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Options
for a Just Solution of the Kashmir Dispute There have been several
rounds of serious negotiations between Pakistan and India since the
beginning of 2004. While all pending disputes between the two countries
are important, it can be said that Kashmir remains the core issue and
the seemingly intractable problem. President Musharraf has insisted
that the resumed dialogue must lead to progress to resolve the Kashmir
issue and implied that if there were no such progress on Kashmir, then
the whole peace process could come to a halt. (1) If this approach is
pressed, it could mean, in effect, that the other five listed issues
in the "composite dialogue" would become a hostage of the
Kashmir dispute. Indian Prime Minister Dr.
Manmohan Singh stated, in his first meeting with the media in May 2004,
that improving ties with Pakistan was the top-most foreign policy objective
of his government. "We must find ways and means to resolve all
outstanding problems that have been a source of friction. It is not
impossible." Dr. Singh added that just as the fall of the Berlin
wall was unthinkable some years ago, normal ties between India and Pakistan
were wrongly considered as unmanageable. (2) However, the ground reality
is that, as yet, there is no change in the Indian policy towards Kashmir.
National Security Adviser Dixit is on record as saying: "There
cannot be any territorial alienation of the Indian state of Jammu and
Kashmir. There can be a marginal adjustment along the Line of Control
in Kashmir, as far as those aspects are related to the ground realities."
(3) But President Musharraf
has already rejected the LoC solution. He has pointed out that the LoC
is itself the problem: thus, it cannot become the solution. It is thus clear that the
stalemate between the two sides on Kashmir continues. One could argue
that the two sides have started with their maximal demands, and when
negotiations take place in secrecy, there will be flexibility and a
give-and-take attitude. However, the experience of the past fifty years
shows that there have been many such hopeful starts to negotiations,
only to be followed by deadlock and failure. Is there a way in which
the two sides could get out of this impasse? Politics is said to be
the art of the attainable. In this spirit, Pakistan must base its policies
on an evaluation of the ground realities. On moral and legal grounds,
no doubt, Pakistan's stance on the Kashmir issue is justified. India
has been guilty of suppression of the popular will in Kashmir. It violated
the partition formula of division of India on the basis of contiguous
Muslim and non-Muslim majority areas, whereunder Kashmir should have
gone to Pakistan. Moreover, India has gone back on its own promises
to hold a plebiscite in Kashmir and has refused to implement the various
UN Resolutions on this subject. However, Pakistan needs
also to take into account several pragmatic considerations. Firstly,
57 years of confrontation has not solved the Kashmir dispute. Secondly,
as the smaller country, Pakistan has suffered much more than its rival
in this unending confrontation. Thirdly, the Jihadist approach, followed
since 1990, has not secured Kashmir for Pakistan. On the contrary, cross-border
activities, more than once, brought the two countries to the precipice
of war. The prospect of a nuclear conflict, both in 1999 and 2002, alarmed
the world community, which applied strong pressure, mainly on Pakistan,
to put a stop to all cross-border activities. Pakistan also needs to re-examine
some of the basic assumptions behind its Kashmir policy. One traditional
argument has been that Kashmir is the jugular vein of Pakistan, which
cannot survive without Kashmir. But this has been belied by the ground
reality. To wit, India has been in possession of most of Kashmir for
half-a-century, but Pakistan has survived well enough without Kashmir.
A second Pakistani assumption is that the exercise of right of self-determination
would secure Kashmir for Pakistan. However, the ground reality is that
in Indian-held Kashmir, there are three regions. Out of these, Jammu
and Ladakh have non-Muslim majorities and would opt for India in a free
vote. The third region is the Kashmir Valley where the solid Muslim
majority is, no doubt, anti-India. But, here, the pro-independence vote
would probably out-number the pro-Pakistan vote. Thus, it seems unlikely
that the exercise of the right of self-determination, on which Pakistan
has been insisting so much, will deliver Indian-held Kashmir to Pakistan.
Some would still argue that
the brotherly Muslim people in Kashmir deserve our support in their
struggle to be free of Indian occupation, even if they opt for independence
rather than join Pakistan. But has not Pakistan made enough sacrifices
for them in the past 57 years, and is it fair to expect Pakistan to
give them open-ended support at the cost of its own national interests?
In a larger perspective,
of course, both Pakistan and India must take into account some strategic
realities. Firstly, this long bitter confrontation between them has
hurt both countries. The big losers have been the hundreds of millions
in the subcontinent who continue to live below the poverty line. They
have been deprived of basic amenities like clean drinking water, food,
shelter, sanitation, and education, while precious resources have been
diverted to massive armaments and military needs. The second strategic reality
is that, since both India and Pakistan are nuclear powers, a war between
them must be ruled out, as it would lead to mutually assured destruction.
The third strategic reality is that the two sides have no option but
to hold peaceful negotiations to resolve their differences. Moreover, there is strong
international pressure on both India and Pakistan to resolve their differences
and, at the minimum, not go to war. Also, public opinion in both countries
has become a factor in favour of peace and reconciliation. Even the
traditional 'hate lobbies' in both countries and hard-liners - like
the Hindu fundamentalist BJP in India and the Pakistani religious parties
- have come around to accept the need for dialogue. Suggested Pakistani Strategy
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