Like we
described in a general overview at the start of this website, in 1949
thousands still crossed the borders of East Pakistan and West Bengal as poverty
and communal tension drove people to seek security with their co-religionists.
In the west, fighting with Pakistan over the Muslim-majority state of Kashmir
had reached a deadlock. Pakistani fighters had clawed their way to unofficial rule
over half of the state, which they called Azad Kashmir (Free Kashmir), but they
could make no further headway. Neither country was prepared to give way, even
though internal food and financial crises meant that neither could afford the
burden of war.
And
while more recently the strength of India's strategy lies in its democratic
resilience its desire to learn from its mistakes, and its ability to create new
substate structures to suit the special political needs of the populace. This
alone, however, is unlikely to suffice. Wrecked by prolonged violence, Kashmir
is no longer India's internal problem. To exclude Azad Kashmir and the Northern
Areas in the debates on Kashmir is problematic because these areas constitute a
critical piece of the jigsaw puzzle called the ‘ Kashmir
conflict.' That conflict cannot be fully understood or resolved without
involving the local leadership and people in the peace process. The lesson of
experience is the same as in the Indian part of Kashmir: that is, deploying
monolithic communal parameters to understand the realities of Jammu and Kashmir
is not only inappropriate but, also yields a politically misleading analysis.
The various communities living in different parts of the state across the
dividing Line of Control have different political aspirations.
Throughout
the nineteenth century, Britain 's imperial strategy was focused on defending
the Indian landmass by controlling the entry points into the Indian Ocean
through a ring of naval bases. By the late 1940s, this strategic picture had
begun to change with the growth of air power and Western dependence on oil. The
defense of the Middle Eastern oil fields and the sea lanes from the Gulf thus
became a high priority for Western countries. (Chandrashekhar Dasgupta, War and
Diplomacy in Kashmir: 1947-48 (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2002), pp. 10-12).
For
people today who forget that ‘map is not the territory’, it is easy to see why
Kashmir is typically understood as a territorial dispute between two
belligerent neighbors in South Asia. Jammu and Kashmir is
a former princely state partitioned since 1949, yet still regarded as a
homogeneous entity. India and Pakistan control almost half of its territory a
small portion is occupied by China), with both claiming jurisdiction over the
whole. The line of demarcation is called the Line of Control. Nevertheless,
developments in the Pakistani part (made up of Azad Kashmir and the Northern
Areas) simply do not figure in the debates on Kashmir, while stories of
Kashmiris seeking to break away from the part administered by India distort
reality by overlooking the region's complexities. The political construct of a
Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir state pitted against a majoritarian Hindu
India-or of an Islamic bond cementing the relationship between Azad Kashmir and
the Northern Areas with Pakistan-is, at best, misleading.
With
its medley of races, tribal groups, languages, and religions, Jammu and Kashmir
is one of the most diverse regions in the
subcontinent. Even its majority community of Kashmiri Muslims is not a unified,
homogeneous entity in terms of its political beliefs, its ideological leanings,
or the political goals of the decade-long insurgent movement in the Kashmir
Valley. There are sharp divisions between those demanding that Jammu and
Kashmir become an independent state, those seeking to merge with Pakistan, and
those wanting to reconcile their differences with India through constitutional
mechanisms guaranteeing their political rights. Nor does the Kashmiri political
leadership necessarily speak for the diverse minorities of the state, including
Gujjars, Bakkarwals, Kashmiri Pandits, Dogras, and Ladakhi Buddhists. Across the Line of Control,
the Northern Areas also presents a rich mosaic of languages, castes, Islamic
sects, and cultures, which cannot be subsumed under the over
arching category of "Muslim brotherhood" without distorting
the diverse political aspirations of the region's residents. It is essential to
recognize the deeply plural character of Jammu and Kashmir's society on both
sides of the line of control and the political aspirations and choices of its
minority communities. The irreducible and homogenizing parameters of ideology
and nationalism usually applied in analyzing the Kashmir conflict are clearly
at variance with the plural realities and diverse political demands of the
region's various communities, ranging from affirmative discrimination to more au~nomy, separate constitutional status within India or
Pakistan, and outright secession.
