In our dealings with Pakistan on the Kashmir issue, we have often appeared defensive, occasionally apologetic, leading to a bleeding heart syndrome among some of us. This approach ignores that Pakistan has cynically used violence, and the world has allowed it to do so, as an instrument of foreign policy. This attitude also mixes sympathy and concern for the innocent with that for the terrorist.
Afraid of 'Hindu' India, Muslim Pakistan had to make a success of its experiment and hitched its stars to the wagon of the new empire, the US. There were toys for the boys in khaki and promise of some real estate for a faithful ally, a promise that awaits fulfilment. Cold War dynamics meant that Pakistan had to be helped and there was incessant pressure on India in the UNSC and outside. There was the Dixon Plan, threat of withdrawal of PL 480 food in 1965, joint ventures in jehad in the Eighties with their fallout in Kashmir in the Nineties, ironically accompanied by allegations of human rights abuse against India.
Battered and bruised by other democracies, India developed a defensive approach. Obviously, Pakistan had successfully created the impression that they were the injured party, that most issues were settled except for the Valley, for which UN resolutions be implemented or peoples' wishes ascertained.
Areas across the LoC are still a part of J&K. It is time India seized the initiative and surprise the general occasionally. A beginning was recently made when the Indian foreign office spokesman expressed concern at the eruption of troubles in Gilgit. But our media, politicians, bureaucrats, think-tanks, could also talk of the acute deprivation in these areas, the Shia-Sunni divide and the backwardness of Gilgit and Baltistan, the deliberate policy of reducing the Shia majority to a minority by bringing in the Sunni Pashtuns, and the plans of the Pakistanis to formally annex these areas that they call the 'Northern Areas'. We need to ask why Chitral, a part of J&K at the time of its accession to India, was hived off and made a part of NWFP.
While Pakistani leaders shed tears for the Kashmiris, they oppress those living in areas occupied by them. Visitors to POK and Gilgit-Baltistan - or Balawaristan, as the locals refer to it - have come back with the impression that the sense of alienation, deprivation and marginalisation is much stronger in these areas than in POK.
Pakistani leaders incessantly talk of political rights of the people of Jammu and Kashmir but deny these totally to the people of POK and Gilgit-Baltistan and many Pakistanis refer to these areas as the world's last colony. Criticism of Punjabi-Pashtun bureaucrats invariably results in instant reprisals not only against the critic but also against the family.
The toothless 'Northern Affairs' Legislative Council is a sad joke on the people. It cannot enact laws, locals assert that the so-called elections are rigged and only favourites are selected. Their 'prime minister' is answerable to the local bureaucrat. The civil administration and the political set-up are in the hands of Sunni loyalists. The Frontier Corps have been brought in to maintain law and order but in reality to control the Shias. Prominent Shia locals feel that Pakistan does not want to give too many freedoms to the locals for fear that they will ask for an independent Shia state.
Shia-Sunni riots have been frequent in Gilgit-Baltistan although nothing on the scale of the 1988 riots, when Pakistani armed forces slaughtered protesting Shias, has happened. Riots occurred again in 2004 and 2005 and over 4,000 persons have been killed in sectarian clashes in the last decade, mostly the result of official connivance if not encouragement. About 80 people have died in clashes with Pakistani forces in Gilgit this year.
Assassinations are common. A Shia religious scholar was murdered in January this year because he had led Shia protests against attempts by the authorities to 'Wahabise' the education syllabus and a former police officer was assassinated in March in retaliation. As recently as on October 13, at least 12 persons were killed and over a hundred injured in a shoot-out between the security forces and Shia students. This incident took place when protesting students returning from the funeral of another student were stopped at a Rangers' picket. Protests have spread to different parts of the region, the Karakoram Highway was blockaded by Shia protestors demanding the release of their leaders and curfew imposed in Gilgit.
Earlier, on October 11, gunmen killed a former revenue official and a Ranger was shot at and injured in a separate incident, which led to the closure of all establishments in the city. Meanwhile, Shia leaders have threatened that the protests would spread into Pakistan and become an almost daily process in Gilgit-Baltistan. Harsh State repression is inevitable.
Systematic attempts have been made to change the Shia majority of this region by importing Sunni Pathans from NWFP. Shias and Ismailis were 85 per cent of the population in 1948 but were only 53 per cent by 2004. From being virtually absent in 1948, Sunni Pashtuns now constitute one-fourth of the population. Locals resent the sale of land to outsiders and they themselves cannot acquire land or seek employment in Rawalpindi, Abbotabad or Manshera.
Over 60 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line. Illiteracy rates are the highest in these areas. There has been no infrastructure development in the region in the last 50 years and more. Suspicious of Shia loyalties, Pakistanis substantially reduced the Shia component of the NLI Battalions and moved NLI units to other areas so that locals from these areas could be recruited.
We need to pay more attention to this area of 'Pak Occupied Gilgit and Baltistan', as the chairman of the Balawaristan National Front refers to his land. We tend to forget the strategic importance of this remote area at the tri-junction of undivided J&K in India, the Wakhan corridor in Afghanistan and Xinjiang in China.
The area is important to India for the simple reason that Pakistan intruded and occupied it in 1947 and never vacated it despite UN resolutions requiring it to do so. Pakistan has located a part of its jehadi infrastructure in these remote areas and used them in Kargil in 1999.
For Pakistan, the rivers that flow through this area irrigate the Punjabi farms in Pakistan. In addition, the Karakoram Highway is a vital strategic link into China and has been used for clandestine supply of nuclear material, missiles and missile components from China and North Korea. Finally, control of this area provides Pakistan with vantage points against India in times of war or proxy war.
The Karakoram Highway and the strategic Gwadar port close to the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf provide China vital access to the sea-lanes in the area. It also enables continued supply of material to Pakistan against India. The US as inheritor of British imperial interests, in pursuit of Cold War first and then its new doctrine of pre-emption, would need this corridor to have access to the troubled Xinjiang.
There are real and strategic reasons for India to make an issue out of this illegal occupation.
The author is former Secretary (R), Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India, New Delhi. He is presently Advisor to Chairman, Observer Research Foundation (ORF), New Delhi. Source: Hindustan Times, New Delhi, November 9, 2005. * Views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Observer Research Foundation.
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