Edward Gargan’s article “Where Violence Has Silenced Verse: The state of Kashmir is a Garden Lost to the Savagery of War” (Nov.22, 1992) was a moving and balanced contribution to the debate over the crisis in Kashmir. His piece truly evokes the real pain and terror suffered by the Kashmir people at the hands of a brutal Indian regime.
Gargan also notes correctly I believe that the Kashmiri peoples struggle is not a fundamentalist struggle. He writes: “Fundamentalism has few roots in Kashmir. The majority of Kashmiris simply want to call their territory their own.” The Kashmir crisis is a struggle over self-determination. All the Kashmiri people want is a national plebiscite to decide their final status as promised them by the international community through consecutive United Nations resolutions in 1948 and 1949.
Instead they suffer gross human rights violations at the hands of the Indian military. Gargan eloquently described several heart wrenching cases of these brutal atrocities and cited a report delivered last year by Asia Watch which “notes a widespread pattern of atrocities.”
It should be noted that in October 1992 Asia Watch returned to Kashmir to conduct a follow-up study of the human rights situation. As New York Times correspondent Barbara Crossett recently reported their soon-to-be-released paper found that the situation had in fact worsened nothing that “A new Indian Government drive…called Operation Tiger which began in August (1992)” had been launched. Operation Tiger she wrote “has resulted in the sexual abuse and murder of noncombatants and the widespread terrorizing of civilians.”
Amazingly when Gargan brought these atrocities to the attention Indias Lieutenant General Zaki his response was simply to say that on the whole the behavior of our personnel has been good.”
But India’s record has long been one of denial. In Kashmir India talks peace but wages war.
The question Gargans piece naturally brings to mind is: what can be done? I believe the United States has a clear role and vested interest in helping bring a peaceful resolution to the Kashmir crisis.
The humanitarian considerations alone are compelling. But Gargan touched briefly on another consideration which ought to give us pause. The Kashmir crisis he writes “has worsened tensions between India and Pakistan two would be nuclear powers both laying claim to the area.”
This point goes to the heart of the matter. India and Pakistan have already fought three wars in the past 40 years two of them over Kashmir. As tensions are now rising once again over Kashmir there is a real danger that another Indo-Pakistani war could erupt India and Pakistan are both widely believed to be nuclear powers today? Thus there is a significant danger that should another war crupt between them over Kashmir it could become the world’s first nuclear conflict.
This nuclear danger makes the Kashmir crisis more than just another bloody and intractable conflict in a faraway land. It is a conflict that left unresolved could blow up into a nuclear holocaust.
If the United States wants to avoid this deadly outcome and bring lasting peace to South Asia it must make resolving the Kashmir crisis a foreign policy priority. Just as we have used our diplomatic prestige to bring the parties in the Middle East to the peace table so too should we work to facilitate negotiations over Kashmir? And if they are to be successful such negotiations must include all the parties to the dispute Indian Pakistani and Kashmiri
A peaceful resolution of the conflict is what the Kashmiris want for their war ravaged country. Such are solution is essential if we want to diffuse the nuclear trip-wire which threatens South Asia with a deadly unthinkable war.
Dr.Ghulam Nabi Fai
Kashmiri-American Council
Article extracted from this publication >> December 18, 1992