In
the early phase of the UN deliberations, the British worked behind the scenes
to bring Western countries around to its own viewpoint on the Kashmir issue.
Both the superpowers-the United States and the former Soviet Union-showed
little interest. The U.S. acting secretary of state, Robert Lovett, declared
that the United States was already overcommitted globally and should avoid
choosing to support the interests of India over those of Pakistan, or vice
versa. He also felt that U.S. involvement might attract Soviet interest, making
it harder to resolve the Kashmir dispute. (Dennis Kux,
The United States and Pakistan, 1947-2000: Disenchanted Allies, Washington,
2001, p. 23).
At
the same time, the United States deferred to Britain in political and strategic
issues pertaining to South Asia. For its part, the Soviet Union stayed clear of
the Kashmir issue until 1952 and abstained from voting on it, although its
official stand portrayed the dispute as an Anglo-American plot. Communist China
also avoided taking sides, seeing that Pakistan and India were Asian states and
neighbors. Like Moscow, Beijing maintained that the Kashmir issue was a
creation of U.S. and British imperialists who wanted to transform Kashmir into
a U.S. colony and military base. China had little faith in the instrumentality
of the United Nations and urged India and Pakistan to negotiate directly. With
its significant knowledge of the subcontinent as the imperial broker between
the two dominions and with the presence of British officers in their armies,
Britain was in a position to influence developments at
the United Nations. It decided to move cautiously, however, in view of the
critical situation in Palestine, so as to "guard against the danger of
aligning the whole of Islam against us, which might be the case were Pakistan
to obtain a false impression of our attitude in the Security Council." (Dasgupta,
War and Diplomacy in Kashmir, p. 111).
Pakistan
wanted it in UN hands, whereas India insisted that Sheikh Abdullah remain in
charge. From the plebiscite describing the nature and pace of the withdrawal of
Indian and Azad Kashmir forces what becomes clear is ; India 's desire to
label Pakistan an aggressor; and Pakistan 's wishes to condemn the overall
treatment it received from India .Noel-Baker succeeded in securing Western
support for the Pakistani position on three of these issues: Pakistan would not
have to take effective action to stop the invaders into Kashmir until a formula
was found to resolve the dispute that was acceptable to Pakistan, the Abdullah
government would have to be replaced by an "impartial" interim
administration, and the United Nations should not merely observe the plebiscite
but actually bold it under UN authority. Delegates of China and Colombia showed
greater appreciation of India 's viewpoint, China did not think that an
entirely new regime in Pakistan was necessary to secure a free plebiscite; it
also felt that the Security Council directive 10 Pakistan in regard to putting
a stop to the fighting might be more specific.For
reasons of alliance solidarity, the United States was prepared to offer the
maximum possible support to Britain , although there were subtle differences in
their approach. Noel-Baker's proposals would have placed Kashmir under
effective UN control pending a plebiscite and permitted the induction of
Pakistani troops into the state with a status similar to
that of the Indian army. In 1948 U.S. officials were prepared to recognize the
legal validity of Jammu and Kashmir's accession to India, but Secretary of
State George Marshall expressed "grave doubts" about the use of
Pakistani troops in Kashmir, which, he pointed out, would make it difficult to
reach a compromise solution acceptable to India.For
details on the differences between the American and British approach, see I he
exchange between their officials as noted in the State Department records.
Cited in Dus gupta, War and
Diplomacy in Kashmir, p. 121.
The
United States on the other hand supported the basic idea of Pakistan
participating in the defense of the Middle East as a "better bet than
India." Nehru, it argued, appeared to be angling for Indian hegemony over
a neutral bloc of countries in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. This pattern
of thinking was indicated by an early memorandum of September 1949 from Deputy
Assistant Secretary of State Raymond A. Hare to Ambassador-atLarge
Phillip C. Jessup, which stated that while "India has emerged from World
War II as the strongest power in Asia ... [w]e have no great assurance that
India in the future will ally itself with us and we have some reason to believe
that it might not. Pakistan, if given reasonable encouragement, might prove the
more reliable friend. In certain circumstances, therefore, a strong Muslim bloc
under Pakistan leadership could provide a very desirable balance of power in
Asia." Cited in Baldev Raj Nayar
and T. V. Paul, India in the World Order: Searching for Major-Power Status
(Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 147.
