Not Even the Earthquake Has Shaken Loose Old Prejudices in Kashmir
The disaster killed over 80,000 people in Pakistan—the majority in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir—and 1,400 in adjacent areas of Indian-controlled Kashmir along the Line of Control (LOC) that divides disputed Kashmir. This toll is higher than that produced by fighting between Muslim insurgents and Indian forces in Indian-controlled Kashmir over the past sixteen years. But the calamity has had a far from seismic effect on relations between the South Asian neighbors, which remain dominated by mutual suspicion and the baggage of decades of antagonism.
Last month the Musharraf regime made acceptance of an Indian offer to supply helicopters—desperately needed to rescue injured and marooned survivors—subject to their being supplied sans Indian crews. The Indians balked. At the Islamabad donor conference Musharraf made an emotional plea to India to solve the Kashmir conflict ‘once and for all’ and claimed that was the best ‘donation’ India could make to Kashmir’s stricken people. The rhetoric is likely to evoke a cool response in New Delhi, where terrorists suspected to be Pakistani religious militants by the Indian authorities bombed congested markets in end-October, killing sixty people.
The earthquake highlighted the problem with the 742-kilometer LOC being a forbidding barrier of bunkers, trenches, barbed-wire fencing and minefields manned by hostile militaries. Indian personnel and resources could not be deployed to rescue trapped survivors and provide succor to stricken communities in villages and towns just across the LOC. Survivors in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir’s border communities could not access medical care and assistance on the Indian side of the Line. The anguished people of Indian-controlled Kashmir were unable to go to the aid of their stricken compatriots across the frontier.
Since 7 November five points on the LOC for transit of relief supplies and civilians traveling on foot have been opened after agreement between the Indian and Pakistani governments. As donors gathered in Islamabad last weekend a few villagers in a remote border community in Indian-controlled Kashmir gingerly crossed a suspension bridge over a treacherous mountain river to the other side of the Line to inquire after the fate of relatives.
The moment was historic—no such passage has been permitted for five decades. But it was also modest balm to the festering sore of the Kashmir conflict. The LOC has been quiet since November 2003, when a truce brought respite to hundreds of thousands on both sides from shooting and shelling duels. In April this year a fortnightly bus service began connecting Srinagar, capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir, with Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani-controlled Kashmir since razed by the earthquake.
The ceasefire and the bus link were enabled by a thaw in India-Pakistan relations. The thaw was welcome, since the two countries fought a fierce war on one stretch of the LOC in 1999 and appeared to be on the brink of a large-scale military confrontation in 2002. But two years later a serious peace process is yet to emerge. There has been no progress particularly on issues connected to the Kashmir dispute, such as the military stand-off in the Siachen glacier region—the world’s highest-altitude battlefield.
In the absence of even piecemeal progress, a settlement to the Kashmir dispute is nowhere on the horizon. The conflict can be settled in a way that accommodates the contending positions of India and Pakistan and the interests of the people of Kashmir, who are split into pro-independence, pro-India and pro-Pakistan segments. Such a settlement would transform the LOC from a barrier of separation to a bridge of cooperation—a soft border—and establish self-rule regimes run by Kashmiris on both sides.
The fashioning of such a settlement requires resolve and skill from the Indian and Pakistani governments. The United States, which has direct influence on Pakistan and significant leverage with India, has an important role in encouraging a peace process leading to such a settlement. The 1999 and 2002 crises were defused only by American diplomatic intervention. The current India-Pakistan détente is going nowhere slowly, and even a tragedy of the magnitude of the earthquake has not improved its prospects. Kashmir—a flashpoint between nuclear-weapon states in a hotbed zone of Islamist radicalism—deserves greater attention in Washington.