Posted by NEWS on 12/8/2004, 22:10:45 India and Pakistan International Herald Tribune NEW YORK Few conflicts in the world arouse as many suspicions or passions as the dispute over Kashmir, which has brought India and Pakistan to war three times. Resolving the conflict, however, should remain primarily about saving Kashmir's people from the wrath of extremists. Larger regional goals - diffusing a tangible nuclear threat or reinvigorating shattered economies and dysfunctional polities in Pakistan and Afghanistan - will be achieved as a result. .Kashmir's people are caught between Islamabad's military insecurity and the arrogance that leads New Delhi's civil authority to rule over a Muslim population against its will. Kashmiris have been given little say in determining their future, or even the present course of their daily lives. India and Pakistan need to make the Kashmiri people the centerpiece of efforts to settle the dispute, and to acknowledge their fundamental human right to determine their own destiny. .More than 60,000 civilians have been murdered and raped during two decades of Islamist insurgency and paramilitary counterattacks. Indian and Pakistani leaders have tried to start peace negotiations three times, only to fall back on the same old arguments - as they did again in the most recently completed round of talks - about whether Kashmir should top the agenda (Pakistan's hardened stance), or whether everything else that ails the India-Pakistan relationship should be put on the table first (India wants incremental progress on physical property issues like the Siachen Glacier before getting to the issue of Kashmir's people). .Such stubbornness, driven by suspicion and mistrust, cannot produce a viable framework for safeguarding the interests of Kashmir's people. President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India must bear this in mind during the round of negotiations that started this week. .India's electoral transition this year forced a pause after what were perhaps the most promising signs of peace since partition in 1947. Musharraf and former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, who boldly framed India's first meaningful effort at peace in 2000 in the name of insaniyat (humanity), had developed an earnest, if grudging, respect for each other. .Hyped-up intelligence assessments that were once the root cause of suspicion and wartime readiness had been replaced by unprecedented cooperation between New Delhi and Islamabad. India's intelligence chief, C. D. Sahay, went so far as to provide early warnings to his Pakistani counterpart, General Ehsan ul-Haq, about an assassination attempt against Musharraf by Islamist militants earlier this year. .With India's shift to the left, its new leaders need to rekindle the spirit of trust and cooperation with Pakistan that was already prevailing at the political level and beginning to blossom at an intelligence level before the Congress Party took over. Musharraf had taken bold steps toward peace, but he has now wrongly begun reversing them. Terrorist training camps in Pakistan and Kashmir are being allowed to reopen. Cross-border incursions - the primary bone of contention for India - are increasing again. .The framework for sustainable peace talks is straightforward. The centerpiece should be a meaningful effort over many years to empower Kashmiris, on both sides of the Line of Control, politically and economically so that any conciliatory political gestures by India or Pakistan would be seen as benefiting the very people they claim to want to represent. .This is particularly important for Pakistan because Musharraf could then tell his generals and jihadists that it was their steadfast support for the people of Kashmir that enabled them to negotiate a self-determined solution with New Delhi. Both antagonists could then slip out of the conflict, reputations intact, under the cover of Kashmiri self-rule. .For its part, New Delhi should return to its doctrine of empowering people. Perhaps Indian-ruled Kashmiris would not be so desperate to leave India politically if they could reap the dividends of New Delhi's oft-stated support for their political and human rights. Transferring power transfers responsibility, which in turn builds the framework for good governance. .India and Pakistan have a compelling moral responsibility to restore Kashmiris' livelihoods and culture. Agreements on issues such as how to demilitarize the world's highest and coldest battlefield at Siachen are admirable steps forward - but not a substitute for putting Kashmir's embattled residents first in constructing a durable peace. .Mansoor Ijaz, chairman of Crescent Investment Management in New York, was joint author of the blueprint for the July 2000 cease-fire by Muslim militants in Indian-governed Kashmir.
TO BRING PEACE, FOCUS ON KASHMIR's PEOPLE
by Mansoor Ijaz
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