Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 1998, pages 35, 98

Special Report

Menacing Nuclear Presence in Subcontinent Forces Kashmir Issue to Top of Global Political Agenda

By M.M. Ali

It was an unusual sight to see Pakistani Prime Minister Mian Nawaz Sharif and Kashmiri leader Mir Waiz Omar Farooq, from Srinagar, on the Indian side of the ‘line of control” that bisects Kashmir, on the same platform facing an audience in the United States. The sight conveyed several messages.

The State of Jammu & Kashmir is disputed territory between India and Pakistan. The two countries have gone to war three times within the past half-century, twice over Kashmir.

The U.N. Security Council passed resolutions in 1949 asking the parties to settle the Kashmir question through a plebiscite that would allow the 13 million Kashmiris, who are predominantly Muslims, to choose between India and Pakistan. India occupies two-thirds of the territory, including the capital, Srinagar, and Pakistan controls the rest, with the U.N.-monitored Line of Control separating the two parts.

The Kashmiris, a majority of whom probably prefer independence from either India or Pakistan, have been rebelling for the past nine years against India’s occupation. New Delhi has answered the rebellion with heavy deployment of military and paramilitary forces. Thousands of men, women and children have lost their lives during the process. The human tragedy continues unabated.

The All Parties Hurriyat Conference, a coalition of the Kashmiri parties now spearheading the freedom movement of which Mir Waiz is a key member, has repeatedly asked for a tripartite conference of Indian, Pakistani and Kashmiri leaders to resolve the dispute peacefully.

India wants bilateral talks with Pakistan, although several such attempts in the past, the most recent this October, have produced no results. Pakistan wants a third-party mediator, preferably the United States, present during the talks.

Yet another significant element that has cropped up in recent years, at least in unofficial discussions and in outside forums that have sometimes included the Kashmiris, is the option of Kashmiri independence. If that would break the deadlock, it is believed that the Hurriyat Conference would support it.

Therefore, the joint appearance of Mir Waiz and Nawaz Sharif is significant. It may be interpreted to mean that Sharif is willing to consider the independence option, or that Mir Waiz is sending a message to India that Kashmiris would want to go with Muslim Pakistan, an eventuality that New Delhi has found unacceptable all these years. India supports the status quo. Pakistanis and Kashmiris oppose it. Another unmistakable message is that Kashmiris realize that Pakistan is essential for the survival of their freedom struggle.

For any fair solution to emerge, the Kashmiris will have to be allowed to exercise the right of self-determination that was promised to them half a century ago by the United Nations.

To India, in the face of the international disapproval it has incurred due to its obduracy on the issue, and the heavy military drain all these years, the third option of Kashmiri independence may be more acceptable than Kashmir joining Pakistan. Such a solution would also alleviate the acute danger presented by the presence of nuclear weapons on both sides.

Unlike the previous India-Pakistan wars, which were essentially large-scale border skirmishes, a nuclear war could not be confined to the border areas, nor could it be halted before large-scale devastation had been inflicted. In fact, besides being a calamity of untold proportions for both countries, such a war would be a tremendously destabilizing event for the entire region.

India Puts Kashmir Back on the Global Agenda

The decision by India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party to conduct nuclear tests in May 1998 put the Kashmir issue back on the international agenda. Before that, much to the chagrin of Pakistan and consternation of the Kashmiris, the issue had even been dropped from the annual agenda of the U.N. Security Council.

Now, what seems to have been a major miscalculation by the Hindu extremists of India’s ruling BJP party has changed all that. Said a strongly worded Sept. 11 article in New Delhi’s English-language Hindustan Times:

“Pokhran II [the Indian nuclear tests] did not blast our way to nuclear weapons state status. It did not blast our way to a permanent seat in the Security Council…We had respect, and had more moral authority than many countries in the world.

“We blasted away that respect, resulting in internationalizing the Kashmir issue. Right from the word go, we have done everything under the sun to make the world believe that Kashmir was not an integral part of India to the same extent as the other states were.”

The question to be answered, the article went on to say, “is, how can we keep on harping on the time-worn cliché of Kashmir being an integral part of national life?…We agreed to a plebiscite to resolve this.”

The article lamented the scarce resources that were poured into Kashmir and the military forces that remain stationed there to no purpose. “But so far there has not been even a glimmer of hope,” it continued. “If anything, things have deteriorated even more so, until today it has become the most insecure land not only in the country, but perhaps in the world.”

India received another shock when the new chairman of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), Nelson Mandela of South Africa, called upon India and Pakistan to resolve the Kashmir dispute. New Delhi had thus far successfully kept Kashmir outside the NAM agenda. Mandela’s action also sent a message that the Non-Alignment policy of the 1950s and ’60s during the Cold War had lost its relevance in the ’90s in a unipolar world.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has also lent his voice to seeking a peaceful end to the Kashmir dispute. That Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee agreed with Nawaz Sharif to discuss the Kashmir issue along with other bilateral matters also did not surprise anyone. At the same time, no one was surprised that this festering dispute was not resolved during the India-Pakistan talks at the foreign secretaries level held in Islamabad in mid-October. Knowing too well that New Delhi would stall it again, Pakistan perhaps was going for the long haul to re-emphasize the need for third-party mediation. The secretaries are scheduled to meet again in February 1999.

In another forthright article, the Hindustan Times, which reportedly speaks for the ruling BJP, observed: “The latest scenario today appears to be that even P-5 and G-8 countries are veering round to the idea that, ultimately, the Kashmir issue must be resolved by the two parties...Why are we hedging discussing Kashmir first and putting every other issue on the back burner?” The paper reminded Delhi, “Except for Kashmir, there are no other issues.”

President Clinton’s decision to postpone his planned visit to the Indian subcontinent this fall could delay matters. With criticism of Nawaz Sharif’s handling of his country’s economy mounting, it is also possible that he may heat up the Kashmir boundary line to divert attention. This would be a continuation of serious military exchanges that have been taking place between India and Pakistan on this front in recent months.