How Compellence Prolonged the India–Pakistan Kashmir Dispute

Introduction

The partition of British India into two independent nations in August 1947 was intended to create coexisting, peaceful homelands for Hindus and Sikhs in India and Muslims in Pakistan. Since that time, however, India and Pakistan have waged three shooting wars over the hotly disputed territory of Kashmir, with each nation claiming ownership. Today, an uneasy ceasefire exists along the Line of Control established following the first such war in 1947, but each side accuses the other of inciting new hostilities through armed provocative incursions into disputed regions of Kashmir. With both India and Pakistan possessing nuclear arsenals and inadequate, unpredictable command-and-control structures, it is reasonable to suggest that a conventional war between these two belligerents may not end as a conventional one.

Against this backdrop, determining why Kashmir has remained a major source of contention between these ideologically and religiously different neighbors represents a timely and valuable enterprise for policymakers. To this end, this paper presents a review of the relevant literature concerning the historic and recent uses of compellence by these two belligerents, and how these actions have only served to perpetuate the conflict rather than resolve it militarily or peacefully.

Background and Overview of the Kashmir Dispute

While the Demilitarized Zone separating South and North Korea along the 38th parallel continues to receive the majority of attention from policymakers in the United States, Kashmir remains the largest and most militarized disputed region in the world. Various sections of the territory are under the respective control of India — which administers portions of Kashmir and Jammu — and Pakistan — which controls the Northern Areas and Azad Kashmir — as well as the de facto administration of the Aksai Chin region by China. This unwieldy and seemingly untenable situation has been continuously exacerbated by armed hostilities prosecuted by both India and Pakistan, resulting in the first and second Indo-Pakistani wars in 1947 and 1965, and more recently in December 1971 when India responded to Pakistani air strikes against one of its airfields in the Western sector.

In international disputes it is axiomatic that every story has at least two sides, and that is certainly the case with the manner in which India and Pakistan have prosecuted their respective interests and claims over Kashmir for more than half a century. There are profoundly varying viewpoints regarding the Kashmir issue, driven by fundamental religious and ideological differences between Pakistan and India's competing claims. The fact that this heated dispute continues to mar relations between two nuclear powers and destabilize the entire Indian subcontinent suggests that neither side may view an end to hostilities as being in its best interests.

A resolution adopted by the nascent United Nations Security Council in January 1948 specifically called upon "the Government of India and the Government of Pakistan to take immediately all measures within their power (including public appeals to their people) calculated to improve the situation, and to refrain from making any statements and from doing or causing to be done or permitting any acts which might aggravate the situation." Notwithstanding this and subsequent UN resolutions mirroring these requests for forbearance, there have been hundreds of minor skirmishes, dozens of significant clashes, and three outright shooting wars over the years due to incursions by both India and Pakistan over the Kashmir problem.

Compellence by India: Pakistan's Perspective

In many ways, the dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir resembles a schoolyard fight between two children, with each side claiming the other struck first in order to justify its own subsequent compellence. Even the modern scholarship on these issues is shaped by each country's respective claims to the Kashmir territory. Two Pakistani researchers, Majid and Hussain (2016), argue that the Kashmiri people initially elected to become part of Pakistan as part of their right of self-determination, and cite India's recalcitrance as the source of today's conflict. In this regard, Majid and Hussain emphasize that "India's efforts to integrate Kashmir into [the] Indian Union did not succeed because the major Kashmiri leaders and parties resisted these efforts. The Kashmiris want that they should themselves decide about their political future, as committed to them by the UN Resolutions of 1948–49. Indian leadership uses force to crush this demand [which] has caused a perpetual conflict between the Indian authorities and the people of Kashmir." From this perspective, it is the continuing acts of compellence on the part of the Indian government that are responsible for the Kashmir problem.

