Pakistan). Moreover, given the presence of Indian troops in Jammu and Kashmir after J&K had acceded to the Indian Union, Pakistan too refused to withdraw its forces – egged on as records now reveal by the British who wanted them to have a territorial hold on J&K for a stronger negotiating position.

Thus, despite several attempts by the United Nations at international arbitration (between January 1948 and September 1950), the final outcome till date has been the stationing of UN observers for peacekeeping duties (UNMOGIP) along the ceasefire line (CFL). Pakistan has, however, continued to insist that Kashmiris must be given the right of self-determination. For Islamabad, this essentially means that the valley must go to Pakistan, to satisfy its claims as a homeland for the subcontinent’s Muslims. But Pakistan, whatever its public assertions, has all along been more interested in the waters of the Indus river system – not in the Kashmiris.

Recognizing this Pakistani need, Pandit Nehru with World Bank assistance, went on to firm up the Indus Waters Treaty in September 1960 with Pakistan’s Ayub Khan. This treaty was extremely generous in granting Pakistan rights over 80.52% of the waters of the Indus and its tributaries, while India settled for only 19.48% of its waters. However, despite a one-sided treaty, poor water management within Pakistan has led to complaints about India denying its full share of water supplies. But virtually all Pakistani attempts at international arbitration have led nowhere.

 

Within India, there were several attempts to find a way forward for Kashmir’s integration within the Indian Union after the Maharaja joined the Indian Union with conditions that gave him and his successor’s considerable autonomy under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution. This was a ‘temporary provision’, in that its applicability was intended to last till the formulation and adoption of the state’s constitution. However, the J&K Constituent Assembly dissolved itself on 25 January 1957 without recommending either abrogation or amendment of Article 370. Therefore, Article 370 became a permanent feature of the Indian Constitution. Pandit Nehru soon sidelined the Maharaja and Kashmir’s engagement with Delhi came to be dominated by Sheikh Abdullah, who chose India over Pakistan as he saw no chance of getting full independence from either country. The Delhi Agreement between Nehru and Abdullah in 1952 further defined the terms of reference of this relationship.

What is less known is that from May 1954 onwards the state was placed under the jurisdiction of the President of India, and from 1954 until 1974 over 138 central acts of the Indian Parliament were made applicable to J&K. Then between 1956 and 1977, 28 Presidential Ordinances were applied to J&K; therefore, despite Article 370, J&K had been integrated into India. Furthermore, Articles 249, 356 and 357 of the Indian Constitution were made applicable to J&K in 1964-65. In the light of all of these legislations/enactments, no prime minister of India will ever get the mandate to retrocede autonomy to J&K for it to revert back to the status quo ante that existed before 1953. It will neither be constitutionally possible nor politically acceptable, whatever the claims of those who swear by or challenge the validity of Article 370.

 

But Pakistan wasn’t willing to give up. Its second major attempt to militarily annex Kashmir was initiated in September 1965. Emboldened by India’s humiliation by the Chinese in 1962, Ayub Khan, encouraged by a young Zulfikar Bhutto, initiated another bold military operation to annex Kashmir in two parts: first to create an uprising in Kashmir (Operation Gibraltar) and follow it up with a swift military attack to cut-off J&K from India along the border near Jammu (Operation Grand Slam). This was again shoddily implemented, and India’s unexpectedly swift military response led to a ceasefire and both sides went back to the ceasefire line.

But what mattered more was the 1971 Indo-Pak war, following the massive uprisings in East Pakistan after the genocide of Bengalis by Pakistani troops and the refugee crisis in eastern India that eventually led India into a war, resulting in the liberation of Bangladesh. While this war was about the liberation of Bangladesh, the post-war negotiations were around Kashmir! But the Kashmiris were not part of these discussions.

An accord was signed in Shimla on 2 July 1972, during which both sides accepted that the Ceasefire Line (CFL), with some modifications, would henceforth be known as the Line of Control or LoC, on both sides of which Indian and Pakistani troops remain deployed. India says that this was based on a verbal agreement between India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Pakistan’s Zulfikar Bhutto to re-designate the CFL (a military term) as the LoC (a more a politico-military term), thereby setting the stage for the eventual acceptance of the LoC as a permanent border in J&K. India thus went ahead and released over 90,000 Pakistani Prisoners of War (POW) without seeking anything in return, but when he had obtained the return of all the POW, Bhutto refused to acknowledge the ‘deal’ over the LoC as a border!

 

Even as New Delhi continued to insist that the Shimla Accord had resolved the dispute over Kashmir, the Pakistan Army became obsessed with ‘doing a Bangladesh on India’ in Kashmir. And when the Kashmiris, fed up with shoddy governance and the manipulations of politicians in Srinagar and Delhi, raised a cry for independence between 1988-89, Pakistan grabbed this opportunity to become involved. This coincided with a similar movement in Eastern Europe as the Soviet Union broke up. And so Pakistan initiated a well planned operation to ‘liberate’ the valley from India from 1990 onwards, after a large number of Kashmiri youth, appalled (at the betrayal by Delhi) by the instances of rigging of the 1987 elections (in at least 10 constituencies around Srinagar itself), crossed the LoC – which was then an unfenced military boundary line, though with troops deployed on either side in trenches – into POK. They were welcomed, trained and armed, and then pushed back into the valley to initiate an insurgency.

