Resolving Kashmir Conflict Needs Flexibility

Need for flexibility on Kashmir
By Dr Tariq Rahman
Dawn, January 4, 2006

GENERAL Musharraf’s statement that a solution to the Kashmir problem may be sought outside the conventional position adopted by the establishment could prove to be the best thing to have happened in 2006. The real impediments to peace are not the “hawks” on both sides.

Hard-liners do not value peace anyway even after the world has suffered catastrophes like the two world wars, the Russian aggression in Afghanistan, American aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan and similar devastations.

It is the common people who have been brainwashed by over half a century of propaganda into thinking that Kashmir is more important than Pakistan, or for that matter, India.

Recently, Amanullah Khan, leader of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, said that the Quaid never called Kashmir the “jugular vein of Pakistan”. Pakistani hawks have always trumpeted this as the Quaid’s saying. Be that as it may, it is true that the rivers of Pakistan run through Kashmir. It is equally true that India has not tampered with those rivers, at least not in a dangerous and radical way so far.

We have had several wars but the rivers run as they have since time immemorial. So, does it stand to reason that the rivers will stop running if there is peace in Kashmir? Is that a good reason for spending millions on the instruments of war and putting a whole country, in fact civilisation, at risk of nuclear annihilation? It is far better to allow peace to prevail while preparing for a possible conflict on other issues. When and if there is real and imminent danger to the rivers we can do something about it but why risk all we have for something which may never happen at all?

The history of Pakistan’s involvement with Kashmir has been full of blunders. First, the decision to join Pakistan or India was left to the rulers of the princely states. This went against democratic principles, since the people were left out of the decision-making, as did the Muslim League’s two-nation theory that Hindu-majority areas should join India and Muslim-majority ones Pakistan).

The result was that the princely ruler of Junagarh opted for Pakistan and the latter accepted the decision — why? The population was mostly Hindu though the ruler was a Muslim. The reverse was true for Kashmir. If the League had refused the accession of Junagarh its stance on Kashmir could have appeared a more principled one.

Once the ruler of Kashmir acceded to India, Pakistan helped the Pashtun tribesmen, including army volunteers on leave, to fight against the Indian army. This venture failed but even if it had not, it would have established the principle of an appeal to arms for the future, endangering the new country because India could have resorted to armed aggression. After all, Pakistan had a very small army at that time and it was not even adequately armed. Besides, the eastern wing of the country was almost completely unprotected and surrounded on three sides by India. This was definitely dangerous policy under the circumstances.

Incredibly enough, the policy was repeated both in 1965 and in Kargil. Each time two basic assumptions were made. First, that Pakistani guerrillas, or paramilitary auxiliaries, would cut off Kashmir from India. Second, that India would not launch a full-scale war across the border. In 1965, it was proved that India did not behave how the Pakistani decision-makers believed it would. The Kargil operation may not have resulted in the devastation and misery brought on by a nuclear war but the subcontinent came near enough to the edge of the abyss.

Since then we have had other scary confrontations but sanity seems to have prevailed for the present. I do not know if the United States has persuaded the leadership of both sides, or at least General Musharraf, to try to make peace. But if it has then we ought to be grateful to Uncle Sam. In the rest of the world, regrettably the US is notorious for bringing about war and destruction. If peace is its interest in our part of world, I am all for it.

But perhaps General Musharraf himself has realised that Pakistan’s progress is hostage to the perpetual preparation for war. No country can spend on education, health, industry and modernisation while keeping a huge colonial style standing army. If the problem of Kashmir is solved we could have a small, highly efficient, professional army with most of our young people trained for defence and huge bunkers to save citizens from the devastation caused by bombing. That would be far better defence than huge armies which consume the resources needed for modernisation.

Whatever the reasons for General Musharraf’s new, flexible stand on Kashmir, it is now incumbent on all those who love peace and Pakistan to support this policy. Kashmiris we do and should care about, but not at the cost of our own benighted, starving people. If the Kashmiris want to be independent, join Pakistan or India, so be it. If they want their former state to split along religious lines, again so be it. All solutions are welcome provided they lead to peace.

In this context, any joint rule of Kashmir by India and Pakistan will probably lead to reprisals, antagonism and war. So, if Kashmir is to be administered by any powers other than Pakistan and India, it should be the United Nations. Then the UN can hold any form of plebiscite, referendum, election etc. to determine what the Kashmiris really desire. Flexibility is the crux of the matter. If we stick to any of the bad old mantras (‘atoot ang’, ‘Kashmir banega Pakistan’) and so on, we will fail again.

The real impediments in the path of peace are the brainwashed people of Pakistan and north India. What is necessary now is to counter this brainwashing. But this need not be done by the “murder of history’ (in K. K. Aziz’s inimitable phrase). It should be done by telling the truth for a change: the truth about the initial Muslim League mistake, the wars and the cost of the conflict.

There are several books on this cost and it is appalling. Also, all lessons in textbooks glorifying war should be removed. In India, all the anti-Pakistan films should be done away with and, once again, the excessively chauvinistic line adopted on Kashmir should be modified. If this is done in both countries the brainwashed people will allow their leaders to think ‘out of the box’. If it is not done, or done only in one country, there will be no peace.

The people of South Asia should realise at what cost they maintain their huge standing armies and their arsenals bristling with weapons. They should be conscious of the terrible nuclear payloads and the missiles pointed at Indian and Pakistani cities. Pakistan and India owe it to their people to allow them to live happily and without fear.

Let us not lose civilisations that go back beyond the Vedic age to gain a piece of land called Kashmir, a land which, in reality, no one can gain because modern warfare has no real victors. The only real gain we can have is peace. If General Musharraf and the present Indian leadership can gift this to the people of South Asia then that will be something worth remembering in the years ahead.