7. Monitoring of Cross-border Activity:

The Team believes that Pakistan, for its part, should simultaneously undertake a convincing confidence-building measure of its own by agreeing to station on its side of the Line of Control an adequately staffed regional or other international body with a fresh mandate for observing and reporting all cross- border activity.

The process of normalization, and, in particular, the reaching of any bilateral agreements with India in regard to Kashmir, cannot be expected to progress far without the Government of Pakistan's adopting confidence-building measures of its own. That government must make explicit, in other words, the strength of its commitment to help in creating a regional environment congenial to serious and sustained dialogue with India. One possibility for doing so would be public and strongly expressed verbal disapproval of any and all acts of indiscriminate violence, whosoever may be responsible for them, committed in Indian-controlled areas of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. But the most material and convincing gesture that the Government of Pakistan can make is in relation to covert cross-border interference.  ·Pending establishment of an appropriate bilateral (India-Pakistan) peacekeeping mechanism, as proposed in section below, the Team believes that the Government of Pakistan should invite the setting up for this purpose of an interim international body - under the auspices, perhaps, of the Commonwealth, the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), or possibly even of SAARC. Objectionable cross-border activities, in the Team's view, must not only be subject to observation and reporting, but also should be both renounced and denounced by Pakistan if, in fact, they do occur.

In making this recommendation, the Team lays claim to no authoritative knowledge that covert cross-border activities are currently underway or are being advocated. Indeed, creation of such a body must be understood neither to imply nor to relieve the related responsibility of any party to this dispute. Neither should the existence of the proposed body suggest that hostile cross-border actions were necessarily confined to the sector of the India-Pakistan border constituted by the LOC. Its sole and entirely constructive purpose would be to facilitate the process of normalization and, specifically, to enable the parties to the Kashmir dispute to enter agreements pointing to the restoration of normal civil life in J&K. While the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP), the peacekeeping organization already in existence in Kashmir, is certainly technically qualified to carryout the monitoring function described here and might conceivably have its mandate converted to that purpose, the political difficulties involved in such a step, in the Team's judgement, might prove to be insuperable. India's unfavourable view of UNMOGIP's mission has been demonstrated; but some mechanism might be found to alter that view.

8. Strengthening of peacekeeping on the Line of Control:

A logical follow-on to the last recommendations, in the Team's judgement, would be for India and Pakistan to explore together various modalities for strengthening peacekeeping on the Line of Control. One such option would be to constitute a Joint Border Security Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) as principal peacekeeper on the Line of Control.

Already given some consideration in the context of the India-Pakistan negotiations over the Siachen Glacier, a joint peacekeeping arrangements on the LOC would formalize security cooperation between India and Pakistan while at the same time providing a mechanism for reducing and perhaps eliminating the grounds for the frequent military clashes between them on the LOC. Introduction of a Joint Border Security Group would also give explicit, institutional acknowledgement to the incontestable fact that the situation in the Indian-controlled sector of Jammu and Kashmir is in some part interstate in origin and therefore requires interstate cooperation for its amelioration.

Regrettably, UNMOGIP itself has been weakened over the years and is now unable to serve the purposes noted above. Upgrading of its capabilities, in light of political attitudes in the region, presently seems improbable. A formalized peacekeeping apparatus of some kind is obviously required in the region, however, and UNMOGIP should not be discarded until a durable agreement is reached on a viable successor.

Assuming a Joint Border Security Group is established and demonstrates its efficacy, consideration should be given to gradually expanded demilitarization of sections of the Line of Control to a width of up to ten kilometers on either side of the line. Such demilitarized sections - which would be subject to the same type of inspection as the sections that are not demilitarized  -would go far towards eliminating the all-too-frequent trans-border exchanges of fire that presently occur along the Line of Control.

9. Monitoring of Compliance with human rights Covenants:

It is equally crucial, the Team believes, that the Government of India take public steps to formalize and strengthen monitoring of India's compliance in Kashmir with applicable United Nations human rights covenants.

There are several ways by which the Government of India can protect human rights in Kashmir. One is aggressive and unfettered involvement of the government's own monitoring agencies - the Indian Human Rights Commission and the newly-formed Human Rights Commission of Jammu and Kashmir state. Much more likely to generate widespread confidence in the fairness and fullness of monitoring procedures, however, would be official encouragement including, for instance, the highly respected People's Union for Civil Liberties and the South Asian Human Rights Documentation Centre. The Team is of the view, however, that free and unfettered access to Kashmir by international humanitarian agencies and human rights monitors would even better assure India's credibility. Ideally, to strengthen the practice of local human rights monitoring over the long term, such agencies should be formed from within the region, perhaps under the auspices of the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC), and should include members from all the states in the region. Also desirable, however, would be India's prompt removal of all barriers to monitoring by such established international organizations as the International Committee of the Red Cross, Amnesty International and Asia Watch.

