Kashmir | News & Discussions.
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ice_man
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this is your defence??? to the whole issue of kashmir?? i thought firstly indians denied any PROBLEM at all in kashmir! as for people rounding up and handing over army paratroops to IA....well in operation market garden tens of thousands of allied troops were rounded up & made POWs now should we say that the netherland people supported the NAZIs???
please put something valid down firstly you denied anything wrong in kashmir! when proven wrong you said ok give example of things before 80s now even when that is rebuffed you come up with a post that is not even worth replying too!
Jackdaws
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yes and we specifically picked out 1/10 to go into kashmir so they can rape & plunder but wait we told them don't do any killing or raping until you are a few kilometers from srinagar!
look you & i both know culture is disintegrating now! in 1947 people upheld morales & cultures & traditions! so keep the BS to yourself about raping men,goats & when nothing was found women!
If anything people back then proved themselves barbarians - they killed and maimed with reckless abandon. And the tribesmen behavior is a historical fact even mentioned in neutral sources and in Pakistani ones too.
Jackdaws
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It is part of India although there can be talks on handing over P-o-K to India.
The Hindu : Opinion / Lead : A homecoming for yesterday's jihadists?
Mohammad Aslam, a former militant, now leads a frontal assault against his former colleagues by training locals to take on militants in Reasi district, J&K.
Hundreds of Hizb-ul-Mujahideen cadre in Pakistan are seeking a new life in their old homes in Jammu and Kashmir.
For 14 days and nights in September 1994, Abdul Rasheed marched across the 5,000-metre passes of the inner Himalayas to train for war at the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen camp in Pakistan.
The journey took Rasheed, part of a group of 116 volunteers from across Kashmir, across the Kaobal pass near Dras, on to the Hizbs forward base at Gilgit, by jeep over the dirt road to Skardu and then by bus to Muzaffarabad. Eight men returned home; 12 died of cold and high-altitude sickness, and were buried where they fell.
Early this summer, Rasheed walked into a police station in Srinagar to report his return: a journey that began with a Pakistan International Airlines flight from Karachi to Kathmandu, by bus to Gorakhpur, train to Gurdaspur and, finally, two more bus rides home. His Pakistani wife, Nyla Zamaan Abbasi and their children, four-year-old Haroun Rashid and two-year-old Amna Rashid, were with him.
More than one hundred former Hizb operatives and their families have returned home from Pakistan since 2005; nine this summer alone. Many have returned knowing full well they could face time in prison or worse. Kulgam resident Mohammad Jalil Amin, for example, served 10 months in jail when he was arrested on returning home through Kathmandu in June 2006. Naseer Ahmad Pathan, who crossed the minefields along the Line of Control with his Pakistani wife Naseema Akhtar and four children in 2005, is still uncertain if his family will be allowed to stay on in India. Rasheed faces his prosecution; his wife, possible deportation. In June 2007, Hizb operatives Irfan Ahmad Ganai, Fayyaz Ahmad Bhat, and Javed Ahmad Khan were shot dead trying to return through the LoC.
For much of this summer, New Delhi has been working quietly to begin a dialogue with the secessionist All Parties Hurriyat Conference a dialogue that fell apart during Prime Minister Manmohan Singhs first term in office. Even as the effort to resume the dialogue proceeds ahead, Jammu and Kashmirs major political parties have been seeking to draw the Hizb into negotiations. Like the Peoples Democratic Party, which engaged Hizb elements in talks through its three-year term in office, senior National Conference figures have sent out feelers to senior figures in the Islamist terror group.
Little remains of the Hizb ul-Mujahideens once-feared forces which, in the early 1990s, were believed to have numbered several thousands. The police say the code-name Ghazi Misbahuddin, traditionally assigned to the Hizbs overall commander for military operations in Jammu and Kashmir, is now used by the Gandoh-based commander Ghulam Abbas. But beyond funnelling funds, Indias intelligence services and the police believe, Abbas has little work: there is no longer an army to command.
The Hizb has fractured into small and largely-ineffective cells. Mohammad Shafi, who uses the code-names Dawood and Doctor, presides over the small group of operatives still active in northern Kashmir. Born in the village of Papchan near Bandipora, Shafi is among the Hizbs seniormost field operatives. He joined the organisation in 1992, soon after finishing school. But there have been signs in recent years that Shafis commitment to the jihad is waning. Police sources say he initiated communication with the authorities in 2007-2008, to explore an exit route.
