| 11 November 2004 | Thursday | 27 Ramazan 1425 |
Many faces of Arafat
The vote that did not work
Remembering Lushun battle
Kashmir: options and strategies
It is understandable if the price of an essential item rises because it happens to be in short supply or that its demand has suddenly or excessively gone up. But what is not understandable is that when a commodity is in abundance and its export demands forbiddingly large subsidies, its price should abruptly fall instead of rising. But that is what has happened in case of sugar.
Owing to its abundance the sugar mills have postponed the start of crushing season to November 21, a month later. And yet the price of sugar went up by Rs. 2 per kilo to Rs. 24 in the open market in Karachi due to price manipulation or the success of sugar cartels in pushing up prices. That was the Ramazan syndrome as well for the traders. Rightly or wrongly, the prices should be pushed up; if there is no shortage one should be created.
The Economic Coordination Committee of the Cabinet reacted promptly and ordered the Trading Corporation of Pakistan to release 50,000 tonnes from stocks, including 20,000 tonnes for Karachi. Now the utility stores talk of selling sugar at Rs. 20 per kilo. They may have enough sugar, but there are not enough utility stores in the city or the country.
Of course, as usual the sugar mill owners are blaming the wholesalers, stockists and the retailers while retailers are blaming the sugar mill owners and stockists. It is a truly exploitative system that we have, and Ramazan is the best season for over-pricing eatables. In fact, judging by the glossy advertisement the austere month of abstinence has become a "Ramazan festival" where the affluent should have their Iftari and Sehri at swanky restaurants with foreign brand names.
On the government's part, in an effort to increase the supply of food items the ECC has not only banned export of Urea but also decided to import it at a heavy subsidy. The imported urea will be sold at Rs. 450 for 40 kg which could mean a subsidy of Rs. 700. The TCP now says that as a result of such subsidy it has incurred a staggering deficit of Rs. 10 billion which the government has to make up quick before it could bear more such burdens in these difficult economic times.
In such an environment it is proper that the Supreme Court has banned serving of meals at wedding ceremonies and several other related functions. The richer the family the larger the number of such functions, and the more lavish and wasteful the menu. Meals can be served only for the family members and within the home premises. These cannot be served at wedding functions at hotels, clubs and other plush premises. The middle class families cannot block the roads by setting up large Shamianas and disrupting the traffic.
In fact, the wedding functions have become more and more lavish as foreign bands and dancing groups from abroad are hired at a high cost. A new tribe of event managers has also sprung up to organize such functions.
Gone is the Punjab government's decision of serving one dish for 300 guests. Now the old federal ordinance of 2000 has been reactivated. Still one question arises. Can a family set up several shamianas in their large compound and entertain any number of guests, arguing they are members of the larger family? If that is practised that will be a violation of the spirit of the new judgment emphasizing austerity and banishing ostentation. The rules which the government may make to implement the new judgment must take care of that.
The fact is that some wedding ceremonies have become so extravagant that invites receive not an invitation card but a whole invitation booklet of eight to ten pages. And yet the marriages break down in weeks, if not within days.
The judgment described several of the additional ceremonies accompanying the wedding as non-Islamic and acquired from Hindu culture. It says that display of dowries which is copied by the low-income families as well is crushing the poor. In parts of Punjab the groom has to produce 20 tolas of gold before he can claim his bride. In these days of high gold prices, it is a nerve-shattering demand.
The Supreme Court wants the government and society to popularise wedding ceremonies in mosques. If the western couples can take pride in solemnizing their weddings in churches, and even princes and princesses go there for this purpose, Muslims can also perform these ceremonies in mosques so that the poor and the middle class families spend far less on the marriages. It is essential to forbid lavish illuminations at weddings, and for several days together, in a country where shortage of power and power breakdowns are too common.
Similarly, after a number of persons have died and far more have been injured in the course of shootings at wedding parties, the ban on shootings at weddings should be enforced rigidly. One couple's joy should not be the cause of tragedy for others. And yet the ban continues to be violated even on occasions when policemen get married.