10. Initiation of Domestic-level Talks with Kashmiri Leaders:

The Team believes that India should initiate formal and unconditional domestic-level talks with a broadened slate of Kashmiri leaders, including the  leadership of the All Parties Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference. India's willingness to take this action is essential for progress to be made towards the restoration of normal civil life in Kashmir. In addition, this action would be an important confidence-building measure.

These talks, which would be separate from and preparatory to trilateral discussions within the normalization framework (as recommended in Section 4 above), can be variously structured. They must certainly not exclude representatives of the present National Conference-led state government. They should have as their initial objective winning the support of the state's political leaders, whether in or out of power, to the project for restoring normal civil life to Kashmir.

11. Commitment to Eschew Violence:                                                                                                                        A parallel confidence-building measure that the Team considers equally important to the successful restoration of normal civil life in Kashmir would be a clear commitment given by all of the armed militant and counter-militant Kashmiri groups of their willingness to eschew violence and to participate constructively in the process of political dialogue.

An unambiguous declaration by all these groups of their willingness to suspend all military activity and observe a complete cease-fire pending the outcome of talks with India is one obvious and very likely essential such commitment.

12.Role of the International Community:                                                                           The international community, the Team believes, can play a helpful role by emphasizing to all those concerned the importance of implementing measures to restore normal civil life and by pointing out to them the high costs of failing to do so.

Major and direct involvement by agencies within the international community at the present preliminary state of negotiations over normalization between India and Pakistan, unless sought by both India and Pakistan, would more than likely be counter productive. Assuming these negotiations proceed along their present positive trajectory, however, a substantial and relatively near-term supporting role for the international community, or at least for particular state-level or regional agencies within it (as proposed in Section 7), can be envisioned. Should it happen that these negotiations falter or break down entirely - not at all a remote possibility in view of the history of India-Pakistan relations - then re-examinations and reconfiguring of the role of concerned actors within the international community would certainly be required.

For the moment the Team believes that the primary focus of the international community - including here interested governments as well as non-governmental and inter-governmental entities - should be upon communicating forcefully and frequently to the governments of India and Pakistan the urgency of their undertaking and the willingness of the international community to assist in facilitating its success.

Conclusion:                                                                                                                            The Kashmir dispute has now bedeviled relations between India and Pakistan for half a century and is, the Team is convinced, the principal obstacle to normalization of relations between those two states and to broaden cooperation in South Asia. Two costly wars have been fought between India and Pakistan for control of the erstwhile princely state of J&K and a third war between them, relating primarily to the separation of what is now Bangladesh from Pakistan, soon spread to Kashmir as well. Within the Indian-held portion of Kashmir, a grim civil struggle has been raging for the better part of a decade. And the possibility of its escalation into a fourth international war cannot be discounted.

There can be little doubt that, virtually since the moment of their independence, the high costs of military preparedness borne by India and Pakistan, to no small extent because of the Kashmir dispute, have acted to the detriment of most of the people of the subcontinent, roughly two-fifths of whom still live below the poverty line. Thus, one can see that 99% of the combined populations of India and Pakistan (see frontispiece) are, in effect, held hostage to the struggle to extend or preserve Indian or Pakistani control over the remaining 1% who happen to inhabit the area constituted by Jammu and Kashmir. It is not merely the peoples of Jammu and Kashmir who suffer from the struggle, but also, in varying degrees, the entire South Asian region. At the moment of independence, South Asia led the countries Southeast Asia in respect to most indices of development.

Today, those countries of Southeast Asian that have been spared the scourge of war lead India and Pakistan by substantial margins. These observations are not merely the carping of critical outside observers, but were conveyed to the Team repeatedly by its Indian and Pakistani informants as well.

Yet, despite the widespread recognition of the dangers and costs engendered by continued conflict over Kashmir, the maddening complexities of that dispute have prevented its resolution to date. Nevertheless, a good, though still modest and tentative, beginning has been made by the governments of India and Pakistan to normalize relations between the two states. The Study Team sent to South Asia by the Kashmir Study Group warmly applauds that initiative and urges its continuation and expansion. It has put forward in this report a number of recommendations that, in its view, will further this process. These recommendations, intentionally modest in scope, are aimed primarily at the restoration in Kashmir of a normally working civil society, marked by conditions of peace and respect for fundamental human rights. These are the essential prerequisites for carrying on a sustained dialogue in which not only the two national governments, but also the voices of all significant segments of the peoples of J&K can be heard. The Team is convinced that, with mutual forbearance, a spirit of accommodation, and a willingness to compromise, the parties to the dispute can work out for themselves a peace settlement that is at once honourable and just.