Both Qayoom Najar and Majid Bisati, Shafis key lieutenants, are believed to have sought to survive by integrating their operations with those of the Lashkar-e-Taiba. However, the effort fell through because the Lashkar itself had haemorrhaged commanders in counter-terrorism operations targeting the group.
In the central Kashmir area, the Hizb has only one significantly active unit. Mushataq Ahmad, a one-time resident of Vorpach village near Ganderbal, leads a group of just three ethnic-Kashmiris and two Pakistani nationals. Nor are things much better for the Hizb in southern Kashmir. The organisations top bomb-making expert Pervez Ahmad Dar known by the code-name Pervez Musharraf executed a number of attacks on military convoys while serving as the Awantipora area commander. He has, however, been unable to stage a major operation in over a year. Shabbir Ahmad, named in police records as the perpetrator of the killings of at least three civilians before the recent Lok Sabha elections in Jammu and Kashmir, has done nothing since.
Mudassir Ahmad Shah, third major Hizb operative still active in the Awantipora area, too has had little success. Born at Gadikhal village near Awantipora, Shah came from a family with an Islamist tradition; his father, Abdul Ahad Shah was a Jamaat-e-Islami activist of long standing. Having joined the organisation while studying to become a dentist, police sources say, Shah trained as an improvised explosive device fabricator an enterprise which cost him an eye. He is alleged to have been responsible for a string of bombings in Srinagar and Banihal in 2006-2007. Shah, police say, left for Pakistan in 2007 before returning home in May 2008, but has done little since. Like his north Kashmir counterparts, his unit has been attempting to tap the operational resources of the Lashkar, but to no avail.
Perhaps the only significant-sized Hizb unit in southern Kashmir is the Kellar-based group of Fayyaz Pir, which is thought to have recruited at least 12 Shopian residents in recent weeks. Sangarwani-born Pir is thought to have joined the Hizb seven years ago, and stuck with the organisation even as its south Kashmir leadership was annihilated in a successful police-led campaign that began in 2006. Pirs new recruits, though, have received only rudimentary training in the Pir Panjal mountains, rather than formal military instruction at the Hizb camps in Pakistan. Like other groups, Pirs cell has been unable to stage a single significant attack.
Early in February, at a rally held by jihadist groups in Muzaffarabad, Hizb chief Mohammad Yusuf Shah widely known by the pseudonym Syed Salahuddin appeared to rule out an end to war.
Jihad will continue, the Urdu-language newspaper Roznamcha Jasarat reported him as saying, until the independence of Kashmir [from India]. He lashed out at the Pakistan government for proscribing the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammad both of which were represented at the rally. If there is a setback to the war [in Jammu and Kashmir] due to the cowardice of the [Pakistan] government, Shah said, then this war will need to be fought in Islamabad and Lahore.
Language like this, though, is at some distance from reality as is being experienced by the Hizbs several hundred-strong reserve in Muzaffarabad. Few have demonstrated any willingness to return home to swell the ranks of their depleted units within Jammu and Kashmir a reluctance also shared by Shahs key commanders.
Rashids story is instructive. Put to work as an apprentice shawl weaver after he dropped out of school in the eighth grade, Rashid found in the Hizbs jihad a romance and agency missing in his life. In 1998, suffering poor conditions at the Hizbs Jangal Mangal camp in Muzaffarabad and his religious nationalism stilled by years of watching comrades sent to death in an apparently-unwinnable campaign against Indian forces, he left the organisation. Living off a subsidy made available by the Pakistani authorities, he apprenticed with Muzaffarabad tailor Shakeel Ahmad Abbasi. Later, he married Abbasis sister. Having watched others make their way home to India, Rashids thoughts turned to returning to his land-owning family. Early this summer, Rashid paid a local travel agent Pakistani Rs. 4 lakh to arrange for passports, visas and tickets to Nepal.
Last year, responding to pressure from his war-weary rank and file, Shah ordered a ceasefire in October, the month of Ramzan. Later, he called for a solution in Jammu and Kashmir modelled on Northern Ireland a formulation that suggested that the organisation would be willing to disarm. Earlier, in August 2006, he offered to initiate a dialogue with New Delhi and a conditional ceasefire.