Yet
neutralism contradicted the fundamentals of 'collective security,' a euphemism
to describe American strategic interests since the coming of the 'cold war' to
Asia in 1949. Therefore Nehru had to be dealt with
firmly and patiently and Pakistan treated as a friendly country. The outcome
was a Security Council resolution adopted on April 21, 1948, setting up the
United Nations Commission on India and Pakistan which did not go as far as Noel-
Baker's original draft but nevertheless rcmained
unacceptable to India. Nehru, was angry at the United
Nations had failed to condemn Pakistan as the aggressor and seemed to be
treating the two countries as equal parties to the dispute. In a letter to his
sister he charged that the " USA and UK have played a dirty role."
And February 15, 1948, he had remarked that "instead of discussing and
deciding on our reference in a straightforward manner, the nations of the world
sitting in that body [were] lost in power politics." Cited in A. Appoadorai and M. S. Rajan,
India's Foreign Policy and Relations, 1985, p. 83).
This
marked the beginning of a polite British and American rivalry in South Asia.
While the U.S. State Department, at the insistence of the British Foreign
Office, shied away from giving Karachi a territorial guarantee, U.S. embassies
in the Middle East were instructed in June 1951 "to use every appropriate
occasion" to bring Pakistan closer to the Middle East. For its part, Pakistan
ardently courted both the United Kingdom and United States and was prepared to
play the "Cold War version of the Great Game between imperial Russia and
British India." As early as September II, 1947,
Jinnah had stated that "the safety of the North West Frontier [is] of
world concern and not merely an internal matter for Pakistan alone." He
believed the Russians were behind the Afghan call for Pushtunistan
and were trying to stir up fresh communal troubles in both India and Pakistan.
Pakistan 's leaders had "little hesitation in exchanging base rights,
treaty commitments, and its UN votes for U.S. weapons and Washington 's
politic- support for its claim over Kashmir." See Stephen P. Cohen,"
U.S. Weapons and South Asia: A Policy Analysis:' Pacific Affairs 49 (Spring
1976): 49-69. Liaquat Ali Khan sent the deputy chief of the army, General
Walter Joseph Cawthorn, on a top
secret mission to London with a proposal for a military alliance. See
Dasgupta, War and Diplomacy in Kashmir, pp. 71-73.
Prime
Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, for instance, not only endorsed the U.S. position on
North Korea but also backed u.s. demarches to other
Arab countries in the Middle East. Nehru, on the other hand, rejected the bloc
politics and was unwilling to play the global balance-of-power game. He was
keen to chart an independent course through India 's policy of nonalignment.
Quite apart from Kashmir, the United States and India found themselves at odds
on many foreign policy questions, particularly international control of atomic
energy, Palestine and the creation of Israel, and the Indochina conflict. Nehru
was aware of the U.S. intent to strengthen Pakistan as a rival to India,
because " Pakistan was easy to keep within their sphere of influence in
regard to wider policies, while India was uncertain and possibly not
reliable." (Cited in Rajendra K. Jain, ed., U.S.-South Asian Relations,
1947-1982, New Delhi, 1983, p. 23).
Nehru
had already turned down an earlier appeal by President Harry Truman and Prime
Minister Clement Attlee to submit their differences to arbitration. Both India
and Pakistan rejected Owen Dixon's 1950 proposal for partitioning Jammu and
Kashmir, and a subsequent plan for demilitarization also ran aground. For a
detailed account of these debates in the Security Council, see Sisir Gupta,
Kashmir: A Study in India-Pakistan Relations (Bombay: Asia House, 1966), pp.
110-254, 310-42.