Eminent Journalist M.J. Akbar On Kashmir

Why did Iqbal exclude Kashmir from his list of contiguous Muslim-majority provinces in the north-west of India that would constitute the Muslim homeland? Did the answer lie in realpolitik? One reason may be that he was not sure of the status of the princely states in free India, and did not want to antagonise the Muslim nawabs and the Nizam who sought their territories beyond the life of British rule. They were after all patrons of the League. But that answer fits Jinnah, the cool mathematician of human strengths and weaknesses, rather than the spirit of Iqbal. It is just as likely that Iqbal never saw the Muslims of Kashmir as being part of cultural homogeneity he found between the Hindu Kush and the Indian Ocean. And if history be any witness, then the anger of the Kashmiri against the Punjabi and the Afghan is severe ... Emperor Akbar ... is still considered an imperialist by Kashmiris. Similarly the Afghan rule which preceded the Dorgas was, if anything, more oppressive ... Just as Iqbal could not find much in common between the Muslim of U.P. and the Muslim of Punjab, he could not envision political unity between the Kashmiri and the Punjabi ..              (Source: The News from India)

Tavleen Singh on Kashmir Problem

When it comes to Pakistan, our patriotism is at its strongest ... We have waited 50 years for India's negotiators to come up with something substantive in the many rounds of talks they have had with Pakistan ... Our negotiators do not talk straight. Let me correct that slightly. They do talk straight when it comes to telling Pakistan to stop exporting terrorists and weapons across the border. They also talk straight when it comes to hurling some justified abuses at that most efficient of terrorist training schools, the Inter-Service Intelligence.

But when it comes to what Pakistanis call the "core issue" - and what we call "Kashmir" - we talk in circles. Why is it so hard for us to say that there is no way there will be any further division of India? Why it is so hard for us to say that the only solution to the Kashmir problem is for everyone to accept that the LOC is the border? Once this is stated clearly and categorically, we may actually be able to have a real dialogue with Pakistan. We could even talk about Kashmir, which they want to do so desperately. Forget about trying to take Kashmir or redrawing the borders, we could say, and forget about such outdated suggestions as plebiscite.

We could perhaps extend the exercise to the Americans. Personally, I do not share the general Indian perception that America's main foreign policy objective in the subcontinent is to break up India. But I do share general irritation at the Americans constantly poking their nose into a problem they barely understand.

Yes, we do need to be friends with Pakistan - if only because 50 years of enmity have caused South Asia to be universally acknowledged as a place of the most wretched, demeaning poverty in the world. A recent survey reveals the shaming fact that we have more poverty and less development than even sub-Saharan Africa. We need to spend more money on fighting poverty than fighting each other and we can only get there by talking to each other. But this dialogue ... will be worth nothing unless we can spit out the truth on Kashmir ... The ordinary Pakistani is as sick of 50 years of rancour and enmity as the ordinary Indian.                                                                                                                                         (Source: The India Today, 6 October, 1997)

Kashmir: Rhetoric at OIC Summit, 1997

K.K. Katyal in the Hindu, 11 December, 1997

Once again, the OIC has chosen to deal with the Kashmir issue in a manner that reflects the deep-seated prejudice of some its members against India ... Compared to the rhetoric on other issued, the India- related statements are peripheral and, as such, do not represent the major concerns of the grouping, Thanks to the pro-Pakistani elements in the OIC secretariat, the drafting of Kashmir related anti-India resolutions has become a routine affair. This set of documents is adopted without much discussion as part of a set operation at the instance of the hardliners, with the moderates either making feeble noises or letting it go through without much ado. In the process, the resolutions, whether on Kashmir or Babari Masjid or any other India-related issue, get the OIC stamp. That is enough for the Pakistani lobby to lap up these documents and to derive the maximum propaganda advantage.

At one stage in the past, the Government chose to involve into discussion the IOC hardliners who set the tone ... It did not work because of the pre-determined and prejudiced attitudes of the OIC activists. That job was given up.

The collective anti-India noise at the OIC, it was found, did not conform to the views expressed by individual members of the grouping in their bilateral talks with India. The relationship between India and most of them was governed by economic and other powerful factors and there was a marked keenness to strengthen those ties. It was not unusual for New Delhi to hear defensive explanations from the moderates ...

Either in explicit terms or impliedly, the OIC document attacked Indian on three counts - disregard of democratic norms, violation of human rights and religious bigotry. A comparative analysis of the situation in India and the record of some of the leading lights of the OIC would be highly revealing ... As such, it is considered ironic that they should be lecturing India on these matters.

Though not perfect, democratic institutions in India have taken deep roots, as is evident from the vibrancy ...

The widespread condemnation within the country of the  Ayodhya episode substantiates this point. The excesses by the administration or other agencies attract instant critical notice of the public and the press ... Even on Kashmir, the Central Government and the political leadership are often taken to task for going slow on the promise for increased autonomy for the state. The OIC hardliners, on the one hand, fail to appreciate all this and, on the other, seek to romanticise trans-border terrorism as freedom struggle ...                                                (Source: The Hindu, 11 December, 1997)