In a country in which unemployment suicides, terrorism and large scale crimes are common, the rich should not be allowed to revel in display of their wealth at weddings and hold up the traffic of their areas.On one side we have such weddings and on the other side girls and boys who fall in love and get married without the approval of one or more parents are murdered in cold blood. Even when the marriages are within their own families such couples could be murdered in the name of karo kari. And it remains to be seen how effective is the new federal law banning such cold blooded murders.
The supporters of women who are appalled by such crimes are far from satisfied with the new law with two many loopholes which can negate the law. The problem in Pakistan, as in many other developing countries, is each family has too many children. And the parents get them married early, particularly in the rural areas. Dowry and expensive wedding ceremonies in each case places heavy burden on the family.
They have to borrow heavily for that purpose at high interest rates. In the rural areas that could mean 100 per cent interest, and the family ending up as bonded labour. Because of the dowry system many of the fathers in rural areas sell their daughter even at an early age. Female children within families are often neglected and ill-cared. As a result if we have a male population of 77.38 million, female population is 71.65 million - a gap of 5.73 million.
India's Nobel-Prize winning economist Amartya Sen some years ago startled India by talking of the missing 30 million Indians - its women. They have been lost through the same process of neglect which the girls in poor families in Pakistan suffer and vanish from our census figures. Now instead of letting them die due to undernourishment, some fathers sell off their daughters early to old men.
The Supreme Court says the rich should give up their spendthrift ways in marriages as the poor try to imitate the rich and come to grief. And thereafter some of the members of the poor families vengefully turn to dacoity and try to rectify the balance partially. The policemen, too, profit in the process as they get their cut.
The VVIPs in this country are partially responsible for popularizing lavish weddings. When they attend such functions these become even more lavish and are widely publicised. Photographs appear in newspapers and magazines showing them attending such functions regardless of how dubious is the source of the host's income.
The chicken industry will be hit by the Supreme Court verdict. The earlier chief justice wanted to give a decision in favour of the industry; but did not sign the verdict before his retirement. So the earlier federal ordinance stays restored. But weddings without meals have been there for long until the Punjab law. Wedding halls will also be affected and they are in large numbers.
This is a country in which domestic savings are very low compared to other countries in the region. It went up from 13.3 per cent in the fiscal year 2001 to 14.8 per cent and ten to 16.9 per cent in FY 2003 and dropped to 13 per cent lest year. This is the period of consumer credit from banks for the rich and many tend to live on tomorrow's earnings.
This is a country marked for its high rural indebtedness with its crippling interest rate. Everything possible has to be done to reduce that, particularly if the debt is incurred in a wasteful manner. We have to move more and more towards a rational social order until we are clearly out of the poverty trip and free of the increasing unemployment suicides and karo kari murders, and the vanishing over a thousand children a year.
Many faces of Arafat
How will history remember Yasser Arafat? The options are seemingly endless: freedom-fighter, terrorist, visionary peacemaker, peace-destroyer, corrupt chairman of the Palestinian Authority, embattled president living under Israeli siege.... Yasser Arafat has many faces. Which one will enter the history books?
The controversy and contradictions that made up the life of Yasser Arafat are on ample display in his dying days. Hanging between this world and the next, a multitude of issues and conflicts rage around him. Conflict between his widow and the rest of the Palestinian leadership, power tussles between different Palestinian leaders and factions, the row over where Arafat should be buried and over his alleged fortunes. These are alongside more fundamental differences over whether his death should be mourned or merely ignored, and over the kind of tributes that should be paid to him.
There are many who will mourn the Palestinian leader, especially among the older generation who can still remember his courage in fighting the Israelis and, more significant, the manner in which he turned a disparate group of refugees into a national movement demanding their own state, and having that national identity and demand recognized by the international community. Nothing Arafat did since can detract from the enormity of that contribution to the Palestinian cause. Without it 'Palestine' would have long ago slipped from the international lexicon.