In recent weeks, though, Shahs language has been less conciliatory. Perhaps fearful that the APHCs political secessionists would exclude his organisation in a future dialogue, he lashed out at separatist leaders who were begging for talks with India. He also argued that Pakistans disinterest to highlight [the] Kashmir [issue] has disappointed and angered Kashmiris.
Shahs family embodies traditional middle-class aspirations not radical Islamism. His oldest son, Shahid Yusuf, works as teacher, and Javed Yusuf is an agricultural technologist. Shakeel Yusuf works as medical assistant in a government-run hospital. Wahid Yusuf, 24, graduated from the Government Medical College in Srinagar, where the familys contacts helped him obtain a seat under a quota controlled by the Jammu and Kashmir Governor. Momin Yusuf, the youngest of Shahs sons, is an engineer.
Even if Shah isnt willing to give his defeated army a chance to build the kind of lives he gave his sons, the Jammu and Kashmir government needs to find ways to give people like Rasheed a future.
Mohammad Aslam, a former militant, now leads a frontal assault against his former colleagues by training locals to take on militants in Reasi district, J&K.
Hundreds of Hizb-ul-Mujahideen cadre in Pakistan are seeking a new life in their old homes in Jammu and Kashmir.
For 14 days and nights in September 1994, Abdul Rasheed marched across the 5,000-metre passes of the inner Himalayas to train for war at the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen camp in Pakistan.
The journey took Rasheed, part of a group of 116 volunteers from across Kashmir, across the Kaobal pass near Dras, on to the Hizbs forward base at Gilgit, by jeep over the dirt road to Skardu and then by bus to Muzaffarabad. Eight men returned home; 12 died of cold and high-altitude sickness, and were buried where they fell.
Early this summer, Rasheed walked into a police station in Srinagar to report his return: a journey that began with a Pakistan International Airlines flight from Karachi to Kathmandu, by bus to Gorakhpur, train to Gurdaspur and, finally, two more bus rides home. His Pakistani wife, Nyla Zamaan Abbasi and their children, four-year-old Haroun Rashid and two-year-old Amna Rashid, were with him.
More than one hundred former Hizb operatives and their families have returned home from Pakistan since 2005; nine this summer alone. Many have returned knowing full well they could face time in prison or worse. Kulgam resident Mohammad Jalil Amin, for example, served 10 months in jail when he was arrested on returning home through Kathmandu in June 2006. Naseer Ahmad Pathan, who crossed the minefields along the Line of Control with his Pakistani wife Naseema Akhtar and four children in 2005, is still uncertain if his family will be allowed to stay on in India. Rasheed faces his prosecution; his wife, possible deportation. In June 2007, Hizb operatives Irfan Ahmad Ganai, Fayyaz Ahmad Bhat, and Javed Ahmad Khan were shot dead trying to return through the LoC.
For much of this summer, New Delhi has been working quietly to begin a dialogue with the secessionist All Parties Hurriyat Conference a dialogue that fell apart during Prime Minister Manmohan Singhs first term in office. Even as the effort to resume the dialogue proceeds ahead, Jammu and Kashmirs major political parties have been seeking to draw the Hizb into negotiations. Like the Peoples Democratic Party, which engaged Hizb elements in talks through its three-year term in office, senior National Conference figures have sent out feelers to senior figures in the Islamist terror group.
Little remains of the Hizb ul-Mujahideens once-feared forces which, in the early 1990s, were believed to have numbered several thousands. The police say the code-name Ghazi Misbahuddin, traditionally assigned to the Hizbs overall commander for military operations in Jammu and Kashmir, is now used by the Gandoh-based commander Ghulam Abbas. But beyond funnelling funds, Indias intelligence services and the police believe, Abbas has little work: there is no longer an army to command.
The Hizb has fractured into small and largely-ineffective cells. Mohammad Shafi, who uses the code-names Dawood and Doctor, presides over the small group of operatives still active in northern Kashmir. Born in the village of Papchan near Bandipora, Shafi is among the Hizbs seniormost field operatives. He joined the organisation in 1992, soon after finishing school. But there have been signs in recent years that Shafis commitment to the jihad is waning. Police sources say he initiated communication with the authorities in 2007-2008, to explore an exit route.
