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KASHMIR
IN FOCUS
New start, new ideas and new
faces
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - With both India and Pakistan appearing
ready to make a paradigm shift in their policies on
Kashmir, proposed talks on the disputed territory can be
expected to be more precise and practical than the last
abortive round in Agra in India in July 2001, and could
result in a change in the region's political map.
The diplomatic endeavors of the United States
aside, it is now emerging that the efforts of Prince
Karim Aga Khan on behalf of US authorities have
contributed in no small way to the breaking of the ice
between the two countries in recent weeks.
Prince Karim Aga Khan is the head of the
Ismaili community (a branch of the Muslim Shi'ites),
and although he lives in Europe he has a strong following
in India, Pakistan - including Kashmir - and
Afghanistan. Sir Aga Khan, the grandfather of present head of
the Ismaili community, was the first president of the
All India Muslim League, the party that laid the
foundations for Pakistan in 1947.
Recently, Prince Karim
visited both India and Pakistan, where he met with
Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and President
General Pervez Musharraf. During both meetings he
stressed the need for a practical solution on Kashmir,
as well as confidence-building measures between the two
countries.
It is perhaps no coincidence, then,
that soon after the prince's visits, the flurry of
exchanges between Delhi and Islamabad has resulted in
the countries expressing the desire to resume road, rail
and air links, as well as top-level diplomatic ties and
softer visa regulations to make it easier for divided
families to reunite.
And to talk about Kashmir.
Numerous rounds have failed in the past, and
even led to wars, but this time diplomatic sources in
Pakistan emphasize that unlike past initiatives, the
present efforts will be more closely based on ground
realities.
Instead of focusing on United Nations resolutions,
water problems, the Simla agreement of 1972 that
resulted in the establishment of the Line of Control
(LoC) that now separates Indian and
Pakistani-administered Kashmir, other proposals will be
given serious thought.
One such proposal has
been outlined in great detail by a US think tank, the
Kashmir Study Group, which functions as an advisory body
to the US State Department. It details new Kashmir
entities, each with their own government and
constitution. The paper suggests that some districts of
Kashmir - Doda, Gool Gulabgarh in Udhampur, Poonch and
three northern areas of adjacent Rajauri - could be made
part of a new autonomous entity or entities acceptable
to both India and Pakistan and "the people of Kashmir".
The group claims that its proposal is based on
responses from opinion makers, including government
officials, in both India and Pakistan. The think tank
maintains that the responses were in general positive
towards the creation of a Kashmir entity. Former
bureaucrats and defense officers were involved in the
preparation of the draft proposal, which has been boiled
down to three options: Two Kashmiri entities on either
side of the LoC, one straddling the LoC, or just one
entity on the Indian side of the LoC. In all three
options, the proposed entities would have their "own
government, constitution and special relationship with
India and/or Pakistan".
The proposals, which are
now under discussion at different levels in both
countries, seek to identify areas in Jammu and Kashmir
that would like to be part of the new Kashmiri entities.
The identification will be based on religion and
"Kashmiriyat" (The concept of a distinct Kashmiri
identity ).
Kargil, where a brief war was fought
in 1999, is also included in the list of districts, but
the paper adds that "though this group, too, has
interacted closely with Kashmiris, their desire to join
a Kashmiri state cannot be assumed".
On the
Pakistan side, the paper presumes that "what is now Azad
[Free] Kashmir would opt to have sovereign status more
or less equivalent to that of an Eastern Kashmiri
state". But the study group, which is more categorical
in listing the supposed preferences of the people of
Jammu and Kashmir state in India, hesitates to make the
same presumptions for Pakistan-occupied Kashmir,
stating, "It is presently difficult to gauge the wishes
of the people of the region and we have therefore not
attempted to distinguish varying regional degrees of
desire for a new political dispensation."
The
paper, while providing for a single Kashmiri state "with
the concurrence of India and Pakistan", states that this
would be more difficult than the other option of two
Kashmiri entities on either side of the LoC. The new
proposal goes into details about the religious,
linguistic and territorial profile of the region. It
also calls the existing LoC "dysfunctional" and without
any inherent logic and proposes territorial exchanges
between India and Pakistan "to enhance regional
security" involving 11,815 square kilometers of
territory.
Apart from these proposals, others
are doing the rounds, one of which envisages the
creation of a neutral entity that would act as a buffer
between the proposed new entities of Kashmir. This
theory sees the carving out of a new autonomous entity
comprising those areas in Pakistan and India with
Ismaili communities to form a community of about 1
million people under an Ismaili administration.
The initial feedback to this idea has apparently
been positive, given that in effect most of the needs of
these areas are already fulfilled by the Aga Khan
Foundation, which is engaged in improving the quality of
life of people there through rural development,
education, healthcare, micro-credit, financial services,
humanitarian assistance and the enhancement of
non-governmental organizations. Almost 90 percent of the
schools, hospital and services, including civic
services, in these regions are operated by the
foundation.
Which goes some way to explain
Prince Karim Aga Khan's involvement in trying to break
the Kashmir impasse for the benefit of all of the people
in the Valley.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd.
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