India fought wars with Pakistan in 1948, 1965, 1971 and 1999, after the Kargil intrusion. Though the 1971 war was not linked to Kashmir, the other wars were indeed so. The 1971 war concluded with the Simla Agreement between Indira Gandhi and Z.A. Bhutto on July 2, 1972, where, inter alia, "a final settlement of J&K" was mentioned as one of the items of the pending agenda between the two countries. Bilateral negotiations were agreed upon, and for India at least bilateralism became a sort of mantra. However, the bilateral discussion during the next two decades took the Kashmir dispute nowhere near a solution. Because of the perennial impasse in the bilateral process President Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan hit upon the idea of arming the Kashmiri youth and brainwashing them with Islamic fundamentalism along with military training and funding through the ISI. The explosion of violence in the Kashmir valley has continued ever since.

Prime Minister Vajpayee undertook the pathbreaking Lahore bus trip in 1998. The understanding reached there on the various issues between Mr Nawaz Sharif and Mr Vajpayee was not fully endorsed by Pakistan's powerful military machine represented by the three Service Chiefs and the several intelligence agencies headed by the ISI. During the brief post-Lahore phase, Track-II diplomacy was active and it was whispered by some of the Indian participants that Mr Nawaz Sharif had almost agreed to accept the LoC as an international border, which Bhutto had promised in 1972 but refused to talk about it later. That this was a daydream was demonstrated soon after by the Kargil intrusion by the Pakistan army and foreign mercenaries. Later events made it clear that Mr Nawaz Sharif was fully aware of General Musharraf's Kargil operations and his attempt to shift the entire responsibility on the top General, followed by the withdrawal of the armed forces behind the LoC on President Clinton's pressure, was something the army could not put up with.

General Musharraf, who took over after ousting Mr Nawaz Sharif, has followed a tough policy towards India from day one. He has carried forward ahead, with no qualms in supporting "jihad" in Kashmir. India's stand on General Musharraf's frequent pleas for the resumption of talks on Kashmir is well known. However, the talks cannot be permanently stalled on the ground that General Musharraf has not agreed to arrest the infiltration of militants like those of the Lashker-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad have the "fidayeen" elements consisting of suicide squads and human bombs. Intelligence agencies have unearthed a number of plots and arrested several militants and infiltrators but all this would not be adequate to prevent the "fidayeen" attacks on their chosen targets in Delhi and elsewhere.

After the brief phase of cease-fire announcement by the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen in Kashmir and its abrupt cancellation at the instance of its Pakistani counterpart as well as the Pakistan government, the Hurriyat leadership in Kashmiri has come into increasing focus. The All-Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC) has been invited by the Pakistan government for consultations, and Hurriyat spokesman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq has stated that the APHC has its own agenda aimed at evolving a policy of coordination with the Mujahideen and Pakistan after holding discussions with PoK leaders and militant elements who constitute the United Jihad Council. Any impression that the Hurriyat is going to Pakistan to tell the Mujahideen to surrender in response to the cease-fire call is totally incorrect, the Mirwaiz added. The question, therefore, is: why is the APHC being allowed to go to Pakistan, and more importantly, what does India expect out of the Hurriyat's deliberations with these militant groups and General Musharraf?

Do we also concede that the APHC is the sole representative of the people of J&K? Are we not thereby conceding that the problem is almost exclusively of the Kashmir valley and the Muslim majority areas of J&K? Why did India not think of asking some representatives from Jammu and Ladakh to be included in the delegation of the APHC? That the APHC might refuse to include them is a different issue, but at least an effort could have been made to make the delegation a more representative body of various sections of the J&K people.

The APHC will come back with nothing that could give any hope of a peaceful settlement between India and Pakistan. What the militants and fundamentalists in Pakistan and General Musharraf expect of India, before hard negotiations begin between the two countries on Kashmir's future, have already been spelt out by Syed Salahuddin, the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen Commander-in-Chief, based in Pakistan: "India should publicly declare that Kashmir is disputed territory, stop all forms of operations by security forces in Kashmir, release all jailed militants and political prisoners and reduce troop deployment in Kashmir to the 1989 level". Salahuddin added that the militants would end their attacks in case all these were implemented. And what would be the agenda during the trilateral discussions between India, Pakistan and Mujahideen? He said the people of Kashmir, namely the Muslim-majority areas, should be given the option to merge with Pakistan or India or choose to become an independent country, and this dispensation would also apply to the people of PoK. Slahuddin concluded with the threat that if New Delhi did not agree to all these demands militants would take the war out of Kashmir to the rest of India, that India was surrounded and was fighting the last battle and could not sustain the Kashmir war.

All this is very ominous but real. We have pushed ourselves to this stage and there are no clear prospects of getting out of this messay situation. On reflection, have we not moved far away from the 1972 Simla Agreement which contemplated the resolution of the Kashmir dispute by bilateral discussions between India and Pakistan? The proposition of treating the LoC as an internationalborder to settle the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan is now almost dead. The issue of the will of the people of Kashmir has come to the forefront, and it is this factor which is going to decide the fate of the people of J&K. It is so particularly because of the American political establishment, whether of Mr Bill Clinton before, or of Mr George W.Bush now, which insists on the will of the people of Kashmir being taken into account before a final settlement of the dispute. Eventually, it could indeed be the replay of the proposals of Sir Owen Dixon of 1950-51 which effectively suggested the partition of J&K into three parts on communal lines.

The Track-II participants who returned from Pakistan last month, after their aborted attempt to discuss nuclear strategy concepts of the two countries, had declared their bewilderment over Pakistan's all-pervasive obsession with Kashmir. Indeed, the impression there seems to be that Kashmir is almost within their grasp and that there is no way for India to hold on to it much longer. In this context, the brief announcement on February 4 from Washington that a bipartisan US Congressional delegation would visit India and Pakistan to discuss the Kashmir issue is important. The delegation is likely to visit Kashmir and meet local leaders. Their visit to Kashmir would no doubt be met with processions, protests and demonstrations against Indian security forces and their alleged abuse of human rights and indiscriminate violence against the common people.

The way events are unfolding, the Kashmir scenario is clearly heading, sooner or later, towards a UN-supervised referendum in J&K, most probably on the Dixon lines. What would follow thereafter could be foreseen, but I would rather desist from mentioning it in so many words.

*The writer is a former Governor of West Bengal and Sikkim.

Source: The Tribune