India draws a line over Kashmir
By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - A statement on Kashmir that the United Nations press office issued
recently has ruffled feathers in India, forcing UN secretary general Ban
Ki-moon's office to clarify that the offending words were not uttered by the
secretary general himself.
Sent via e-mail on July 28 to a handful of reporters, the statement said that
the "secretary general is concerned over the prevailing security situation
there [in the Kashmir Valley] over the past month". It called on all parties to
show restraint and while welcoming the recent resumption of dialogue between
India and Pakistan at the level of foreign ministers, the e-mail said the
secretary general "encourages both sides to rekindle the spirit of the
composite dialogue, which was initiated in 2004".
The expression of concern came in the wake of unrest in the
Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) over the past two months that has
claimed the lives of about 51 people, mainly civilians. While India is engaging
in talks with Pakistan, it has suspended the composite dialogue since the
bloody Pakistan-linked attacks on the Indian city of Mumbai in 2008 as Delhi
believes Islamabad has not acted robustly enough to dismantle the
infrastructure of terrorism on its soil.
An incensed India asked the UN for an explanation for the "gratuitous advice".
The secretary general's office quickly responded by playing down the e-mail,
describing it as "guidance" rather than a statement by the Ban. "The
Spokesperson's Office released to the media guidance which was prepared by the
UN Secretariat, and that seems to have been taken out of context. This was not
a statement of the Secretary General," the secretary general's spokesperson
said at a media briefing.
India is one of the largest contributors to UN peacekeeping missions worldwide
and is seeking a permanent seat in the UN Security Council.
India's response to the "guidance" has been criticized as rather excessive. But
it has a long history.
The UN's role in the India-Pakistan conflict over disputed Kashmir has raised
hackles in Delhi for decades. Delhi has been opposed to the UN, indeed any
external attempt to resolve the conflict. It has been of the view that while UN
resolutions have kept secessionist sentiments alive in Kashmir, arms supplied
by Western powers to Pakistan have fueled the latter's military adventurism
vis-a-vis India and encouraged it to pursue the military rather than the
dialogue option with Delhi.
However, it was India that first took the problem to the UN Security Council.
Following Pakistan's aggression on the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir in
October 1947 in violation of a standstill agreement that the governments of
India and Pakistan had with its ruler, India referred the issue to the Security
Council on December 31, 1947, asking for Pakistan to stop. Instead of taking
note of the aggression, the council declared Kashmir a disputed territory,
thereby supporting the Pakistani position.
An August 1948 council resolution called for a plebiscite to determine the
future of Kashmir. At that time, India was not opposed to such a move. At the
time of Kashmir's accession to India, prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru had said
that this was conditional on a plebiscite. That position changed with the
Security Council's handling of the issue. "Pakistan's only locus standi in
Kashmir was that of an aggressor," an official in India's Ministry of External
Affairs (MEA) said. "The UNSC made it an equal party to a dispute that in fact
did not exist as India's rights over J&K were clearly established by the
treaty of accession."
With Pakistan becoming a part of two US-led Cold War military alliances, the
Southeast Asia Treaty Organization and the Central Treaty Organization, by the
early 1950s and Western powers taking a pro-Pakistan line in the UN, India's
distrust of the UN and the West deepened. The promise of a plebiscite was put
on the backburner, as was any role for the UN on Kashmir-related matters. From
1954 onwards, the Soviet Union used its veto in favor of India against UN
resolutions on Kashmir and with that the impact of the UN's "meddling" on India
was effectively blunted.
Unlike India, Pakistan favors a solution according to UN resolutions. This
isn't surprising as the UN plebiscite envisages giving Kashmiris a choice
between accession to India or Pakistan. It is silent on independence or freedom
from Indian and Pakistani control, which is the option most popular among
Kashmiris.
Pakistan has repeatedly sought to raise the Kashmir issue at international
forums, although under the 1972 Simla Agreement with India it pledged to use
bilateral dialogue to resolve it. In fact, diplomats who participated in talks
that culminated in that agreement have written that the two countries had
reached a tacit understanding on converting the Line of Control (LoC) (the
ceasefire line of 1948, which with some small changes was made the LoC under
the Simla Agreement) into an international border. That is, the two countries
had agreed to give de jure status to the de facto situation. Domestic changes
in the two countries in the 1970s prevented this from being implemented.
The policies of the major powers towards the Kashmir dispute were driven by
their global interests or the agendas of their regional partners. Thus, right
through the Cold War, Western powers backed Pakistan's claims over Kashmir,
just as the Soviets recognized J&K as an "inalienable part of India".
During the Cold War, Western powers favored a plebiscite and a third party role
to resolve the conflict, but this began to change in the 1990s. The end of the
Cold War, India's growing economic clout, the lure of its giant market, the
reality of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in the region and the realization that
the dispute would be best resolved by the two countries themselves have
contributed to this shift in position.
Since the 1990s, the major powers have endorsed the Indian position, that is,
conversion of the LoC into an international border. In 1999, for instance, when
Pakistan violated the LoC at Kargil in J&K, it was sharply criticized. 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 Simla Agreement. That idea was echoed by a Group of Eight
communique as well.
During the Cold War, Western powers were not averse to an independent Kashmir,
where they would wield influence. This was an attractive option, given
Kashmir's proximity to the former Soviet Union and China. In the post-9/11
scenario, an independent Kashmir is not that attractive any longer. "The
international community has little appetite for redrawing maps, especially in
this part of the world," the MEA official said. "It has realized that J&K
is in safer hands under India than it would be either independent or in
Pakistan's hands."
If in the past Western powers never hesitated to proffer advice to Delhi on the
Kashmir issue, they have become more circumspect in recent years. Warm
relations with India have always hinged on the support a country gave India on
the Kashmir issue, a fact that the US has learnt and Britain is learning more
slowly. At stake are ties with India, an emerging economic powerhouse. None of
these countries would like to jeopardize their relations with India.
While the US is nudging India quietly to engage in talks with Pakistan, it has
avoided advising it publicly. It prefers to manage a crisis as and when it
erupts rather than engage itself fully in the Kashmir quagmire.
With the major powers shifting their line to match that of India's, Delhi has
been more willing to allow US facilitation. Policymakers recognize that the US
is India's best bet to get Pakistan to stop sponsoring anti-India terrorist
groups.
However, this does not mean that India will take "gratuitous advice" quietly,
as evident from the public ticking-off that visiting British dignitaries
offering to mediate have repeatedly received from India or the recent response
to the UN "guidance".
Some years ago, the UN, in the words of then-secretary general Kofi Annan, said
that in the changed international context, UN resolutions on Kashmir were
"obsolete". But Delhi is not taking any chances. Decades of distrust don't go
away that easily.
Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in
Bangalore.
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