For others, notably the Jordanian and Lebanese who hosted the PLO in its exile years, memories of the Palestinian leader will be less fond. Lebanon in particular paid a heavy price for its hospitality. While one could argue that prime blame rests with the Israeli government which waged an illegal war and occupation of that country for so many years, at least some must be shouldered by Arafat.
On the Palestinian side, those of a younger generation do not remember Arafat's time as PLO leader: their memories of him are as architect of the Oslo Accords that promised so much, and head of the subsequent Palestinian Authority that delivered so little. In his famous speech at the UN in 1974, Arafat had told the international community that he had a gun in one hand and an olive branch in the other. "Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand", was his impassioned plea (and warning).In 1993, Arafat dropped his gun: he recognized Israel and agreed on a process that was supposed to lead to Jewish and Arab states existing side by side. That, by any standards, was a remarkable transformation.
Ask why the Oslo Accords failed, and Palestinians of a moderate bent will answer because of Israeli aggression; those of a more radical, Islamist bent will blame fundamental design flaws - agreeing to an Israeli state and expecting to reach a permanent settlement with Israel was always wrong.
Israelis will of course blame Arafat - for failing to rein in the 'terrorists'. Among Americans, some will concede that Benjamin Netanyahu did much to undermine Oslo, but they will also point to Camp David and the opportunity Arafat had there to secure a state for his people: an opportunity they blame him for rejecting.
Was Arafat wrong at Camp David? Should he have done a deal with Ehud Barak that would have given him a state - but without Jerusalem as its capital - and that would have lost Palestinian refugees the right of return?
Judge Arafat on principle, and no, he should not have agreed. Jerusalem and the right of return are fundamental Palestinian rights that no one can take away. But judge Arafat on pragmatism, on what the Palestinians can realistically hope to achieve, and perhaps he should have agreed. The depressing reality for Palestinians is that, with every rejected deal, their options - what is put before them on the table - gets smaller and smaller. Arafat rejected an imperfect deal in 2000: today not only is there no deal on offer, there are no negotiations either. Ariel Sharon, sitting in Tel Aviv, is calling all the shots.
There can be debate about Arafat's actions at Camp David, but there can be none about the way he has run the Palestinian Authority - or the way he has generally led the Palestinian cause. Good leadership is about more than making inspiring speeches. Good leadership is about delivery: giving people what they want. As Chairman of the Palestinian Authority Arafat should have given the Palestinians an efficient, honest administration that met their needs - for municipal services, education, health care. But he couldn't.
One of the biggest factors in the growing following of Hamas, especially in Gaza, is that the organization's responsiveness to Palestinian needs. The need to vent out their anger and strike back against Israel (through suicide bombings and other attacks) but more than that, their need for basic services like water, medicines, schools. Hamas is catering to those basic needs.
The relationship between Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, and militant Islamist groups like Hamas, is another source of controversy. Israel and America blame Arafat for failing to rein in the Islamists, to end the suicide bombings. Ariel Sharon used that 'failure' as an excuse to break off all dialogue with the Palestinian people. Two arguments - or rather, questions - can be put forward in Arafat's defence.
One, did he actually have the capacity to stop the bombers of Hamas and Islamic jihad? [For at least part of his time as head of the Palestinian Authority, he did try.] Two, looking at the situation from a wider perspective, should the leader of the Palestinian government be hunting down fellow Palestinians to satisfy the demands of Israel?
Because Yasser Arafat never allowed other Palestinian leaders to come to the fore, because he never allowed the institutions and institutional processes to develop that would have promoted democracy but taken supreme power and decision-making out of his hands. Arafat was a self-centred. Tomorrow, God forbid, if the Palestinian movement implodes in a bitter and bloody power struggle, Arafat will be responsible.
