Nonviolent needed to regain Kashmir

Randeep Ramesh, Guardian News Service, London

Among the many differences that separate India and Pakistan possibly the most divisive is that of language.

Not that the conversations on the streets of Karachi or Mumbai would be opaque to citizens of either country as India's Hindi and Pakistan's Urdu are mutually intelligible. Yet there is little understanding between the two countries, ensuring that the written histories and spoken truths of the pair now clash, not cohere.

This is being viscerally expressed in the ugly, nuclear-tipped rhetoric that the pair are now exchanging over the disputed mountains and valleys of Kashmir. India talks of "calling Pakistan's nuclear bluff" and of "decisive victory". Pakistan's military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, responds that Islamabad would "respond with full might" and has not discounted launching a nuclear attack if his country's survival is threatened.

That the nations came close to trading warheads in 1990 and again in 1999 and on both occasions that the cause was Kashmir has not slowed the spiral into war. Neither is heeding the warning that a nuclear detonation could see 12 million lives lost in a day and ensure both economies collapse within months.

With a million troops eyeballing each other, both sides are now armed and dangerous. Both are talking up war. Each casts the other as the aggressor. India claims Pakistan-backed terrorists attacked its parliament last December and launched murderous assaults last week on its army across the de facto border, the Line of Control, that splits Kashmir into Indian- and Pakistani- occupied territories. Islamabad, conscious of the war against terrorism, says it only offers moral support to freedom fighters.

Both are engaged in a propaganda battle -- each emphasizing that the other is a liability not an asset to the international community. India's case has been dented by the worst communal riots in a decade -- sparked by the killing of Hindus but ending in the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat.

But it is Pakistan's Gen. Musharraf who is in danger of being cast again as a pariah after successfully partnering the U.S. His claims of a crackdown on militancy have fallen short of international expectations -- more than half of the jihadis arrested in January have been released.

Worryingly, there are an estimated 200,000 armed militants in Pakistan. Sectarian attacks have seen Pakistani blood spilled and Islamic terrorism within its borders has claimed the lives of a church congregation of diplomats, a U.S. journalist and French engineers. Even Gen. Musharraf's attempt to build a democracy has run into the sand. The referendum to endorse his presidency was criticized as flawed and bodes ill for his promised parliamentary elections in October, as does the his speech last month decrying the notion of "power sharing".

What is most distressing in all this is the lack of concern for the Kashmiri people, on whose behalf the violence is supposed to be taking place. On the Indian side, the numerous human rights abuses and virtual occupation of the state by the Indian army has all but exhausted the goodwill of the Kashmiri people. Pakistan, too, is losing friends in the state, not least by hijacking the aims of the separatist movement and because of suspicions that it had a hand in the assassination of a moderate leader.

Years of misrule have contributed to ill-feeling on both sides of the Line of Control. Although Kashmir dominates the political landscape of India and Pakistan, it appears a paradise lost to both of them. What is needed is a peace process, such as that outlined in a recent paper by the International Center for Peace Initiatives in Mumbai Reshaping the Agenda in Kashmir by Sundeep Waslekar and Ilmas Futehally. It suggests all the parties agree to renounce violence, to talks between parties representing all the peoples of Kashmir, to compromise, negotiated settlement and demilitarization.

No options -- including a carve-up of the state, autonomy, joint sovereignty or independence -- should be ruled out. This would mean Kashmiris from the Muslim Sunni, Shia and Sufi sects as well as the state's minority religions, Hinduism and Buddhism, sitting down with Pakistanis and Indians to talk. There would need to be a process of reconciliation and reconstruction and a fostering of mutual trust.

This would go far beyond the present day Track II talks between Pakistanis, Kashmiris and Indians, which are today submerged by the battle language in which politicians indulge. Pakistan would have to accept that the UN resolutions, passed in the 1940s and which only allow accession of Kashmir to either Delhi or Islamabad, are redundant. India must be ready to grant high-profile third-party mediation to prevent the peace stalling.

Lessons could also be learned from other seemingly intractable hotspots. Once the British and Irish governments stepped back and became arbiters, treating Ulster as a conflict between communities, steps could be taken towards peace in Northern Ireland. The idea of Pakistan giving up claims on Indian- controlled Kashmir and India doing the same for the Pakistani side seem far-fetched but they are necessary for conflict resolution -- and compromises by Jordan over the West Bank and Egypt over the Gaza Strip cleared the way for talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

Despite the faltering progress in both Northern Ireland and the Middle East, the conversation is now about whether the peace can continue, not whether war will begin. Given that the portion of Kashmir which is contested, the Valley, amounts to just a quarter of a percent of India and Pakistan's economy, land mass and population it is absurd that both countries are prepared to risk nuclear war over it. Instead of resorting to arms, Pakistan and India must begin to draft a new future on a blank page for Kashmir. This will mean all parties have to agree to start a story without knowing how or when it will end but in replacing weapons with words, the two will also find a common, acceptable language.