The International Community and Kashmir

Schaffer, Howard B.

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/15470 Copy

Description

Title

The International Community and Kashmir

Author(s)

Schaffer, Howard B.

Issue Date

2008

Keyword(s)

• Jammu and Kashmir -- Conflict
• Jammu and Kashmir -- Diplomacy
• Jammu and Kashmir -- Policy -- United States
• Jammu and Kashmir -- Policy -- United Nations

Abstract

The international community’s efforts to help resolve the Kashmir issue began only weeks after the dispute erupted in October 1947. The controversy remained on the world’s radar scope for a quarter of a century, then faded away when India and Pakistan agreed at Simla in 1972 to resolve it peacefully by bilateral negotiations. The outbreak of an insurrection against Indian rule in the Kashmir Valley at the end of 1989 returned the problem to world attention. The United States and other major powers soon recognized that the nuclear capabilities of the rival claimants made the issue more dangerous and its resolution more urgent. But Washington’s main initiatives in recent years have focused on managing the India-Pakistan crises Kashmir has sparked, not on the elusive search for resolution of the Kashmir dispute itself. It has urged both countries to reach a mutually acceptable settlement that takes into account the wishes of the Kashmiri people, and has declared its willingness to play a facilitating role in helping the parties resolve the issue if both the Indians and Pakistanis wish it to. Other interested powers have been even less involved. All have recognized that the continuing refusal of the Indian government to countenance an international role in Kashmir makes it likely that any outside efforts will be as unsuccessful as others were in the past. This conventional—and till now sensible— approach may not necessarily remain valid. In this article, I will argue that recent important developments may—just may—offer opportunities for the world community led by the United States to play a useful part in resolving this seemingly intractable problem.

Publisher

Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security (ACDIS), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Series/Report Name or Number

Swords and Ploughshares, winter 2007-8

ISSN

1046-7734

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/15470

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