A nonviolence solution for Kashmir

Siswo Pramono, PhD Candidate, Australian National University, Canberra, s8851447@student.anu.edu.au

In South Asia, the traditional Cold War mechanism to prevent a nuclear exchange has become irrelevant. The decision to use nuclear weapons in the region will be made in Islamabad and New Delhi, not in Washington, Moscow, or Beijing. The armed conflicts in Kashmir have revealed another potential madness, mutually assured destruction. Kashmir, which is split into Indian- controlled and Pakistani-controlled territories, is now everybody's problem.

Russia and China, the traditional allies of India and Pakistan, failed to get Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to hold face-to-face talks at the Asian security conference in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The U.S., who, in the course of war on terror, just regained influence in South Asia has hardly pressed the warring parties to resume dialogs. The necessities of war on terror, however, likely complicates the issue of Kashmir.

India has been trying to put Kashmir and Sept. 11 into some kind of context. In three decades, India has lost 60,000 citizens to "terrorism" in Kashmir. Following the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi, India claims (as an effort to win support from the U.S. and the West) that Pakistan-controlled Kashmir harbors between 2,000 and 3,000 al-Qaeda militants. But Kashmir is not about terrorism.

Kashmir is an issue deeply rooted in the history and national identity of India and Pakistan since the traumatic partition in 1947. During the chaotic partition, the Hindu Maharaja of Kashmir handed over his territory to India while promising self- determination to his majority Muslim subjects. The self- determination has never taken place and instead, in the past 12 years, about 40,000 Kashmiris have died as a result of the power struggle between India and Pakistan.

For the Indian-born author Salman Rushdie, Kashmir is the victim of Indian and Pakistani domestic party-politics. Any time the weak Indian coalition government led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was about to lose a general election, it began to engineer war over Kashmir. Any time the weak Pakistan government was beset with economic bankruptcy and corruption charges, it used Kashmir as a magic word to turn public attention from the real domestic issues. Thus, for both governments, Kashmir is, and has always been, a ready vehicle to regain domestic popular support.

While a million Indian and Pakistani soldiers mass along the border of the two countries, the exchange of artillery fire in Kashmir has claimed the lives of many civilians. Yet, India and Pakistan argue that the present conflict will be "limited" in both its means and ends. The warring parties rule out the use of nuclear weapons and instead consider the military build-up as a strategic deterrence.

In theory, Herman Kahn, in his 1960 book, suggests three types of deterrence. The first is a deterrence against a direct attack, in which nuclear weapons are the backbone of this system. The second is a deterrence of extreme provocation, in which strategic air strike/defense assumes the central role. The third is a deterrence of moderate provocation which involves a limited action, military or non military, that renders the aggression unprofitable. At the present stage, according to India and Pakistan, the skirmish in Kashmir qualifies as the third type of deterrence. This theory, however, is not practical.

The traditional doctrine of war by Karl von Clausewitz (1874) dictates that war is an act of violence pushed to its utmost bounds; there is no limit to the use of force. Previous India- Pakistan wars were always limited at the beginning and then escalated at the end. Only God knows whether the artillery exchange in Kashmir, amid the confusion between the rhetoric of restraint and the expression of threat, would escalate to a horrific nuclear exchange.

A limited nuclear exchange would kill 2.6 million in India and 1.8 million in Pakistan. A full-scale nuclear exchange, since India has about 65 nuclear warheads and Pakistan about 40, would kill 12 million and injure 7 million. Then one could expect a massive environmental disaster in South Asia and beyond and the outflow of millions of refugees to South East Asia and Australia.

While denuclearization of South Asia is the best way to avoid such a horrific scenario, the solution of Kashmir problems is a key to prevent the nuclear holocaust. Scholars and strategists have suggested some options.

First, New Delhi and Islamabad must accept the existing Line of Control that now divides Kashmir as a new international border of India and Pakistan. This suggestion is practical for India and Pakistan but unjust for the Kashmiris.

Second, the Kashmiris must be given the right to self- determination as promised in 1947, with the possible option of independence. This suggestion is just for the Kashmiris, but unlikely acceptable to India and Pakistan.

Last but not least, India and Pakistan must simultaneously adopt a "hands off Kashmir" policy, in which Kashmir will became an autonomous region protected by a large international peace keeping forces. If this formula is acceptable to India, Pakistan, and the Kashmiris, a problem remains: who will provide the troops and funds for such an operation?

The point is that India, Pakistan, the Kashmiris, and the international community must be creative in finding a workable solution. In this very dangerous moment, those who remember Mohandas K. Gandhi will find the resonance of his wisdom that the quality of means determines the quality of ends. War, let alone a nuclear war, is the worst kind of means and will only attain the worst kind of ends. According to Gandhi, "mankind has to get out of violence only through non-violence". This Ahimsa (non- violence) principle needs to be repeated as long as there are men and women who disbelieve it.