Look at the handful (in relative terms) of people holding vigil outside Arafat's hospital, and the even fewer who saw him off from the muqataba. His diminished stature in the eyes of the Palestinian people is clear. They will not be indifferent to the passing of Abu Ammar. Had it not been for Arafat's three-year incarceration in Ramallah by arch-enemy Ariel Sharon - something that did much to revive Palestinian feeling for Arafat - his passing would be even less mourned.
The rise and fall of Arafat's popularity throughout his long career is ironic: he went from being a man adored by his people, to one lauded by the international community, to - in his final years - a man repudiated by both. History will indeed have a tough time judging Yasser Arafat.
The vote that did not work
Over 1,000 American (and God knows how many Iraqi) deaths in Iraq, fallacious justifications for the US-led invasion, insurgencies, and all the Michael Moors and the George Soroses of the country could not convince a jittery American electorate to vote against Bush.
The American people, in a decision at odds with prevailing opinion in the rest of the world, gave George W. Bush four more years in the White House. Bush returns to the White House with bigger majorities in the Senate and the House of Representatives. In the final analysis, the pro-Bush voter prevailed over the anti-Bush element.
For the Muslims in the US, and the Muslim world at large, this election painfully exposed the myth of a Muslim bloc vote. To me, a bloc vote is an oxymoron - and goes against the very spirit of democracy. We never hear of a Jewish bloc vote or a Hindu bloc vote or a Mormon bloc vote in any election, federal or local. Organizations do offer endorsements, but they keep them at that and do not claim to speak for entire communities.
A few people, aspiring to be leaders, but with no credentials as established leaders, cannot impose their will - in the name of democracy - on such a large group as divers as the American Muslim community that consists of people from 80 countries and comprises even more ethnic groups. Nobody knows the exact number of the Muslims in the US and the composition of the bloc vote. A figure of seven million US Muslims have been circulating in the media for the last eight years. This is the time for some serious soul-searching.
The so-called qualified endorsement by 10 Muslim organizations was never publicly acknowledged at any level of the Kerry-Edwards campaign. It surely angered the Republicans; but the Democrats weren't too happy either.
To make matters worse, a Muslim civil rights organization, the Council of American Islamic Relations, widely circulated the results of its exit poll before the polls closed on November 2. According to CAIR's exit poll, 93 per cent of the Muslim voters cast their votes for John Kerry.
Now, we can draw only two conclusions from the outcome of the elections and the brouhaha preceding the elections. Either Muslims did not follow the bloc vote advice issued by the American Muslim Task Force (AMT) or the Muslim vote did not matter at all in the presidential race or any congressional and senatorial races.
If we believe - at the risk of our vote being irrelevant in future elections - in CAIR's exit polls, the latter scenario is more likely that the Muslims did not really make a difference. Most of our detractors would prefer to spread the latter view. However, I believe that CAIR's exit poll does not reflect the reality. Muslims voted in large numbers, but they did not vote as a bloc. The majority may have voted for Mr Kerry, but quite a large number voted on the party lines. This means that the Muslim vote will remain effective within the respective parties, and with time, influence the party platforms.
The American Muslim community is a relatively new kid on the political block. Its struggling organizations, fledgling leaderships, and a near complete absence of political institutions, do not allow it the luxury of high profile political endorsements, which are risky and a double-edged sword. The 9/11 attacks dealt a serious blow to Muslim politics in the US, the failure of the bloc vote politics will effectively cut us off from mainstream US politics.
The write is executive director of the Pakistani American Liaison Centre, which operates the Pakistan Caucus in the US Congress.
Remembering Lushun battle
Remember history lest we are fated to repeat it. Exactly 100 years ago, October 1904, Russia and Japan were locked in ferocious land and sea battles for control of the strategic harbour of Lushun on the Yellow Sea, then known by its Russian name, Port Arthur.
I was the first foreigner allowed into Lushun, a top-secret Chinese naval base whose missile-armed destroyers and submarines defend the maritime approaches to Beijing and industrial Manchuria.
My purpose: to commemorate the incredible valour and ferocity of the forgotten 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War, the 20th century's first great conflict.
