CIAO DATE: 12/05

Kashmir: From Persistence to Progress?

Abstract

Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) has been a continual bone of contention, the object of three wars and a theater of engagement in a fourth war, between the two countries. Since 1989, insurgency has consumed Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir (IJK), claiming at least 45,000 lives. All major attempts at resolution by the international community have failed, including those through the United Nations. With overt "nuclearization" by India and Pakistan in 1998, and with "jihadist" militants playing an increasingly prominent role in the insurgency since the mid-1990s, the Kashmir conflict also bears the marks of a distinctly twenty-first century security predicament.

The revitalized peace process between India and Pakistan has piqued hopes about the prospects of resolving the Kashmir conflict. A number of tangible developments have provided grounds for some optimism. India and Pakistan have sustained cooperation and maintained a November 2003-declared ceasefire along the Line of Control (LoC), re-opened cross-LoC transport links, and moved further than ever toward ending their longstanding and costly military standoff on the Siachen glacier in J&K. The most striking manifestation of this new cooperative spirit was the April 7, 2005, start of a regular bus service connecting IJK's summer capital, Srinagar, to the capital of Pakistan-administered Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), Muzaffarabad. The bus service embodied both a new spirit of compromise and new possibilities for reviving deeply meaningful social and commercial ties cut off by J&K's partition.

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