A rchive Date
[ 10-01-2004 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Afghanistan ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/mansur_london.html
A fragile hope for peace
SALIM MANSUR, For the London Free Press
2004-01-10
There were two striking developments of great promise in the first week of the New Year, in a part of the world smouldering under layers of conflicts several decades old.
In Kabul, Afghanistan, the 502-member loya jirga, or grand council, representing all the people of that ethnically varied country, approved a new constitution delicately balancing Islam and democracy.
There is a promise here of an old tribal society emerging steadily after decades of warfare, fanaticism and terrorism, with the help of the international community and Canada's involvement, into the modern world.
In Islamabad, Pakistan's capital, the leaders of seven South Asian states assembled for a regional meeting that set the stage for the much anticipated announcement of India and Pakistan agreeing to diplomatically resolve their differences.
Key among those is their quarrel over Kashmir, which has made them the most dangerous nuclear-armed rivals, with a history of warfare between them.
Of all the world's diplomatic hot spots, including the Middle East and the Korean peninsula, none is more volatile - with the potential for a nuclear war - than the frontier separating India and Pakistan.
These two neighbours - sharing a common history stretching back more than 5,000 years along the river Indus and separated by a bloody partition at the end of British colonial rule - have fought three wars and countless skirmishes over the past five decades.
As recently as December 2001, when India's parliament was attacked by assailants with suspected terror links to Muslim fundamentalists in Pakistan and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network, the two countries had prepared for war.
The New Year meeting between India's Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistan's president and military chief, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, was planned in secrecy, according to official reports from both sides, to prevent premature disclosure and potential failure that befell an earlier meeting of the two leaders in July 2001 in Agra, India.
The key issue holding back peaceful and profitable relations between India and Pakistan since the post-colonial departure by Britain has been their dispute over Kashmir.
This issue has acquired such complexity - invested with nationalist sentiments, drenched with blood, layered with a colourful history of people and their faiths - it is quite impossible to write about the subject within the limited space of a column such as this without offending the disputants and their supporters.
TROUBLED HISTORY
However, it warrants some background. The history of British India's partition in August 1947 is complex and now largely obscured with the passage of time. It is worthwhile to recount this history as it bears upon the problem of Kashmir.
The partition's logic was based on the argument that there were two "nations" within undivided British India, Hindus and Muslims, and that each deserved a state of their own.
By the time the last viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, arrived in New Delhi in March 1947 with instructions to grant India independence, the divergent claims of Hindus and Muslims, represented by the Congress party and the Muslim League, were so far apart that bridging them became well nigh impossible.
Two visions, two readings of history and two arguments on the definition of "nation" collided, with the leadership of each group insisting its view be the basis for deciding the future of the Indian subcontinent.
For Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress, India was an indivisible whole, a land inhabited by people of diverse faiths, cultures, languages and ethnicities - yet together constituting one civilization.
In this view, the Indian "nation" was a composite, and the indivisibility of India meant diversity of regions and respect of individual rights protected within a federal democratic state.
For Muhammad Ali Jinnah and the Muslim League, a united India meant rendering Muslims into the unenviable condition of a minority population.
This fear, real or manipulated, brought the league to define "nation" on the basis of religion, an explosive proposition with tragic consequences.
It did not matter that the League's definition of "nation" was flawed. Once the idea took hold of a sizable population, it followed that the Muslim "nation" deserved a state of their own. It also did not matter that Muslims of undivided India were not of one mind on their future. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, one of India's leading Muslim religious scholars and a prominent Congress leader, repudiated the League's separatist claims based on history, religious principles, political logic and feared consequences.
But communal tensions flared, blood flowed, logic and prudence got trampled, and Britain decided to divide and quit.
The partition of India was immensely costly in lives, property and future relations among people who, from being friends and neighbours, were made into enemies.
Gandhi was killed by a Hindu militant in January 1948. Jinnah died of illness in September 1948. In many ways, the trajectory of their lives mirrored the divergent paths of the two countries they brought into being by shredding a shared history of over 1,000 years.
PRINCELY STATE
Kashmir was a princely state of British India, which also consisted of provinces, territories and tribal areas.
In 1947, there were 565 of these princely states within the subcontinent of varying sizes, some as large as the British Isles and others barely recognizable.
Kashmir was one of the larger states and a natural garden of lakes and valleys surrounded by some of the highest mountains in the world.
A Persian poet, visiting the area in an earlier age, wrote: "If there be a Paradise on Earth, then it is this, it is this, it is this."
In the terms of agreement for partition, Mountbatten announced that princely states were being left with no choice of autonomy on Britain's departure, except joining one of the two successor states, India or Pakistan.
Kashmir was not located, as were other princely states such as Kalat or Hyderabad, within the proposed boundaries of India and Pakistan.
For these 564 princely states, logic of location meant their choice, irrespective of the faith and culture of their rulers and people, was determined by where history placed them on the night of partition.
But Kashmir, by its location, did have a choice.
Kashmir's dilemma was that Muslims constituted the majority population of the state. There were, however, sizable minorities of Hindus and Buddhists.