In 1900, the imperial powers were raping helpless China. Russia and Japan both coveted Manchuria, a vast, resource-rich area in China's far north. Four years later, their ambitions collided at Russian-ruled Port Arthur, a magnificent, deepwater harbour sheltered from typhoons, and ice-free year round.
The Imperial Japanese Navy opened the war in February. 1904, by a surprise attack against Russia's Pacific Squadron at Port Arthur. Japan used the same tactic in its 1894 war with China, and would do so a third time against the US in 1941 at Pearl Harbour.
The Japanese fleet blockaded the Russian squadron in Port Arthur. A Japanese corps under venerable samurai general, Yasusuke Nogi, landed and quickly invested Port Arthur, which was defended by 47,000 Russian troops, Cossacks, and sailors.
Three other Japanese corps landed in Korea, crossed the Yalu river, and attacked the 150,000 Russian troops in Manchuria.
The siege of Port Arthur opened in September with heavy Japanese attacks on the strong northeastern forts guarding the road and rail line into the port. These modern concrete forts - Ehrlung shan, Chikuan shan, Sungsu shan - resisted all attacks, thanks to valiant resistance by Russia's Siberian troops and to new weapons that made their world debut at Port Arthur.
These included 18-20 feet deep belts of dense, interlaced barbed wire, covered by Maxim machine guns and quick-fire fields guns, which protected the Russian forts and trench lines connecting them; powerful searchlights and star shells; hand grenades that were widely used for the first time; even attempts to use poison gas.
All these new weapons played lethal roles 10 years later in World War I. Like the Great War's French and British generals, Japan's commanders at Port Arthur did not understand the murderous power of modern weapons against massed infantry and paid the price in frightful losses.
The Russian commander, General Stoessel, was an incompetent defeatist. Russia's ablest general, Kuropatkin, was killed by a Japanese shell. The most aggressive Russian admiral, Makaroff, sortied out to attack Adm. Togo's blockading Japanese fleet. His flagship, battleship "Petropavlosk," hit a mine and sank.
Unable to take the northeastern forts, General Nogi turned his attention to fortress' western side, dominated by the 203 meter hill. Nogi belatedly understood that this hill, which overlooked the harbour, held the key to victory.
The battle for the steep 203-metre hill - up to 40 degree inclination - was one of the most murderous dramas of the bloody siege. I had trouble just climbing it. Japanese human wave attacks charged up the hill, led by special volunteer units called "ketshitai." Their orders: "do not expect to return alive." Some of the Japanese samurai officers leading the attacks had actually fought decades earlier in full armour, with swords.
Russian Siberian riflemen fought with equal valour, mowing down the attackers with machine guns, and grenades. The hillside was three or four deep in bodies. Eleven-inch Japanese siege guns relentlessly pounded the 203mm hill and the northeastern forts.
Desperate to relieve Port Arthur, Tsar Nicolas II ordered the Russian Baltic Fleet under Admiral. Rozhestvensky, based in St Petersburg and Krondstadt, to steam three quarters of the way around the globe to succor the beleaguered fortress.
On December 5, 1904, the Japanse 7th Division finally took the 203 metre hill. Ten thousand Japanese and 5,000 Russian died there. Japanese artillery spotters on 203 quickly began raining heavy shells on the trapped Russian fleet in the harbour, four to six kms distant, sending battleships and cruisers to the bottom.
General Nogi renewed attempts to storm the three key northeastern forts. Round the clock Japanese assaults were repulsed by fierce hand-to-hand combat on the fort's ruined parapets and in their rubble-filled moats and shattered casemates. The defenders used bayonets, knives, rocks, and burning oil.
The Japanese then resorted to the mediaeval tactic of mining under the fort's walls and defensive galleries protecting the moats. The Russians counter-mined. An underground war ensured, fought with spades and pistols. Finally, the Japanese managed to detonate huge mines containing 2.5 tons of dynamite under the main forts, blowing their forward walls and defenders to bits.