Moreover, Majid and Hussain specifically charge the Indian government with ongoing acts of compellence carefully intended to provoke an armed response by Pakistan. According to them, "India has been using its security establishment to control Kashmir which often resulted in human rights violations in Kashmir. Indian actions are driven by the consideration of keeping Kashmir under its control irrespective of the human rights or other cost. The excessive use of security forces and state power by India has transformed the Kashmir Valley into a 'Human Tragedy.'" Other Pakistani scholars have similarly placed the blame squarely on the actions of the Indian government, with some going so far as to charge India with repeatedly misguiding and misinforming the international community about its compellence in Kashmir in ways that have prevented implementation of UN resolutions on self-determination for the Kashmiri people.

Khan and Mehmood (2018) point out that the UN is heavily influenced by Western powers — and by the United States and its allies in particular — and that these powerbrokers have been misled by the Indian government concerning its interests in Kashmir. Khan and Mehmood claim that "the international community has been miss-briefed by India that Kashmir is her internal problem," whereas Pakistan's position is that it is a matter of the right of self-determination of the Kashmiri people. Furthermore, Khan and Mehmood allege that the Indian government has consistently contradicted its own position by characterizing Kashmir as an "internal problem" even as Indian leaders have on various occasions acknowledged it as a dispute between both countries.

As noted above, China exercises direct influence over regions of Kashmir, and the territory's geographic proximity to the Russian Federation and other regional states suggests that the Kashmir problem is far more than a bipolar issue. Notwithstanding this consideration, Khan and Mehmood conclude that "unfortunately, because of [the] unsupportive and irresponsible policy of world powers, Kashmir is [the] longest unresolved issue on the agenda of the UN. But after the murder of Burhan Wani, mass human rights violations, and [the] China-Pakistan Economic Corridor — which passes through disputed Kashmir territory — the conflict has come to a limelight again."

By characterizing the death of Burhan Wani as a "murder," however, Khan and Mehmood are themselves engaging in the same type of one-sided rhetoric that they argue the Indian government employs to perpetuate rather than peacefully resolve the Kashmir problem. In reality, Burhan Wani was far more than an innocent bystander. Riwaz Wani (2016, no reported relation) advises that Burhan Wani was "the 22-year-old Hizb al-Mujahedin commander [who] called for a new attempt at jihad against India and held a powerful appeal for a young generation in Kashmir."

The incident occurred on July 8, 2016, when a joint operation by paramilitary and law enforcement authorities killed the highly popular Burhan Wani and two of his rebel associates. Reports of Wani's death quickly circulated via social media throughout the subcontinent — and especially in Kashmir. The reaction was immediate, intense, and widespread. During the ensuing mass protests in Kashmir and Pakistan, more than 4,000 security personnel and nearly as many civilians were killed and thousands more were injured, many severely. Since that time, photographs of Wani have widely circulated and have become the new symbol of "Kashmir's deepening alienation from India and a role model for young people for whom guns seem to be the only route to a better future." Against this backdrop, it might seem as though India alone is guilty of acts of compellence — but the Indian government paints a far different picture.

Conclusion

Given that the U.S. Revolutionary War was started by a single shot "heard 'round the world," the U.S. Civil War by a single cannonball, and World War I by a handgun, it is reasonable to conclude that a nuclear-fueled World War III could be ignited by someone simply throwing a rock across the border in Kashmir. The research showed that following the partition of British India in 1947, the independent states of India and Pakistan were created to provide homelands for Hindus and Sikhs in the former and Muslims in the latter. When the princely ruler of Kashmir acceded to India in late 1947 and India dispatched military forces to protect its newly acquired territories, the stage was set for another 71 years of violence that has recently intensified.

The research also showed that Pakistan characterizes India's presence in Kashmir as illegal and maintains that its efforts to help the Kashmiri people exercise their right of self-determination are fully justified. Conversely, the Indian government asserts that Kashmir is an integral part of India and that any Pakistani effort to reclaim territory is violative of India's sovereign national rights. Despite efforts by the United Nations and the international community to bring some sanity to bear on the Kashmir problem, the historical record is replete with examples of nations that have willingly marched off to war when they believed their cause was sufficiently just. In the final analysis, it is therefore reasonable to conclude that the international community ignores the situation in Kashmir at its peril, and that the effects of another all-out war between India and Pakistan would carry truly global implications.