Both Qayoom Najar and Majid Bisati, Shafis key lieutenants, are believed to have sought to survive by integrating their operations with those of the Lashkar-e-Taiba. However, the effort fell through because the Lashkar itself had haemorrhaged commanders in counter-terrorism operations targeting the group.
In the central Kashmir area, the Hizb has only one significantly active unit. Mushataq Ahmad, a one-time resident of Vorpach village near Ganderbal, leads a group of just three ethnic-Kashmiris and two Pakistani nationals. Nor are things much better for the Hizb in southern Kashmir. The organisations top bomb-making expert Pervez Ahmad Dar known by the code-name Pervez Musharraf executed a number of attacks on military convoys while serving as the Awantipora area commander. He has, however, been unable to stage a major operation in over a year. Shabbir Ahmad, named in police records as the perpetrator of the killings of at least three civilians before the recent Lok Sabha elections in Jammu and Kashmir, has done nothing since.
Mudassir Ahmad Shah, third major Hizb operative still active in the Awantipora area, too has had little success. Born at Gadikhal village near Awantipora, Shah came from a family with an Islamist tradition; his father, Abdul Ahad Shah was a Jamaat-e-Islami activist of long standing. Having joined the organisation while studying to become a dentist, police sources say, Shah trained as an improvised explosive device fabricator an enterprise which cost him an eye. He is alleged to have been responsible for a string of bombings in Srinagar and Banihal in 2006-2007. Shah, police say, left for Pakistan in 2007 before returning home in May 2008, but has done little since. Like his north Kashmir counterparts, his unit has been attempting to tap the operational resources of the Lashkar, but to no avail.
Perhaps the only significant-sized Hizb unit in southern Kashmir is the Kellar-based group of Fayyaz Pir, which is thought to have recruited at least 12 Shopian residents in recent weeks. Sangarwani-born Pir is thought to have joined the Hizb seven years ago, and stuck with the organisation even as its south Kashmir leadership was annihilated in a successful police-led campaign that began in 2006. Pirs new recruits, though, have received only rudimentary training in the Pir Panjal mountains, rather than formal military instruction at the Hizb camps in Pakistan. Like other groups, Pirs cell has been unable to stage a single significant attack.
Early in February, at a rally held by jihadist groups in Muzaffarabad, Hizb chief Mohammad Yusuf Shah widely known by the pseudonym Syed Salahuddin appeared to rule out an end to war.
Jihad will continue, the Urdu-language newspaper Roznamcha Jasarat reported him as saying, until the independence of Kashmir [from India]. He lashed out at the Pakistan government for proscribing the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammad both of which were represented at the rally. If there is a setback to the war [in Jammu and Kashmir] due to the cowardice of the [Pakistan] government, Shah said, then this war will need to be fought in Islamabad and Lahore.
Language like this, though, is at some distance from reality as is being experienced by the Hizbs several hundred-strong reserve in Muzaffarabad. Few have demonstrated any willingness to return home to swell the ranks of their depleted units within Jammu and Kashmir a reluctance also shared by Shahs key commanders.
Rashids story is instructive. Put to work as an apprentice shawl weaver after he dropped out of school in the eighth grade, Rashid found in the Hizbs jihad a romance and agency missing in his life. In 1998, suffering poor conditions at the Hizbs Jangal Mangal camp in Muzaffarabad and his religious nationalism stilled by years of watching comrades sent to death in an apparently-unwinnable campaign against Indian forces, he left the organisation. Living off a subsidy made available by the Pakistani authorities, he apprenticed with Muzaffarabad tailor Shakeel Ahmad Abbasi. Later, he married Abbasis sister. Having watched others make their way home to India, Rashids thoughts turned to returning to his land-owning family. Early this summer, Rashid paid a local travel agent Pakistani Rs. 4 lakh to arrange for passports, visas and tickets to Nepal.
Last year, responding to pressure from his war-weary rank and file, Shah ordered a ceasefire in October, the month of Ramzan. Later, he called for a solution in Jammu and Kashmir modelled on Northern Ireland a formulation that suggested that the organisation would be willing to disarm. Earlier, in August 2006, he offered to initiate a dialogue with New Delhi and a conditional ceasefire.
