Civil War in Kashmir

DEMULLIER Loreleï                                Conflict and Peace-Building FINAL ASSIGNMENT

THE CONFLICT IN KASHMIR

1. Presentation of the case

The Kashmir region has been a conflict area for more than 50 years now. The area where the conflict is the most present is the Indian area, also called the Jammu and Kashmir, strategically located in the northwestern part of India, surrounded by Pakistan, Afghanistan, China and Tibet. The insurgency in Kashmir was fueled by years of confrontation between India and Pakistan, who both claimed sovereignty over this region.

Under the scheme of partition provided by the Indian Independence Act of 1947, Kashmir was free to accede to India or Pakistan. The confrontation between India and Pakistan started here, because both were claiming that Kashmir was part of their country. In 1948, the Maharajah, who was first for the independence of the region, agreed to the accession to India as long as the region will keep its autonomy except for defense, currency and foreign affairs. This happened partly because of Pakistani raiders invading the country and the Maharajah needed India’s help to push them back.

After three wars and several UN interventions in the area, Pakistan and India signed the Simla Agreement in July 1972, under which they agreed to respect the cease-fire line defined by the UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan, also called Line of Control (see figure 1.1 in the appendix) and to resolve this conflict bilaterally, as India requested, without internationalizing it. Even though several UN resolutions called for a plebiscite in Kashmir regarding the situation, the government of India refused arguing that since the inhabitants of Kashmir participated to India's local and national elections, this meant that they wanted to retain under India’s authority. This agreement could have been a major step towards a peaceful resolution of the dispute between those two countries over this piece of land but it wasn't really the case since it also stated that the final settlement of this dispute will be resolved later, without specifying any precise date or moment in time. The conflict was left unresolved between the parties and this agreement will be the reference for any further discussion between them on this issue.

Although the independence of Kashmir has been promoted by the population, neither India nor Pakistan have been considering it. The main insurgent group fighting for independence, the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) was founded in 1977, their main goal was to “struggle against foreign occupation, gain independence and attain an honourable position amongst free nations of the world”. After rigged local elections in 1987 where everything was done for the Muslim United Front (MUF) to lose the elections even though they were supported by the population, the JKFL and other insurgent’s groups stepped up their attacks against the government by bombing several official infrastructures and calling for a boycott of the national parliamentary elections in 1989 and kidnapped the daughter of a Minister. That led to violent retaliations coming from the government that adopted a law in 1990 giving special power and immunity to the military forces in Jammu and Kashmir engaging in counter-insurgency action.

In this essay, I will focus on the 2000-2010 period of the conflict, that means after the Kargil war between India and Pakistan that took place in 1999. I will first conduct a conflict analysis, then analyse what were the attempts to resolve this conflict and why they failed and finish with a focus on freedom fighters and human rights violations related to the case.

While studying this conflict I asked myself why it has been going on for so long and how can it still be not resolved, after several attempts on negotiating a solution to the conflict?

1. Conflict Analysis

A conflict can be defined as a social situation in which a minimum of 2 actors strive to acquire at the same moment in time an available set of scarce resources^[1]. The one taking place between the Indian government and the Kashmiri insurgents is a state-based armed conflict waged by formally organised groups and the government of India, who are the primary parties to this conflict. It is rooted around two mains issues: One territory issue and the fact the population in Kashmir is rejecting the accession to India and are divided between the pro-Pakistani (those who want to access Pakistan) and pro-independence (those who want the independence of Kashmir). However, this conflict seems to be more centred on immaterial interests than material ones (territory issue) since most of the Kashmiri population (ICG report 2002) feel like they have been denied from their right to self-determination, as the plebiscite advocated by the UN resolutions has never been hold for them to choose between accessing India, Pakistan or being independent. The main issue at stake therefore seems to be an issue around status and power, as Kashmir is willing to be separated from India before anything and is rejecting the rule of Indian state in the region. This status issue is also really linked to values, especially ideology, since most of the Kashmiri population is Muslim. This ideology side has played a huge role in the conflict, as most of the insurgent groups are Islamist group using the religious discourse to rally people to their cause.

The conflict in Kashmir between India and the insurgents has been going on for several decades, with great escalation periods and violent confrontation but also with several attempts at de-escalation processes. In the 1990’s insurgent groups were really divided and those internal divisions led to confrontations within factions of the group, with a pro-Pakistani one, the Hizb-ul Mujahidin, launching a campaign of killing in 1991 against pro-independence fighters and pro-independence political and religious figures. Ten years after, in 1999, the “fidayeen phase” started and will last until 2003. This campaign took place right after the Kargil war in 1999. This was a campaign of attacks targeting a variety of Indian officials (army, paramilitary camps and police headquarters). These actions were carried out by the Lashkar-e-Taiba insurgent group, and they reached their higher level in December, 2001 when they targeted the national Parliament (source: Al-Jazeera); at this time the high estimates of deaths for this year, that means the aggregated high estimates of death for all incidents of organised violence during a year, according to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, was of 3460 fatalities in 2001 and went down to 437 in 2010. After 2003 this violent process started to run out of steam.

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