Most importantly, the dynastic ruler of Kashmir was a Hindu, Hari Singh.
As Britain's date for handing over power on the subcontinent approached, Hari Singh dithered.
The 10 weeks following the midnight of independence for India and Pakistan is over-burdened with controversy in the Kashmir dispute, still raging more than a half-century later.
During this period, there was a peasant uprising in the southern districts of Kashmir and cross-border raids by infiltrators from the Pakistan side of the Kashmir frontier. The capital, Srinagar, was threatened by the fighting. Hari Singh panicked and sought the support of India.
Mountbatten, appointed the Indian governor-general following independence, and Jawaharlal Nehru, India's prime minister, offered military support - provided Hari Singh agree to join the Indian union.
Hari Singh reluctantly signed the legal documents and then faded into history. India dispatched troops and Srinagar was secured.
Pakistan responded by sending its fledgling army in support of the tribesmen raiding Kashmir and the peasants in revolt.
The two new states of the former British India thus became entangled in a war apart from all the other problems of partition.
When the fighting ceased, Kashmir was divided, and Kashmiris became pawns in an international conflict.
The Kashmir dispute is one of both symbolism and reality.
The Kashmir war of 1947-48 was formally brought to an end by a UN-sponsored ceasefire of Jan. 1, 1949. The main provision in the UN agreement was for a plebiscite for Kashmiris to decide their future.
The conditions for holding the plebiscite required withdrawal of all non-Kashmiris and the respective armies, and the return of displaced populations and normalcy in areas of fighting along the ceasefire line.
But the Kashmir dispute, even before the fighting erupted, acquired a symbolic meaning. The "k" in Pakistan stood for Kashmir, and Jinnah was adamant about this state with a Muslim majority joining the country he helped create.
Congress and Nehru, a Kashmiri by origin, were equally determined to see Kashmir opt for union with India, thereby confirming its secular and democratic vision by repudiating the two-nations theory of Jinnah.
In this struggle for hearts and minds of Kashmiris, the third element was the leadership of the Kashmiri Muslims.
They were divided, but the majority followed Sheik Abdullah, a Muslim nationalist who was closer in politics to Gandhi and Nehru than to Jinnah.
The conditions for the plebiscite were never met and the division of Kashmir along the ceasefire line hardened.
The Indian side of the divide, under Abdullah's leadership, formally joined the Indian Union as the state of Jammu and Kashmir on the basis of legislative elections reflecting the will of the majority.
Pakistan refused to recognize Kashmir's union with India and insisted on the UN brokered plebiscite agreement.
In failing to engineer such a vote, Pakistan sought to break Jammu and Kashmir loose from Indian control by military means. The result was the wars of 1965 and 1971, and Pakistan itself became dismembered with the creation of an independent Bangladesh.
In July 1972, the then leaders of India and Pakistan, following the war of 1971, met in the Indian town of Simla and signed a statement. Indira Gandhi, the Indian prime minister, and Ali Bhutto, the Pakistani president, agreed to settle their disputes peacefully in a bilateral arrangement.
The Simla Accord diplomatically indicated the Kashmir dispute would be resolved by recognizing the ceasefire line, with minor adjustments, as the international frontier between India and Pakistan.
The implementation of the accord, however, was shelved as both leaders were overwhelmed by domestic troubles.
Bhutto was ousted from power by a military officer, Gen. Zia ul Haq, and then hanged in 1979. Gandhi was killed in 1984 by bodyguards sympathetic to Sikh secessionists in Punjab.
The New Year announcement in Islamabad represents a long and conflict-laden detour back to the same grounds of the Simla Accord of 1972.
In more than three decades since then, much has changed. Yet the Kashmir dispute remained basically unaltered.
The Afghan war against the Soviet Union transformed Pakistan into the strategic heartland of Muslim fundamentalism, produced Taliban warriors and Muslim fanatics who penetrated into disputed Kashmir.
A new generation of Muslim militants sought to internationalize the conflict and defeat India, as the Soviet Union was defeated in Afghanistan.
Indian military response to cross-border infiltration since 1989 escalated into human rights violations of Kashmiris.
India and Pakistan became nuclear powers in 1998, and the stakes in Kashmir were raised to a critical level. Then came 9/11, and a new military officer, Musharraf, having seized power in Pakistan, realized the perils into which politics of religious fundamentalism had placed the country.
Pakistan has not been governed well. The result has been a failed state and society.
India's achievement is its democracy, yet it remains a relatively poor country. It is determined to achieve the economic gains China has been making in recent years.
The leaderships of both countries recognize the folly of continuing the conflict in Kashmir, and the potential danger in a war triggered by militants.
For both countries, resolving the Kashmir dispute has become imperative for making future progress.
But there remains danger ahead. Musharraf survived two recent assassination attempts, and Muslim fundamentalists are opposed to Kashmir being the cost of peace with India.
The recent announcement, however, holds out the promise reason may prevail over sentiments, and reality may yet impose its logic for peace between nuclear rivals in the subcontinent where once commonly shared values prevailed over differences.
Salim Mansur is a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario. His column appears alternate Wednesdays Copyright © The London Free Press 2001,2002,2003
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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