In recent weeks, though, Shahs language has been less conciliatory. Perhaps fearful that the APHCs political secessionists would exclude his organisation in a future dialogue, he lashed out at separatist leaders who were begging for talks with India. He also argued that Pakistans disinterest to highlight [the] Kashmir [issue] has disappointed and angered Kashmiris.
Shahs family embodies traditional middle-class aspirations not radical Islamism. His oldest son, Shahid Yusuf, works as teacher, and Javed Yusuf is an agricultural technologist. Shakeel Yusuf works as medical assistant in a government-run hospital. Wahid Yusuf, 24, graduated from the Government Medical College in Srinagar, where the familys contacts helped him obtain a seat under a quota controlled by the Jammu and Kashmir Governor. Momin Yusuf, the youngest of Shahs sons, is an engineer.
Even if Shah isnt willing to give his defeated army a chance to build the kind of lives he gave his sons, the Jammu and Kashmir government needs to find ways to give people like Rasheed a future.
How we turned a Cold War into a hot potato by Jawed Naqvi | PKColumns | Paksitani Columns, Urdu Columns, Pakistani editorials
Far too many innocent men, women and children have died and many more uprooted from their homes in the Kashmir tragedy since its emergence as a violent and volatile issue in 1947. Its essential history, however, is at variance with most contemporary narratives of India-Pakistan rivalry, brutal military occupation, rabid religious zealotry and an indigenous struggle to keep a moderate inclusive Islam as its nodal characteristic.
I have often wondered who among the Pakistani stakeholders in Kashmir is today more keen for an early solution to the dispute is it the army, which has its hands full with a raging insurgency in the northwest but may see advantages in getting even with India by establishing the centrality of the prickly discussion as a requirement to meet its vital international obligations of containing anti-west Muslim extremists elsewhere? Assuming and not conceding that Pakistan has its way in Kashmir, with or without overt international help, is it ready for the consequences of adding one more ethnic headache to its existing four or five? And are the Kashmiris going to be happy with an overstretched nation state which is already in a turbulent flux?
Or is it a strategic quest for the narrow-minded religious militant groups who see in the eclectic and primarily Sufi Kashmir a staging post for their wider jihad against India and against everybody who fits into their crosshairs, including, ironically enough, the current pro-west state of Pakistan. The world on its part doesnt seem to be excited about another Islamic state much less a religious nursery in this part of the world, and India will not allow what it considers to be its territories to be pared down to make itself more vulnerable than it is to Pakistan, China and assorted domestic and foreign insurgents. These are the elements of the regular narrative within which current discussions on Kashmir are staged and its many realistic and far-fetched solutions are posited by nation-states and well-heeled NGOs. Most of the contemporary elements in the Kashmir saga are completely new though and unrelated to the original colonial perfidy that drove its politics before the Cold War harnessed the dispute to American strategies in the region.
Rakesh Ankit, who studied history at Delhi and Oxford, has culled out enough recently declassified British government papers to reassemble a useful picture of Kashmirs emergence as a key plank in the geographical architecture conceived and planned by colonialism and handed over to the Cold War. 1948: The crucial year in the history of Jammu and Kashmir, published in the current issue of Economic and Political Weekly, could prove to be a seminal work as it seeks to guide us to the roots of the problem and its many lingering shadows from the past that may yet decide its future.
Initially, according to Ankit, the British didnt want the Kashmir conflict at all for two reasons. First, their military minds held that they needed both India and Pakistan to secure the peace, welfare and security from the Mediterranean to the China Sea and to confront the intrigue from Sinkiang and intervention from north with implications far beyond Kashmir. They now had to choose one of the two.
Second, they had been worried about the weakening strategic hold in Palestine and Greece, unhappy with the increasingly autonomous and assertive American involvement there without due regard to British interests, anxious about Egypt and Iraq and arguing for a pan-Islamic federation/Arab league to thwart Russia. Against this backdrop, the Kashmir conflict made them concerned about losing control of Pakistan as well.
Losing Pakistan was not an option for London, says Ankit. The British chief of staff (COS) had underlined this five times between May 1945 when Pakistan was but an idea of a few and July 1947, when it was about to be a reality for all. They had first reported to Winston Churchill that Britain must retain its military connection with India in view of the Soviet menace for India was a valuable base for force deployment, a transit point for air and sea communications, a large reserve of manpower. Moreover, it had air bases in the north-west (now in Pakistan) from which Britain could threaten Soviet military installations. They repeated to Clement Attlee the importance of these north-west airfields.
