Jane’s Defence Weekly reports that a strategic review by India’s armed forces last April concluded that India faced no significant military threat from China or Pakistan. The real threat in the next decade, said India’s military commanders, would come from sub-nationalisms, insurgencies and separatisms within India. This threat to internal security, said the Weekly, is now compelling the Indian army to assemble a vast apparatus for “internal peacekeeping”, which will eventually make it the “largest counter-insurgency force in the world”.
This fact suggests some obvious conclusions. The Indian army has been ordered by New Delhi’s political establishment to get ready for the “long haul” in Kashmir because it has absolutely no intention of ever sitting down to “negotiate” a “settlement” on Kashmir with Islamabad. That is why New Delhi insists that Kashmir has been, is, and will always be, an “integral” part of India over which there can be no discussion. That is why, where Kashmir is concerned, it doesn’t matter which prime minister or which government rules in India. The problem, as India never tires of telling the world, is with Pakistan’s refusal to abide by the “understanding” reached at Simla in 1973. What was that “understanding”?
Mr Bhutto was desperate to affect the repatriation of over 90,000 Pakistani PoWs held in India after the war of 1971-72. Mrs Gandhi was aware of his weakness and played her cards deftly. She said she would release the PoWs in exchange for a formal Pakistani commitment to give up its claim over Kashmir. When Mr Bhutto explained why he could not conceivably accede to her demand, the talks broke down. Hours before Mr Bhutto’s departure, however, the dialogue was revived and the Simla Accord was announced. Mr Bhutto insisted upon Pakistan’s position on Kashmir and was accommodated by a clause to the effect that both countries could retain their formal stands on Kashmir. Mrs Gandhi insisted that Kashmir should be taken out of the international context of the UN resolutions and was accommodated by a clause to the effect that all issues between the two countries would be settled bilaterally. Kashmir was then forgotten by Pakistan until the end of 1989 — sixteen years later — when an indigenous, mass uprising erupted in Srinagar against the injustices perpetrated by New Delhi and its puppet regimes in Kashmir compelled Islamabad to revive the issue.
Pakistan and India have each made one fundamental mistake in the 1970s and 1980s which has come back to haunt them in the 1990s. From 1973 to 1989, Islamabad made no significant effort to raise the Kashmir issue at any international fora. That is why it has had difficulty waking up the world in the 1990s to its “historic” UN claim over Kashmir. New Delhi’s error lay in alienating the Kashmiris irrevocably — the same Kashmiris who had flatly rejected Pakistani instigations in 1965 — by its ham-handed “centrist” manipulations in the 1980s. That is why the world cannot help but take note of India’s genocidal policies in the Valley today. This explains why the world is asking Pakistan to “forget” about the UN resolutions on Kashmir as promised at Simla and asking India to restore maximum, unprecedented autonomy to Kashmir as promised in the Indian constitution.
This international prescription to the “problem” of Kashmir was first articulated by Mr Frank Wisner, Washington’s last ambassador to New Delhi, two years ago. Mr Wisner pleaded with Pakistan not to disrupt the election process in Kashmir and pleaded with India to allow free and fair elections to take place in the Valley. Mr Wisner’s plan went awry when the Indian army jumped the gun, massacred the residents of Chrar Sharif and provoked the APHC to boycott the elections. New Delhi has now made matters worse by trying to prop up the puppet government of Mr Farooq Abdullah, a foolish policy throwback to the 1980s.
Both Islamabad and New Delhi have now become hostages to their manipulations and insecurities. Since 1990, Pakistan has been gung-ho about its support to the Kashmiris. It has daily fed its people gruesome details of Indian atrocities in the Valley. How can it bring itself to quickly abandon this cause? India is in the same boat. It has committed genocide in Kashmir. It has fed its people lies about the “Pakistani-Islamic menace” in Kashmir. How can it bring itself to trust the Kashmiris with “maximum autonomy” or persuade its people to accept anything that smacks of “capitulation”.
Clearly, neither side is in any position to concede an inch to the other without being accused of “total betrayal” by its own people. Indeed, the Indian army’s strategy for the future would suggest that it is Pakistan rather than India which is expected to unilaterally take two steps back.
The international community must not accept this logic. It must insist that New Delhi should take the first step back. After all, it is India, not Pakistan, which has brought the issue of Kashmir on the agenda of the subcontinent all over again by a callous application of undemocratic policies in the 1980s and bloody repression in the 1990s.