Interestingly,
none of the parties involved supported the idea of an independent Kashmir. The
main concern, apart from further balkanization of British India, was that
Kashmir 's political and economic weakness as well as its strategic location
would invite communist interference and fuel further regional instability. UN
deliberations had produced an unsatisfactory outcome for all the players. The
United State , concerned more about its global interests than about Kashmir's
fate, sought Pakistan 's participation in the Middle East's defense but refused
to resolve the Kashmir dispute on Pakistan 's terms or to meet its demand for a
"territorial guarantee" against an Indian attack. Although the United
States and Britain were unable to deliver Kashmir to Pakistan, their support
for Pakistan in the Security Council was considerable enough to alienate India.
Through delay and non cooperation,
India thwarted Anglo-American pressure to accept a solution on unfavorable
terms, but it felt trapped by the UN resolutions on holding a plebiscite in
Kashmir. Though Pakistan had the support of extra regional powers, it could not
alter the status quo in Kashmir either. Between 1948 and 1957 the Security
Council debated the Kashmir dispute eighteen times, to no avail. What it had
secured (largely because of British pressure) was a cease-fire and a guarantee
from both India and Pakistan that I hey would not resort to arms to resolve the
issue. From the earliest UN efforts, every interlocutor recognized the
limitations of the organization in resolving I he issue. Successive mediation
attempts also ended in a deadlock. The only way out was to ask the principal
players to take the initiative themselves which started in 1953.
But
where Nehru would readily agreed
that partition might be a better approach and suggested that the cease-fire
line, with minor modifications, would provide a reasonable basis for dividing
the state. However, Pakistan strongly opposed the idea. Since Kashmir was not
the most important issue, John Foster Dulles did not press the proposal.
Dulles's overriding concern at the time was to determine to what extent
governments in the Middle East and South Asia were ready to line up with the
West against communist aggression in the Far East. The things that the US
wanted to hear about at that point, were the dangers of communism. They stressed their
allegiance to the anticommunist cause and Pakistan 's desire to join the free
world's defense team against a possible Soviet invasion "through the
mountain passes of Central Asia aimed at reaching the warm waters of the
Arabian Sea. The proposed response was an expanded Pakistani army properly
equipped for the task of blocking the Soviets.
Dulles
and US Vice President Richard Nixon were also keen to contain India, lest its
nonaligned policies become a model for others in Asia. Nixon regarded India and
the United States as rivals for influence in Asia and argued it would be
"a fatal mistake to back dawn on the aid package solely because of Nehru's
objections; such a retreat would risk losing most of the Asian-Arab countries
to the neutralist bloc." Of equal importance of course was the fact that
the weapons mix Pakistan received from the United States was, as Ambassador
Chester Bowles pointed out, meant for use against India in the plains of the
subcontinent rather than against the Soviet Union or China in the mountainous
areas. Chester Bowles, Ambassador's Report (New York: Harper & Brothers,
1954), p. 478. Nehru believed the United States was diplomatically coercing
India by promoting its encirclement through a ring of alliances.
The
Sino-Indian war of 1962 however changed the strategic calculus of South Asia.
India was forced to abandon nonalignment, at least temporarily, and to seek
military assistance from the United States and United Kingdom, which rushed in
military shipments. Washington urged Pakistani President Ayub
Khan to reassure India by making a significant friendly gesture, "for
example, [by] breaking off in a public way his own negotiations with the
Chinese about the border." Ayub spurned the
overture, objecting strongly to American arms shipments to India. He downplayed
the seriousness of the conflict, describing it as a "limited border
affair:' and urged Washington to take advantage of the situation to press the
Indians to settle the Kashmir dispute. Although President John F. Kennedy was
reluctant to "give this to him:' the Kennedy administration decided to see
what it could do to resolve the Kashmir dispute. (Samina Yasmeen, "The
China Factor in the Kashmir Issue;' in Perspectives on Kashmir: The Roots of
Conflict in South Asia, edited by Raju G. C. Thomas, 1992).
