A Kashmiri View

The Issue is Suppression of Self-Determination

By Rafique A. Khan

I was on an airplane, returning after a school vacation to my home in Kashmir, when I noticed two Americans asking the flight attendant for food. During the next leg of my journey, on a bus through the hot, dusty Himalayan foothills, I noticed that the same two Americans would not spend a nickel to buy a bottled drink. At the end of the bus trip, however, the Americans each took a two-seat foot-pedaled bicycle rickshaw to travel from the bus depot to the train station. They had scrimped and saved all day. Yet, to ease the rickshaw puller's burden, they hired two rickshaws when only one was necessary.

I am now an American citizen myself and see every day among my fellow Americans the same kind of pure goodness demonstrated by the two American Peace Corps volunteers I met in Kashmirin 1955. But American foreign policy has not always reflected such selflessness.

I remember around that time reading The Ugly American, a book which chronicled the doings of an American politician who, after losing an election at home, was appointed ambassador to a Third World country. That was fiction. President Clinton's probable nomination of defeated Brooklyn Congressman Stephen Solarz of Rubbergate fame as our ambassador to India is real.

Solarz, who wants to increase U.S. trade with India, is indebted to the Indian lobby, as well as to the Israel lobby, both of which have contributed handsomely to his election campaigns. In the eyes of Solarz, India can do no wrong.

U.S. foreign-policy makers like Solarz follow the Kissinger doctrine of nurturing, not solving, the Third World disputes that keep people who seek freedom and democracy poor and suppressed. To keep the support of the American public now that the communist empire is gone, such members of the political/ military establishment are creating a new bogeyman they call Islamic fundamentalism.

Indian rulers, inheritors of the British Empire, eagerly dance to this tune. They portray the centuries-old struggle for self-determination, democracy and freedom from autocratic rule by the Kashmiri people, most of whom are Muslims, as a religious separatist movement.

Tucked into the Himalayas, and sharing borders with Pakistan, India and China, Kashmir, known as "the Switzerland of Asia," is home to some eight million people. In 1930 they began their struggle for freedom from the double yoke of feudal rule under a maharaja, and colonial rule under Britain.

In 1947, the British withdrew from India after partitioning it into Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India. Although the majority of his subjects were Muslim, the Hindu maharaja chose to link Kashmir to India. Since 1947 the two countries have fought three wars, two of them over Kashmir, and the third over the secession from Pakistan of East Bengal, now the independent nation of Bangladesh.

Pakistan now controls one third of the land area of Kashmir, and India occupies the rest, including the high, cool and scenic Vale of Kashmir, a favorite summer resort for British colonial administrators and subsequently a popular tourist attraction.

The dispute over Kashmir was brought to the United Nations by India in 1948. All parties initially agreed to let Kashmiris exercise their right of self-determination through a U.N. sponsored plebiscite. An American World War II hero, Adm. Chester Nimitz, was appointed as plebiscite administrator.

Forty-five years later, the plebiscite pledge remains unfulfilled. Instead, India maintains its hold on Kashmir in total disregard of the international agreement and Kashmiri desires for self-determination.

India, which portrays itself as the world's largest democracy, does not want the world to know about this suppression. The international press and human rights advocates are forbidden to enter Kashmir. In the Vale of Kashmir, Indian troops keep the three million Kashmiris in concentration camp-like conditions. During the last three years, scores of mutilated bodies of Kashmiri youth have been recovered daily from the roads and rivers of Kashmir, victims of Indian torture in Indian jails.

In response to the pleas of the Kashmiri-American community and human rights advocates, Bush administration officials cited the Simla Agreement, signed by India and Pakistan after their third war, as a panacea for resolution of the Kashmir dispute. The accord calls for settlement of the dispute by mutual negotiations, and accepts without prejudice the respective positions of the two countries on Kashmir. Pakistan wants Kashmir because most Kashmiris are Muslims. India wants Kashmir as a symbol of its secularism. No one asks what the Kashmiris want.

For a Kashmiri, the dispute is not a territorial matter between India and Pakistan which can be resolved by an agreement to which no Kashmiri is a party. The issue for Kashmiris is the fundamental human right of self-determination.

The U.N.-pledged plebiscite never took place in Kashmir because, after Pakistan signed a defense pact with the United States in the 1950s, and India was increasingly seen as a protege of the Soviet Union, Kashmir became a pawn in the superpower rivalry. Now that the Cold War is over, it seems the old India hands in Washington are more interested in exploring the potential for U.S.-India trade than making it possible for Kashmiris to determine their own future. The Clinton administration may therefore help India maintain its present boundaries, and turn a blind eye to human rights violations in favor of economic considerations.

Kashmiris have for four decades relied on American understanding of their aspirations. By keeping to the sidelines now, however, the U.S. government is making it possible for radical militants to take over the leadership in Kashmir. In the absence of a resolution for the Kashmir conflict, militancy will take root there. Ironically, continued instability in the region would, in the long run, hurt the commercial interests of the free world.

Be that as it may, our country's foreign policy should not be based on short-range economic goals but on the universal values of human rights. The U.S. government should impress upon the government of India, by sanctions if necessary, that India must stop its brutal human rights violations in Kashmir. To resolve the Kashmir conflict once and for all, both India and Pakistan must demilitarize Kashmir and provide the Kashmiri people with an opportunity for self-determination.

Speaking on foreign policy as a presidential candidate, Bill Clinton said, "We need to be a force for freedom and democracy. We can't impose it, but we must nourish it." Amen.

Kashmiris seek both freedom and democracy. So far they have had neither, although the Cold War that led to the India-Pakistan stalemate over their country has ended. The warm feelings among Kashmiris about Americans are dwindling. Peace Corps volunteers no longer vacation in Kashmir. But the nomination of a foreign lobby-backed ax-congressman as ambassador to India means that the "ugly American" may still be around.

Rafique A. Khan was born in Kashmir and came to the United States in 1968. He is a director of the Los Angeles-based Kashmir Human Rights Foundation.