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Drawing a line on a Kashmir
solution
By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - Among the many proposals that have
been put forward over the years as possible ways of
settling the conflict between India and Pakistan over
Kashmir, the conversion of the Line of Control (LoC)
into an international border is widely seen as the most
pragmatic solution. But while the idea has significant
support in India, it has fewer takers in neighboring
Pakistan.
The 776-kilometer LoC runs between the
Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir (which Pakistan calls
Occupied Kashmir) and that part of Kashmir that is under
Pakistani control (while India refers to as Pakistan
Occupied Kashmir or POK and which Pakistan calls Azad
Kashmir, or Free Kashmir). The LoC corresponds more or
less to the Cease Fire Line (CFL) drawn up after the
India-Pakistan war of 1948. The CFL, with minor changes,
became the LoC after the Shimla Agreement of 1972.
The LoC was drawn on the mutual consent of the
top military commanders of India and Pakistan and was
clearly delineated on maps (although by not demarcating
the line beyond map coordinates NJ 9842, scope for
dispute over the Siachen Glacier was left open). Both
countries respected the LoC's sanctity for 27 years
until 1999, when Pakistan violated it by its armed
intrusions across the Kargil-Drass sector.
Conversion of the LoC into the international
border will in effect mean according de jure recognition
to what is the de facto situation on the ground.
Proponents of the conversion of the LoC into a
de jure border point out that this is the most practical
solution. After all, whatever the territorial dreams and
ambitions of the two sides might be (while India
considers all of Jammu and Kashmir, including the parts
occupied by Pakistan and those in turn gifted to China,
to be an integral part of India, Pakistan insists that
Kashmir is disputed territory and that it is the
"unfinished business of partition" of 1947), it is
unlikely that either India or Pakistan will be able to
acquire the territory held by the other in Kashmir,
whether by diplomacy, war or proxy war.
A
Western diplomat based in Delhi told Asia Times Online
that the conversion of the LoC into an international
boundary is seen as a means of discouraging adventurism
on the part of either country aimed at altering the
status quo (as did Pakistan at Kargil).
Besides,
redrawing boundaries to settle the conflict will result
in bloodshed and displacement of populations far greater
than that witnessed in 1947. It would lead to serious
instability in South Asia. And since neither India nor
Pakistan is going to give up territory in Kashmir that
is under their control, legalizing the situation on the
ground seems to be the best answer.
Although
Indian leaders have frequently said that converting the
LoC into an international boundary is unacceptable, in
private they admit that this is a feasible solution.
Selling the idea would be far more difficult in Pakistan
for its leaders would have to justify accepting the
situation as it existed in 1949, when every government
since then has pledged to "liberate Kashmir from Indian
occupation" and spent billions of dollars to alter the
situation on the ground.
India and Pakistan have
almost reached agreement several times in the past on
converting the CFL/LoC into an international border. In
1955, the two sides are said to have agreed to formalize
the division along the CFL; political opposition in the
two countries prevented the agreement from being
finalized.
In 1972 at Simla, prime ministers
Indira Gandhi and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto are said to have
reached a tacit understanding to make the LoC the
international border. In an article published in Times
of India in 1995, P N Dhar, Gandhi's principal
secretary, wrote that Bhutto "agreed that the line could
be gradually endowed with the 'characteristics of an
international border' [his words]". Both leaders are
said to have decided to take steps to gradually
implement this. According to Dhar, Bhutto requested that
these commitments not be included in the formal Simla
Agreement or in the form of a written commitment, as it
would threaten his survival and jeopardize the nascent
democratic setup in Pakistan. Gandhi consented to his
request.
To some extent, Bhutto did follow up on
his assurances to Gandhi. The Northern Areas were
detached from POK and integrated into the federal
territories of Pakistan, and political, administrative
and constitutional control over POK was increased.
However, with Gandhi and Bhutto losing power in
1977, the formal and permanent division of Kashmir along
the LoC could not be achieved.
