Ever since the first peace talks took place between India and Pakistan, the idea of converting the loC into an International Border has been the most consistent formula for a resolution of the Kashmir dispute
Can there ever be peace in KashmirIJ This is the weary question that has to be asked, as once again, the State of Jammu & Kashmir is on the boil. The ostensible reason — as if an excuse was needed — is, what the people of Kashmir see as the unjust hanging of Afzal Guru. But the real reason is that India doesn’t have enough proponents of peace while Pakistan seems to have an unending stream of protagonists of war, starting with Hafiz Saeed and ending with Rehman (or Farooq, or Wasim, call him what you like), the desperately poor victims of circumstance who, like Ajmal Kasab, willingly embrace brainwashing and suicide terrorism.
Take the latest incident: Personnel of the Central Reserve Police Force were hit by a fidayeen attack at Bemina in Srinagar at about 11 am on March 13 when about 50 of them were at the Police Public School grounds to be assigned duties. Right next to the school is the headquarters of the 73rd Battalion. Some boys were playing cricket in the grounds. The militants, dressed in civilian clothes squeezed through the fence carrying arms, ammunition and grenades hidden in their bags, entered the play ground, mingled with the cricket-playing boys and then threw the grenades. Five CRPF jawans died. A tube of Betnovate, a skin ointment, found at the spot gave the game away: The tube was manufactured by Glaxo Smithkline Pak ltd, at 35 Dockyard, Karachi. The numbers mentioned in the diaries, recovered from the scene, were Pakistani, and the bodies were shaved and hairless — a normal practice for suicide bombers.
So infiltrators were at work again. Since 2003 — and don’t believe anything anyone says to the contrary — infiltration levels have declined. This is largely because of the efforts of Chief of Army Staff General NC Vij between 2003 and 2004. He had brushed aside internal and Pakistani objections, revived the idea of fencing astride the line of Control and had it ready in a record nine months, using Army engineers. Smartly, the Union Ministry of Defence was informed only after a quarter of the 740 km loC had been fenced.
Fencing is an obstacle system integral to the new anti-infiltration grid. In 10 years, its effectiveness has been proven beyond doubt. Coupled with the ceasefire, the fencing has shrunk the space for infiltration.
But the fact is, both India and Pakistan have to work to get peace. It isn’t that peace efforts have not been attempted. The first window of opportunity on Kashmir opened after the 1962 Sino-Indian war. Moscow’s open support for China came as a shock to India, that had had a traditional strategic partnership with the USSR, and heightened India’s sense of isolation. At that moment the US and the UK Governments presented a joint initiative to resolve the Kashmir conflict. A mission led by American politician and diplomat W Averell Harriman and British politician Duncan Sandys created conditions for six rounds of bilateral talks on Kashmir between Foreign Ministers Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Swaran Singh between December 1962 and May 1963. US President John F Kennedy himself guided the two sides and the agenda of the talks. The US strategy was to get Pakistan to consider the possibility of “an international boundary running through Kashmir,” that is, making the existing loC into an International Border.
The Indian position, broadly speaking, was that Pakistan could keep territory held by it and India would give up more territory west and north of the Srinagar valley but concede nothing in the valley itself. Pakistan, on the other hand, demanded to keep the valley and let India keep parts to the north in ladakh and to the south in Jammu, while providing a corridor through the valley for connectivity between north and south. The talks inevitably broke down over the possession of the Muslim-majority Srinagar valley.
The next opportunity for a Kashmir solution came in 1964. The main players then were Kashmir’s Sheikh Abdullah, Pakistan’s President Ayub Khan, and Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. The peace talks of April–May 1964 considered three options: Condominium over Kashmir between India and Pakistan, with defence and foreign affairs being the joint responsibility of the two countries; acceptance of the line of Control with both Pakistan and India giving greater autonomy to the part of the State under their control; and the most formidable of all, a full-fledged confederation of India, Kashmir, and Pakistan. The death of Nehru in May 1964, however, ended any chance of exploring those solutions.
In September 1965, after the second India-Pakistan war, Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin brokered a ceasefire in Tashkent. He tried to persuade Pakistani President Ayub Khan to accept the line of Control, with adjustments, as the International Border. However, Ayub Khan was unwilling to do a deal without the Srinagar valley. Even after the 1971 conflict in which India won an outright military victory and took 90,000 Pakistani prisoners of war, New Delhi could not get Pakistan to accept the conversion of the loC into an International Border. However, India came close to extracting a commitment from Pakistan on creating a permanent border, with Prime Minister Bhutto agreeing in principle to making the loC into a “line of peace” and giving an assurance to Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi that the arrangement would be formalised later.
Since the first peace talks, the idea of converting the loC into an International Border has been the most consistent formula for a resolution of the Kashmir dispute. India had hoped that over the course of time and with a civilian Government in Pakistan, it could sell the idea of the loC with some adjustments as the basis for a final settlement. However, the Pakistani military was never ready to accept the status quo.
Now, there’s a chance again. We have to see how much of an issue Kashmir is, during the elections in Pakistan. Some delicate moves are afoot to give Pakistan some semblance of civilian oversight over the military. For instance, a Standing Committee of Pakistan’s National Assembly has been created (like in India) which is asking questions about the way the military functions. For Pakistan, that is unthinkable. If the military concedes some, however minimal, civilian oversight, it could open the window to monitor misadventure. But till that happens, Kashmir, and India, will remain vulnerable to infiltration. In the absence of a political resolution, Kashmir will continue to bleed and security forces suffer — even when the latter are backed by the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act.
(The accompanying visual is of policemen and paramilitary soldiers during a gun battle with militants in Srinagar on March 13. AP photo by Dar Yasin)