Washington
sent a high -level team headed by Averell Harriman to the subcontinent. The
British dispatched a parallel mission led by Commonwealth Relations Secretary
Duncan Sandys. They came to discuss India 's arms requirements but also succeeded
in persuading the Indian government to reopen negotiations on Kashmir. Ayub also readily agreed to negotiate with India, realizing
that a plebiscite was not the best way to settle the dispute and that Pakistan
could not expect to receive all of the Kashmir Valley .
Despite the high risk of failure and Harriman's pessimistic assessment of the
chances of successful negotiations, Kennedy agreed to use U.S. influence in
support of talks between Pakistan 's Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and India 's Swaran Singh. On the eve of the talks, Pakistan announced a
provisional accord with China demarcating the boundary between
Pakistan-controlled Kashmir and China . The news created a furor. U.S.
officials feared that the accord would badly damage, if not wreck, the Kashmir
talks. (Dennis Kux, The United States and Pakistan,
1947-2000, Washington, 2001).
disregarded
warnings about consorting with China. Equally angry, Indian officials regarded Ayub Khan's action as a contemptuous rejection of Nehru's
request that Pakistan refrain from cooperating with China while India was in
difficulty. Nonetheless, negotiations proceeded on schedule, continuing for six
rounds between December 27, 1962, and May 16, 1963. After reiterating their
traditional positions, the two sides seriously discussed the basis for drawing
an international boundary through Kashmir. India's idea was to transfer to
Pakistan the entire occupied area west and north of Kashmir Valley and also adjust the cease-fire line so as to give it even
more area. Pakistan, however, proposed to allot India only a sliver of
territory in Jammu and to claim the entire Valley and all of
Ladakh. That would have left India with less than 3,000 square miles of the
state's total area of 85,000 square miles. Pakistan also insisted that
sovereignty over the entire state be transferred to itself, conceding to India
transit facilities for some time so as to move its
troops to Ladakh. This was so much beyond the maximum that India could concede
that the discussions soon floundered. American officials blamed mainly the
Pakistanis, warning that "the sympathy that Pakistan has enjoyed from
other governments on Kashmir in the United Nations and elsewhere would be
dissipated" if the talks failed completely. (Memorandum of conversation
between Dean Rusk and Aziz Ahmed, February 23,1963, as cited in Kux., p. 139).
Despite
President Kennedy's urging, Pakistan failed to improve upon its territorial
offer. The United States clearly had limited leverage on both sides of the
Kashmir dispute. Harriman recognized that Pakistan 's price for forming a joint
front with India against the communists was a Kashmir settlement on acceptable
terms. "The rub," he conceded, "was that terms acceptable for
Pakistan were unacceptable to India." Resolving the Kashmir dispute had
proved to be one of the Kennedy administration's "more difficult
problems," as the president himself admitted. (Kux,
The United States and Pakistan, p. 146).
When Washington procrastinated on the
question of long-term military assistance for modernizing India 's armed
forces, New Delhi found Moscow eager to help. This marked the beginning of a
long-term arms-acquisition relationship between India and the Soviet Union,
bringing a new player into the South Asian arena. During the 1965 war, Washington
considered India 's attack across the international border a very serious
development, but it also pointed out that Pakistan had triggered the crisis by
infiltrating large numbers across the cease-fire line into Kashmir. President
Lyndon Johnson, however, refused to commit to any particular solution and at
the same time warned Pakistan ’s Ayub that he would
assume collusion if Pakistan rejected the cease-fire and the Chinese moved
militarily against India. With the Vietnam War at its peak, the United States
had lost interest in the subcontinent. (K.Arif,
ed., China-Pakistan Relations 1947-80, Document 49, p. 47).
The
U.S.-Pakistani relationship underwent a sudden, if short-lived, revival in 1971
as a result of a dramatic shift in U.S. global strategy under the Nixon
administration. In an effort to restructure the global
balance of power, President Richard Nixon decided to open relations with China
and asked for Pakistan 's help in this regard. Jack Anderson of the Washington
Post released secret documents revealing the administration's wholly one-sided
approach. Jack Anderson, The Anderson Papers (New York: Random House, 1973),
pp. 203-69. Although the United States formally suspended the shipment of all
military supplies to both India and Pakistan upon the outbreak of the war, the
U.S. administration was complicit in the transfer of F-l 04 aircraft to
Pakistan from Libya and Jordan. The Nixon administration then stunned India by
warning it not to expect any U.S. help in case China decided to intervene in
any war between India and Pakistan. Nayar and Paul,
India in the World Order, p. 177.