In his book
India-Pakistan in War and Peace (Books Today,
2002), former Indian foreign secretary J N Dixit writes
of India's "unpublicized diplomatic initiatives" in the
early 1990s to convert the LoC into the international
border as per the Gandhi-Bhutto agreement. Neither
Benazir Bhutto nor Nawaz Sharif showed interest in a
solution to the Kashmir problem based on the LoC. Dixit
writes: "The fundamental reason for this intransigent
pull back from the position taken by Bhutto in 1972 in
Simla was the assessment by the Pakistani power
structure that Kashmir was ripe for separation from the
Indian Republic from 1989 onwards and that the Indian
state did not have the political will or the stamina to
sustain Jammu and Kashmir as an integral part of India.
The large-scale military aggression launched by Pakistan
across the Line of Control in Kargil in the summer of
1999 was an operational expression of this. It would be
pertinent to recall that Pakistan questioned the
legality and sanctity of the Line of Control during the
Kargil conflict."
So why should Pakistan be
willing to consider the LoC's conversion into an
international border now? If the armed uprising in
Indian Kashmir encouraged Pakistan in the 1990s to
reject the LoC as the basis of a settlement of the
conflict over Kashmir, the changed international
position on the issue (every important country prefers
the LoC as the basis of a settlement) is expected to
push Islamabad to consider it again now.
When
Pakistan violated the LoC at Kargil, the international
community sharply criticized its action. The joint
statement issued by US president Bill Clinton and
Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif on July 4, 1999 in
Washington expressed respect for the LoC in accordance
with the 1972 Simla Agreement between India and
Pakistan. That idea was echoed by a G-8 communique, as
well.
Following the terrorist attack on the
Indian parliament in December 2001, there were calls in
India for military strikes on terrorist camps across the
LoC. "Sections in India maintained that strikes across
the LoC would not generate that much international
criticism or evoke that much of a response from
Islamabad. They were wrong," said the Western diplomat,
pointing out that this again suggests the inviolable
status of the LoC in the eyes of the international
community. It is the "dangers of this adventurism,
especially in the context of the two countries
possessing nuclear weapons" that has given the need to
settle the conflict over Kashmir by formalizing the LoC
urgency, he added.
An official in the Indian
Ministry of External Affairs says that India would be
willing to consider making "minor adjustments" along the
LoC and giving Pakistan "some concessions" to enable its
government to sell the idea of the LoC's conversion as
the international border.
The Kashmiri people,
though, are unlikely to welcome the conversion of the
LoC into the international border as most of them are in
favor of azadi (independence). Indian analysts
have suggested that this could be overcome to some
extent if India and Pakistan would give their respective
Kashmirs maximum autonomy and take steps towards making
the border a soft one, which would allow for free
movement of people and commodities between the two
Kashmirs. Opening the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road and
allowing people to travel between the Kashmirs (as is
allowed at Attari-Wagah in Punjab) would be the first
step in this direction.
However, Delhi does have
serious misgivings about a soft border. Early this week,
the Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mufti Mohammed
Sayeed suggested that the LoC be made a soft border. He
called for the opening of a checkpoint on the road that
leads to Muzaffarabad so that people could travel easily
to the other side with visas.
The Indian
government has, however, turned down his suggestion.
India-Pakistan relations have been in a deep freeze for
around 18 months. There are signs of a thaw, but clearly
Delhi is wary. The Indian Home Ministry says that it is
too premature to even consider conversion of the LoC
into a soft border. Ironically, opening the border was
first put forward by Delhi, two years ago. Much water
has flowed down the River Jhelum since then.
Converting the LoC into the international border
would not resolve the entire Kashmir problem. It could
settle the problem between India and Pakistan over
Kashmir. That should free the governments of the two
countries to then focus their attention towards
addressing the problems within their respective
Kashmirs.
(?003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
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