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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