In July 1946, they identified the crucial arc from Turkey to Pakistan, in view of essential oil supplies, defence and communications requirements, with the Russian threat. In November 1946, they summed up that Western India (post-1947 Pakistan) with Karachi and Peshawar was strategically and ideologically crucial for British Commonwealth interests. Five weeks before Partition, the COS concluded:
The Foreign Office (FO) viewed the Kashmir conflict as a religious war which might be used by Russia as a pretext for intervening. It felt that the Russians tend to favour India as against Pakistan. Moreover, any initiatives had to keep in mind the present difficult position over Palestine which made any talks about HMG being unfair to Pakistan (over Kashmir) undesirable. It reminded the Muslim countries via its embassies: HMG might easily have handed over the whole of India to the Hindu majority. But they loyally protected the Muslim minority, even to the point of facilitating the creation of a separate independent Muslim state by going out of their way. This is what the Muslims themselves demanded. We have recognised Pakistan as a Dominion and have supported its admission to UNO. We would always come to Pakistans help.
As India and Pakistan battled for their claim on Kashmir, the British had their own axe to grind. When India got the Instrument of Accession, disputed by Pakistan as a confirmed fact, and Indian troops landed in Srinagar, Lawrence Graffety-Smith, the UK High Commissioner in Pakistan (1947-51), spoke for many when he sent this report to London two days after Kashmirs accession to India:
But the British were even-handed in their dealings with the new Dominions were they not? Heres how they did that. Philip Noel-Baker headed the Commonwealth relations Office (1947-50). He worried that
The newly released British papers certainly make the current diplomatic and military manoeuvres on Kashmir and other colonial era disputes stalking the region look tame by comparison. There is much to laud in Ankits effort in putting together an argument. And there is much to ponder in the new and dangerous direction all the unresolved issues are taking us. Its a shame that India and Pakistan, in the tradition of good old client states, continue to engage in a mindset that helps their foreign minders sow more discord between them. The Kashmiri people are the worst sufferers in this disastrous charade in which national servility on both sides passes for national interests.
jawednaqvi@gmail.com
Far too many innocent men, women and children have died and many more uprooted from their homes in the Kashmir tragedy since its emergence as a violent and volatile issue in 1947. Its essential history, however, is at variance with most contemporary narratives of India-Pakistan rivalry, brutal military occupation, rabid religious zealotry and an indigenous struggle to keep a moderate inclusive Islam as its nodal characteristic.
I have often wondered who among the Pakistani stakeholders in Kashmir is today more keen for an early solution to the dispute is it the army, which has its hands full with a raging insurgency in the northwest but may see advantages in getting even with India by establishing the centrality of the prickly discussion as a requirement to meet its vital international obligations of containing anti-west Muslim extremists elsewhere? Assuming and not conceding that Pakistan has its way in Kashmir, with or without overt international help, is it ready for the consequences of adding one more ethnic headache to its existing four or five? And are the Kashmiris going to be happy with an overstretched nation state which is already in a turbulent flux?
Or is it a strategic quest for the narrow-minded religious militant groups who see in the eclectic and primarily Sufi Kashmir a staging post for their wider jihad against India and against everybody who fits into their crosshairs, including, ironically enough, the current pro-west state of Pakistan. The world on its part doesnt seem to be excited about another Islamic state much less a religious nursery in this part of the world, and India will not allow what it considers to be its territories to be pared down to make itself more vulnerable than it is to Pakistan, China and assorted domestic and foreign insurgents. These are the elements of the regular narrative within which current discussions on Kashmir are staged and its many realistic and far-fetched solutions are posited by nation-states and well-heeled NGOs. Most of the contemporary elements in the Kashmir saga are completely new though and unrelated to the original colonial perfidy that drove its politics before the Cold War harnessed the dispute to American strategies in the region.