Pakistan’s generals had put together plans to first challenge the sanctity of the LoC and then to initiate the secession of the valley, in reverse order of their foiled plans to do so in 1965. In the first part, their aim was to capture the Siachen glacier. As the CFL/LoC ends abruptly at NJ 9842 near Leh, the Siachen glacier – the source of about a 100 million cubic meters of water – lay in ‘no man’s land’. But India’s swift response stumped Zia’s adventure, and since 1984, Siachen has remained the world’s highest battlefield and an area of military dispute. Then, working to a plan, outlined in April 1988 by General Zia-ul-Haq – apparently convinced about their inability to seize Kashmir by conventional military operations – Pakistan launched what is now their longest running quasi-military initiative against India: Operation Topac (named after a guerrilla movement in Latin America).

 

General Zia’s aim was to run this quasi-military operation in three phases as follows: In Phase 1, Pakistan was to initiate a low-level insurgency in Kashmir, (which it did from late 1989) while still allowing the local government to function so that central rule was not imposed by New Delhi. It would also see Pakistani sympathizers subvert the police forces, financial institutions and other government organizations along with regular anti-India student and youth-led rioting to prepare Kashmir for secession and a Pakistani-led takeover of the valley. (A titular government, in what India calls Pakistan occupied Kashmir or POK, or what Pakistanis call Azad Kashmir, has thus been kept in waiting.)

In Phase 2, as Kashmir remained on the boil, Pakistan would exert military pressure on the Indian Army on the LoC, forcing it to deploy the bulk of its troops along the line of control and beyond in the Siachen region. This was to be followed with attacks on key military cantonments and posts along the LoC to divert the attention of the Indian Army from the turmoil in the valley. Pakistan would then cut off the Kashmir Valley and its airfields, tunnels and highways to prevent an Indian response to any subsequent Pakistani attack. And finally in Phase 3, Pakistan would target the liberation of the Kashmir Valley, by having created a mini-Islamic state in the valley. The aim of was to turn Kashmiris away from their centuries old culture of Sufism by replacing it with hard line Wahabi Islam and cleanse the valley of non-Muslims.

 

Much of the insurgency has thus unfolded as planned by General Zia. Pakistan’s army was hopeful that its long-standing aim of liberating Kashmir would be achieved in a few years following the articulation this strategic game plan (Operation Topac) in 1988, as a large number of Indian Army’s fighting units were then battling Tamil insurgents in Sri Lanka in 1988-89. Zia had expected Indian troops to stay there much longer, but they returned in March 1990 as India pulled out of Sri Lanka. It was around the same time that the insurgency in Kashmir finally took off and hit Delhi in its face. A panic stricken New Delhi decided for the first time to launch the Indian Army in a counter-insurgency (later in counter-terrorism operations) within the Kashmir Valley from 1990, and soon the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) was implemented by Delhi across the state of Jammu and Kashmir. It gave Indian troops legal cover to operate freely, but the AFSPA soon came under a lot of criticism for the alleged human rights abuses by Indian troops.

New Delhi remained in denial about the insurgency for quite some time, even though the police had arrested the first group of Pakistan trained men as early as September 1988. And their numbers kept increasing as they infiltrated across the LoC, guided by the local shepherds through craggy pathways. By mid-1989 Srinagar descended into violence and a ‘quit Kashmir’ movement was launched; simultaneously the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front, JKLF, (a freedom seeking secular group) was soon sidelined by the more radical pro-Pakistan Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HuM).

 

The Kashmiri ‘pandits’ became the first targets of both these groups. This led to their exodus to Jammu and other parts of India, and their population was reduced from over 75,000 families in January 1990 to around 650 families in 2014. Kidnapping and grenade attacks on paramilitary posts became the norm in the valley as the political leadership stood paralyzed and confused. With Indian troops soon flooding the valley – many of whom had no idea of how to battle this new challenge – there were excesses committed which continue to rankle Kashmiris. By mid-1990s, the HuM was sidelined by the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which still enjoys wide support amongst Pakistanis since its stated aim is to ‘liberate’ Kashmir from India.

Pakistan also extended support for setting up the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, a collection of 26 political parties as an anti-Delhi political coalition in March 1993, to keep raising the cause of Kashmiri separatism. But they were a divided lot with Syed Ali Shah Geelani, a hardliner, and Mirwaiz Farooq, a moderate, leading the two groups. Pakistani leaders visiting India insisted on engaging with them at their mission in Delhi, promising them that ‘freedom’ was around the corner. Pakistani intelligence agencies funnelled money to its leaders, as investigations have now revealed, to keep the fires burning. And though the insurgency has gone through many violent cycles – another violent uprising has followed every phase of calm, as politicians in New Delhi and Srinagar have failed to address the core issues of Kashmiri grievances, with Pakistan exploiting this indecisiveness. Further, the fear of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies (ISI) and the targeted assassinations of those who dared to challenge their narrative have silenced the moderates.