Erhlung fort dissolved into rubble. Chikuan shan's heroic Russian defenders fought to the last man. These bitter siege operations eerily presaged the murderous battles for Verdun's forts in 1916, and Canadian mining operations in 1917 at Vimy against German fortified positions.
Port Arthur had become, said a Russian journalist, "a living hell." Only 5,000 Russians were still under arms; 15,000 lay sick or wounded. On January 3, 1905, the garrison surrendered. Four battleships, two cruisers, and fourteen gunboats fell to the Japanese, whose total casualties reached 90,000.
Rozhestvensky's Baltic Fleet arrived too late to save Port Arthur. The Russian admiral headed for Vladivostok by steaming due north through the narrow Tsushima Strait between Japan and Korea.
Admiral Togo on his flagship "Miyaka", was waiting. In one of history's greatest naval battles, Togo sprang from ambush, crossed the Russian T, and destroyed the entire Russian fleet. I was able to sail over much of the area of this great naval action.
Disaster was complete. In a geopolitical earthquake, a European power was defeated for the first time by "inferior" Asians. Triumphant Japan longed for more military glory. A month after Tsushima, uprisings erupted across Russia that lit the fuse of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.
When Japan's emperor Meiji died in 1917, loyal samurai retainer, General Nogi, committed ritual suicide, or "seppuku" to join his master.-Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2004
Kashmir: options and strategies
President Musharraf's call to move away from the past and seek new pathways to peace to resolve the Kashmir conflict merits serious consideration both at home and by the Indians. Apparently, he has been encouraged by his interaction with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New York and is willing to take bold initiatives to break the logjam and cut across bureaucratic channels and diplomatic niceties.
Islamabad's preference for an early solution of the conflict is understandable. The festering problem of Kashmir has caused immeasurable suffering to the people of the state. It has been the cause of two wars and a major conflict in Kargil between India and Pakistan and continues to bedevil their relations despite the recent progress in the peace process.
In Pakistan the Kashmir "fallout" has encouraged forces of militancy and radicalism and impeded efforts towards political stability and economic development. For India too the consequences have been no less grim, although its larger size and resources do mask the real picture.
Gross human rights abuses by its security forces to hold Kashmir down detract from the democratic and secular character of India. Furthermore, Kashmir remains a serious barrier to actualization of India's economic potential and undermines its political standing at the regional and global levels.
In fact, Kashmir casts a long shadow over the entire region by distorting priorities of the two major countries in terms of development and fighting poverty to diverting resources on defence. Another aspect is countering each other's influence internationally. It is therefore prudent that as India and Pakistan enter the second and more substantive round of talks, they seriously examine the various options on Kashmir, whether they relate to the plebiscite in, or partition of, the state or the different variants of each.
It may also be desirable to move away from some of the traditional approaches and start looking at the Kashmir conflict as a human rather than a territorial issue. In any event, an attempt to impose a one-sided agenda by any of the three parties to the dispute - India, Pakistan and the people of Kashmir - should be avoided at all costs as it is bound to fail.
New Delhi, for political expediency, has from the very beginning opposed the plebiscite idea, but in the last five decades this option has genuinely been overtaken by events and for all practical purposes considered a redundant idea. Even UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, remarked four year ago that the UNSC resolutions on Kashmir were no more implementable.
Unfortunately, the major powers are more interested in conflict management of the Kashmir issue rather than its resolution. The United States and the world at large are too preoccupied with fighting terrorism that securing support for the cause of Kashmir is difficult. Moreover, from their perspective lines between freedom struggle and terrorism have blurred and Islamic militancy remains an anathema. Domestically, Pakistan is facing a serious challenge of religious extremism and bigotry and support to Kashmir militants further aggravates the problem, which it can ignore only at its peril.
India, because of its larger size, resources and democratic credentials, carries more clout with the international community and is in a position to ignore the adverse foreign reaction to its gross human rights violations in Kashmir. In these circumstances Islamabad's policy to stop supporting militancy and seeking a political solution of the Kashmir problem by engaging with India and the people of Kashmir is prudent.