Rakesh Ankit, who studied history at Delhi and Oxford, has culled out enough recently declassified British government papers to reassemble a useful picture of Kashmirs emergence as a key plank in the geographical architecture conceived and planned by colonialism and handed over to the Cold War. 1948: The crucial year in the history of Jammu and Kashmir, published in the current issue of Economic and Political Weekly, could prove to be a seminal work as it seeks to guide us to the roots of the problem and its many lingering shadows from the past that may yet decide its future.
Initially, according to Ankit, the British didnt want the Kashmir conflict at all for two reasons. First, their military minds held that they needed both India and Pakistan to secure the peace, welfare and security from the Mediterranean to the China Sea and to confront the intrigue from Sinkiang and intervention from north with implications far beyond Kashmir. They now had to choose one of the two.
Second, they had been worried about the weakening strategic hold in Palestine and Greece, unhappy with the increasingly autonomous and assertive American involvement there without due regard to British interests, anxious about Egypt and Iraq and arguing for a pan-Islamic federation/Arab league to thwart Russia. Against this backdrop, the Kashmir conflict made them concerned about losing control of Pakistan as well.
Losing Pakistan was not an option for London, says Ankit. The British chief of staff (COS) had underlined this five times between May 1945 when Pakistan was but an idea of a few and July 1947, when it was about to be a reality for all. They had first reported to Winston Churchill that Britain must retain its military connection with India in view of the Soviet menace for India was a valuable base for force deployment, a transit point for air and sea communications, a large reserve of manpower. Moreover, it had air bases in the north-west (now in Pakistan) from which Britain could threaten Soviet military installations. They repeated to Clement Attlee the importance of these north-west airfields.
In July 1946, they identified the crucial arc from Turkey to Pakistan, in view of essential oil supplies, defence and communications requirements, with the Russian threat. In November 1946, they summed up that Western India (post-1947 Pakistan) with Karachi and Peshawar was strategically and ideologically crucial for British Commonwealth interests. Five weeks before Partition, the COS concluded:
The Foreign Office (FO) viewed the Kashmir conflict as a religious war which might be used by Russia as a pretext for intervening. It felt that the Russians tend to favour India as against Pakistan. Moreover, any initiatives had to keep in mind the present difficult position over Palestine which made any talks about HMG being unfair to Pakistan (over Kashmir) undesirable. It reminded the Muslim countries via its embassies: HMG might easily have handed over the whole of India to the Hindu majority. But they loyally protected the Muslim minority, even to the point of facilitating the creation of a separate independent Muslim state by going out of their way. This is what the Muslims themselves demanded. We have recognised Pakistan as a Dominion and have supported its admission to UNO. We would always come to Pakistans help.
As India and Pakistan battled for their claim on Kashmir, the British had their own axe to grind. When India got the Instrument of Accession, disputed by Pakistan as a confirmed fact, and Indian troops landed in Srinagar, Lawrence Graffety-Smith, the UK High Commissioner in Pakistan (1947-51), spoke for many when he sent this report to London two days after Kashmirs accession to India:
But the British were even-handed in their dealings with the new Dominions were they not? Heres how they did that. Philip Noel-Baker headed the Commonwealth relations Office (1947-50). He worried that
The newly released British papers certainly make the current diplomatic and military manoeuvres on Kashmir and other colonial era disputes stalking the region look tame by comparison. There is much to laud in Ankits effort in putting together an argument. And there is much to ponder in the new and dangerous direction all the unresolved issues are taking us. Its a shame that India and Pakistan, in the tradition of good old client states, continue to engage in a mindset that helps their foreign minders sow more discord between them. The Kashmiri people are the worst sufferers in this disastrous charade in which national servility on both sides passes for national interests.
jawednaqvi@gmail.com
The paper by Ankit. An interesting read and a good collection of declassified British Documents and the British 'thinking' at that time.
Great Britain, Cold War and Kashmir 1947–1949
Great Britain, Cold War and Kashmir 1947–1949
i am your fear
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i am your fear
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Inclusion is the way forward, for healing past wounds and for future prosperity. Everything should be done before Pakistan again feels tempted to intervene.
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Some obvious cases of family men quitting war, is not an indication of any sort of relentment in the desire for independence. Kashmiris want Kashmir minus India.
So much so that a few years back Hizb-ul-Mujahideen even had Hindus in its ranks, upto commander levels!
So much so that a few years back Hizb-ul-Mujahideen even had Hindus in its ranks, upto commander levels!
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