 

Pakistan has also got some success in altering the religious tenor of the Kashmir Valley, home for centuries to moderate Sufi Islam. With the growing influence of Wahabi Islam, a more hard line view has grown in Kashmir since 2000 following the setting up of hundreds of Wahabi mullah-led mosques that many say were funded by Saudi Arabia and their representatives in Pakistan. And though noticeable for years, it was passively allowed by political parties in Kashmir. But it is the use of Kashmiri youth as (paid) stone pelting mobs, egged on by local politicians and the Hurriyat leaders to disrupt counter-insurgency operations and shelter cornered militants since 2010 – drawing upon both an old local tradition of stone pelting and the model of the Palestinian intifada – that has challenged the patience of Indian troops. With many policemen injured by these stone pelting mobs and the use of ‘pellet guns’ in response, to deter the stone throwing mobs, (mostly by the CRPF, an armed police force) that led to many Kashmiris being injured, the situation at times looked hopelessly out of control. And when in 2017, the Indian Army warned that it wouldn’t spare those disrupting their operations, the anti-India cries of the secessionists, further garnered popular support.

However, Islamabad’s ‘secret war’ aimed at ‘bleeding India by a thousand cuts’ has been repeatedly exposed by militants captured (or those who’ve surrendered) in the valley. They have not only admitted having received training from Pakistan but also almost always carried weapons with Pakistani marking. Witness the regular covering artillery fire that Pakistan gives to those it trains and pushes across the LoC to keep the Kashmir issue on the boil. This has resulted in fiery duels between the two armies on the LoC and, in one instance, a short but sharp conflict, known as the Kargil war, erupted in the summer of 1999, just after both countries had become nuclear weapon states. And though the aim of General Musharraf – then Pakistan’s army chief – was to contest the sanctity of the LoC by putting regular and irregular soldiers on the mountainous heights around the northern Kashmiri town of Kargil, India’s firm but measured military response pushed back Pakistani troops and more importantly, led the US and the world at large to accept that the LoC was now the de facto border in J&K.

 

Pakistan, however, still refuses to give up its claims on Kashmir because it will be left rudderless. The central unifying adhesive for much of Pakistan is anti-Indianism, symbolized by Kashmir. And though much is made by Pakistan about the rights of Kashmiris and that Pakistan will never ignore their freedom struggle, the reality is that Pakistan’s own track record in what India calls Pakistan occupied Kashmir (POK) or what Pakistanis call Azad Kashmir, and the northern parts of J&K (Gilgit-Baltistan), is dismal.

While POK is used as a training-cum-camping ground for militants readied to be launched across the LoC into India, the people of Gilgit-Baltistan have for decades been at the receiving end of the Pakistan Army’s jackboots. Their importance has of late increased with the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) passing through this region. It led Islamabad to pass the Giligit-Baltistan Order (2018), possibly at China’s behest, as Beijing is uneasy about India’s strong opposition to its projects in this region. And though India has so far chosen to ignore Pakistan’s misrule in POK, which is run as a fiefdom by Pakistan’s Ministry of Kashmir Affairs, New Delhi has now begun to challenge Pakistan’s authoritarian rule.

 

More worrying for India though is the strong Pakistan-China nexus and its implications for the Kashmir issue. The bonding between these two countries, an all-weather alliance, took off in the 1960s, when Pakistan gave away the Shaksgam Valley to the Chinese in 1963. This lies north of Ladakh and the Siachen glacier. Finalizing the agreement just after the 1962 Sino-Indian conflict, whereby China firmed up its hold on the Aksai Chin region east of Jammu and Kashmir, gives China a major territorial presence in J&K.

The Shaksgam agreement laid the foundation of the Karakoram highway that was built by China and Pakistan in the 1970s. It has given land connectivity to the two countries and is now part of the CPEC. Soon thereafter China began to tap on the water reserves of some glaciers in the Karakoram range. The Chinese now propose setting up four dams on the Indus river system in the POK-Giligit-Baltistan area to eventually generate up to 60,000 mw of electricity. Most if not all of it, will be for Chinese use despite Pakistanis craving for it. Moreover, since the UN resolutions on Kashmir is about India and Pakistan – a selective version on plebiscite remains an article of faith for Pakistanis – the China factor actually makes it even more difficult to implement now. Besides, with both Pakistan and China more interested in the Indus waters system, it is unlikely they will care about the fate of the Kashmiris.

 

* Maroof Raza is the author of Wars and No Peace Over Kashmir. Lancer, New Delhi, 1995.