But
with the support of their former benefactors dwindling, India and Pakistan
found their strategic calculations in disarray. Pakistan no longer had
frontline status in a U.S. war against Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. In any
case, its alliance with the United States was now shaky because it had crossed
the "red line" by making nuclear weapons. In October 1990, a troubled
Washington decided to end economic and military aid to Pakistan, which had
averaged $650 million a year in the 1980’s. India, too, lost its chief
strategic ally when the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan and moved its
global strategy in a new direction, to focus on collaboration with the United States
and later integration with the West and to end hostility with China. In 1993
Russian foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev, contrary to President Boris Yeltsin's
assurances, downgraded relations with India by adopting a policy on nuclear
nonproliferation and Kashmir strictly in line with that of the United States
and its allies. Additional pressure came from China, through its "policy
of containment of India and encirclement by proxy." Notwithstanding the
Sino-Indian engagement since 1988, China continued to supply nuclear missile
technology, components, and materials to Pakistan and over the years channeled
90 percent of its arms sales to countries bordering India. See J. N. Dixit, My
South Block Years, New Delhi, 1997, p. 223. 48 and J. Mohan Malik, "India
Goes Nuclear: Rationale, Benefits, Costs and implications," Contemporary
Southeast Asia, August 20, 1998, pp. 194-95.
Conclusion
Asia's Cold War, Case Study Kashmir P.1.: Kashmir's fate in 1947, including its accession to
India and eventual division into two parts, was decided not on ideological
grounds but on the outcome of the political battle between the Indian National
Congress and the Muslim League. Within the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir,
the National Conference, led by Sheikh Abdullah, influenced the, course of
events at that critical juncture far more than did the Dogra Hindu maharaja,
Hari Singh. India pursued a markedly political strategy in the region, although
it erred in retreating from its fundamental commitment to provide a federal,
democratic, and secular model of self-governance to the people of Jammu and
Kashmir. It is now on a corrective course, making amends with constituents who
remain alienated from the Indian state. India 's leadership does not think
militarily about Kashmir, has no offensive military objective to bring Azad
Kashmir and the Northern Areas back into Jammu and Kashmir state, and
accordingly has no aggressive military strategy in Kashmir. Pakistan, in
complete contrast, has not evolved a political strategy for arguing its case on
Kashmir. Rather, it has persistently tried virtually every instrument of
violence to alter the status quo in Kashmir by force-and has failed in all such
attempts. Whether it has learned from its mistakes, due mainly to certain
systemic flaws in its strategic decision-making institutions, is unclear. In fact self-determination, first raised by Sheikh Abdullah in
the Dogra reign of Maharaja Hari Singh and now nourished by multiple notions of
self-determination among the diverse communities of Jammu and Kashmir state.
From what is clear however Kashmir conflict revolves around many complex, and
multilayered issues, emanating from equally complex causes. Any hope for creating
critical political opportunities that will allow the parties to explore ways to
find a just, viable, and lasting solution to the conflict depends on deeper
insight into these complexities. For that we need to look at what led to the
2006 agreement, and is likely to happen, next.
Jammu and
Kashmir, the state that comprises the Indian-administered portion of the
contested region of Kashmir, has seen prolonged social unrest this past summer
rather than the typical isolated protests and militant attacks on Indian
security posts and government buildings. While protests are nothing new in the
region, the latest unrest has simmered for more than three months and has
claimed the lives of more than 80 people, with most deaths caused by the
response of Indian forces to Kashmiri protesters. By contrast, protests in 2008
and 2009 triggered by a dispute over control of a religious shrine and by
allegations of the rape of local women by Indian troops, respectively, only
lasted one month to six weeks.
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