It is common knowledge that Jammu and Kashmir is a polyglot and ethnically and geographically a diverse entity but was held together as a part of a princely state for over a hundred years. Grasping these complexities, UN special representative Sir Owen Dixon, as far back as in the 1950s, suggested a regional plebiscite in preference to a state-wide process so that at least the winner-takes-all possibility is eliminated.
This too was rejected by India. With New Delhi categorically opposed to any form of plebiscite and Islamabad periodically invoking the sanctity of the Security Council resolutions, it is only logical to move beyond these positions and explore new options.
India's desire to maintain the status quo and its apparent willingness to go along with a solution on Kashmir by converting the LoC into an international border is unacceptable to Pakistan and to most Kashmiris. This would only perpetuate the injustice against the Kashmiris. As our UN representative Munir Akram aptly remarked, "The status quo is the problem; it cannot be the solution".
Furthermore, acceptance of the LoC by Pakistan would mean that it had no case on Kashmir. Besides, this solution will be totally tilted in favour of India. Converting the LoC also does not address the fundamental problem of alienation of the Kashmiris, particularly of the Valley and their refusal to accept the legitimacy of Indian occupation.
But it cannot be ruled out that New Delhi, as in the past, is, still seeking an internal solution of Kashmir and would like a de facto territorial status quo with perhaps some measure of autonomy. For this it may be willing to work out an arrangement with most of the political forces, including the APHC, the People's Democratic Party and the National Conference leaders and present a fait accompli to Pakistan and the world.
Because of alienation from India and disenchantment with Pakistan, the popular sentiment for independence seems to have surfaced, particularly among the people of the Valley. They feel that they have been cruelly oppressed and brutalized by India and manipulated and exploited by Pakistan and therefore, independence is the only solution.
The problem in this popular approach, as in others, is how to determine the wishes of the people when India refuses to agree on a plebiscite in Kashmir. An independent Kashmir may again get caught up in the subcontinental rivalry with various groups and regions being manipulated and from into it. It could also trigger a domino effect leading to the balkanization of South Asia.
Western countries have expressed apprehensions that an independent Kashmir will become a breeding ground of terrorism. For geopolitical and security reasons China may have reservations about an independent Kashmir. Even if these fears were misplaced it is unlikely that this will evince support from either India or Pakistan. Granting independence to our part of Kashmir would further reduce the strategic depth of Pakistan. Besides, we cannot afford to lose control over the northern areas of Gilgit and Hunza, where the strategic road link to China has been constructed over the Karakoram highway through the Khunjrab pass. Similarly, India would not allow Ladakh to secede.
Jammu and Kashmir is deeply fractured with different parts holding allegiance with either India or Pakistan or seeking independence and have fairly distinct identities on the basis of religion and ethnicity. It then boils down to considering territorial readjustment of the Valley and a few Muslim dominated districts of Jammu - Doda, Poonch and Rajauri - and allowing them the option of acceding to India or Pakistan or to become independent. The division is based on geographical contiguity and ethnicity along the river Chenab, referred to by some as the "Chenab formula".
Another option could be that this area is brought under the joint sovereignty of India and Pakistan with maximum autonomy being exercised by the entity, which is guaranteed by a bilateral treaty. On the basis of the current LoC the two countries should retain control of the remaining parts of Kashmir. This would proximate to the Kashmir Study Group's proposal and is close to the Andora model, a territory held under the joint sovereignty of France and Spain.
Meanwhile, both countries should soften the borders by facilitating travel and establishing communication links between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad and Sialkot and Jammu and re-deploy troops to stabilize the border and ensure continuity of the ceasefire. The faithful implementation of these Kashmir specific and other bilateral CBMs should create a climate of trust and understanding that could go a long way in transforming Kashmir from being the most divisive issue to becoming a bridge for a future partnership between the two antagonists.
The writer is a retired lt-gen.