ANOTHER war between India and Pakistan has just ended and an uneasy truce exists between two nuclear powers of the subcontinent.
The Kashmir dispute is a long-standing territorial conflict primarily between India and Pakistan, with some involvement from China, over the Kashmir region in the Indian subcontinent.
The dispute stems from the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 and India’s claim of the state’s accession via a disputed “Instrument of Accession”.
The United Nations, with the exception of India, recognizes Kashmir as a disputed territory.
Kashmir has been the bone of contention between India and Pakistan since 1947 and continues to be the cause of friction leading to war and bloodshed on both sides and there appears to be no light at the end of the tunnel or a glimmer of hope for a peaceful resolution of this dispute or this festering wound in the side of the two countries.
Immediately after partition on 2nd of January 1948 the Indian Govt.
headed by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru submitted a complaint to the Security Council of the United Nations that the Pakistan army along with some armed insurgents have invaded the disputed state of Kashmir and “that once the soil of the State had been cleared of the invader and normal conditions restored, its people would be free to decide their future by the recognized democratic method of a plebiscite or referendum which, in order to ensure complete impartiality, might be held under international auspices.
” This matter was debated in the Security Council and resolutions 47 and 48 of April 21 1948 were unanimously adopted and according to these two resolutions Pakistan was asked to ensure the complete withdrawal of all Pakistani forces from the territory of the state of Jammu and Kashmir and went on to dictate that “The Government of India should undertake that there will be established in Jammu and Kashmir a Plebiscite Administration to hold a plebiscite as soon as possible on the question of the accession of the State to India or Pakistan”.
According to the demand of the Security Council resolutions both sides had to ceasefire immediately and the armed forces of both sides were supposed to go back to the sides they had occupied on 14th August 1947.
Ceasefire was implemented but troop withdrawal has not happened to date.
Pakistan and India clashed in 1948 and then in a major war in 1965 over the question of Kashmir and then the Tash-kent agreement was signed between the two countries resulting in no war no peace state between the two.
In 1971 India helped the insurgency in Pakistan resulting in the separation of East Pakistan and the formation of a new country called Bangladesh with the signing of the Shimla agreement and yet again the question of Kashmir was left unde-cided.
India has so far resolutely and blatantly refused to abide by the Security Council Resolutions on Kashmir and refuses to have a plebiscite to allow the People of Jammu and Kashmir to decide the future of their people.
Pakistan unfortunately has so far not been able to make any progress on this issue but in the process has already lost a major part of its territory in 1971 with the emergence of Bangladesh.
The Shimla Agreement was signed on July 2, 1972 between India and Pakistan, signed respectively by PMs Indira Gandhi and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.
The Shimla Agreement reiterated “That the principles and purposes of the Charter of the United Nations shall govern the relations between the two countries” and that “the two countries are resolved to settle their differences by peaceful means through bilateral negotiations”, and “That the basic issues and causes of conflict which have bedeviled the relations between the two countries for the last 25 years shall be resolved by peaceful means”.
It has now been 53 years since the Shimla Agreement was signed but Kashmir remains the festering wound and the point of conflict between the two countries.
A gruesome terrorist attack took place, killing 26 civilians in In-dian occupied Kashmir on April 22, 2025.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi immediately seized on the kill-ings and, on May 12, 2025, cited them as the reason for, henceforth, India not talking to Pakistan about Jammu and Kashmir.
The Indian reaction to the Pahalgam incident of 22nd April 2025 was a massive release of drones and missiles on Pakistan resulting in civilian casualties including some children on May 7th 2025 According to India, since Jaish-i-Muhammad (JeM) and Lashkar-i-Taiba (LeT) had carried out terrorist attacks in the past, they must have carried out the present one too.
However, neither the JeM nor the LeT had claimed responsibility.
On its part, Pakistan had on January 14, 2002 proscribed both the JeM and the LeT under the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1997.
The Kashmir question is one of the oldest unresolved international problems in the world.
The experience of seven decades has shown that it will not go away and that an effort is urgently required to resolve it on a dura-ble basis.
It is indisputable that, whatever be the rights and wrongs in the equation as far as arguments go, real populations with a pronounced sense of identity of their own, with their sufferings and their aspirations rather than just legal title and merit are involved It is commonly acknowledged that, with India and Pakistan both being nu-clear-weapon states directly confronting each other, this dispute is potentially the most dangerous in the world.
It should, therefore, be a major interest of the U.S.to prevent this dispute from exploding into a conflict, which can be catastrophic for a large proportion of the human race.
Yet, ever since the start in 1989-90 of the popular uprising in Kashmir against alien military occupation, which accentuated the character of the dispute, the U.S.has been content with playing often a passive, at times a tentatively advisory and marginal role.
For the first time during present clash of May 2025 the US President has played a leading role in dousing the fires of a potentially greater conflict and it is in the interest of world peace that the US and other world powers make a seri-ous and practical effort to solve this problem.
—The writer is Professor of History, based in Islamabad.
