6 The EconomistJuly 22nd 2017
SPECIAL REPORT
INDIA AND PAKISTAN2 stan should fall into the cold-war embrace of America, which
showered it with surplus weaponry from the Korean war. But
the bonanza made the generals overconfident. In 1958 they top-
pled the civilian government. They began to dream of gaining
full strategic parity with their much larger neighbour, but they
lacked public backing for bigger spending and indefinite military
rule. This they achieved by setting up India as a threat to the na-
tion. In 1965 Pakistan again sent guerrillas into Kashmir. India
struck back across the international border farther south. After
some weeks of fighting both countries signed a truce. Pakistan
gained nothing, but its army had proved that India was indeed
an existential danger.
Five years later East Pakistan was growing restless. As a
small guerrilla campaign grew in strength, with covert Indian
help, Pakistan’s army launched a counter-insurgency so brutal
and indiscriminate thatit provoked a far bigger uprising. India
formally entered the conflict in December1971. In just13 days its
army, with the Bengali rebels, defeated Pakistan and took 90,000
prisoners. Bangladesh had won its independence.
The Bangladesh debacle carried the disgraced Pakistaniarmy out of power, but only until the next military coup, in 1977.
For his first two years in power General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq
remained an international outcast. But when Russia invaded Af-
ghanistan at the end of1979, Pakistan gained an avalanche of aid
from America and itsallies, particularly Saudi Arabia.
General Zia tilted Pakistan sharply away from Jinnah’s
dreamy secularism. Yet in many ways his embrace of conserva-
tive Sunni orthodoxy reflected tensions inherent in Pakistan’s
“Islamic” identity. Even before he imposed a panoply ofsharia
punishments, Pakistan was renamed as an Islamic Republic in
1956, the Ahmadi minority was officially branded as non-Mus-
lims in 1974, and alcohol was banned in 1977.
General Zia died in a mysterious plane crash in 1988, the
year the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan. But although
Pakistan nominally returned to civilian rule, there was no real
oversight over the sprawling military establishment. The army’s
influence and the tentacles of the intelligence apparatus reached
into the press, the courts, universities and private business. Bol-
stered by continued American support, the Pakistani army has
been free to indulge its obsession with India ever since. 7LOUIS JOXE, THE French statesman who
signed the peace agreement ending Algeria’s
bloody war of independence, later reflected
that it was the magnificence of the country’s
landscape that intoxicated France. “It went
to our heads,” he said. Kashmir has a similar
effect. Juxtaposed with the torrid flatness of
the vast north Indian plain, its cool green
highlands exert a magical pull. “We are
twisted and coated in this beastly beauty,”
laments Aijaz Hussain, a grizzled journalist in
Srinagar. “In a way it holds us hostage.”
History has not been kind to Kashmir.
In 1846, after the British had defeated the
Sikh empire that then ruled the Indian north,
a vast chunk of it was sold to the Dogra family
for 7.5m rupees. So was born the princely
state of Jammu and Kashmir. One of the
many odd satrapies under the British Raj, its
rulers were Hindu but their subjects mostly
Muslim, particularly in the Vale of Kashmir.
This was the jewel in the turban: a rich,
well-watered upland plateau the size of a
large English county whose people spoke
their own language, Koshur.
At partition a century later, both new
countries staked a claim to the state. Its
maharaja dithered, toying with indepen-
dence. Pakistan pre-empted him by sending
armed “volunteers” to foment an uprising,
for surely his Muslim subjects longed to join
their new motherland. In lowland Jammu
some Muslim-majority areas joined Pakistan,
and tens of thousands of Muslims fled there.
But the Vale did not rise up, even when the
maharaja signed away his inheritance,inviting India to oust the invaders.
The brief war that followed left Paki-
stan with a slice of Jammu and a sliver of
Kashmir, along with Gilgit-Baltistan, a vast
tract of spectacular mountains. India kept
the mostly Hindu rest of Jammu, the Vale
itself and the desert-like fastness of Ladakh.
The UNsuggested they both pull back their
troops and hold a plebiscite. When Pakistan
balked at withdrawing, India used this as an
excuse to avoid a vote. And so things have
stood, uncomfortably and with intermittent
violence, until now.
While India and Pakistan spar, it is the
Kashmiris who suffer. Some more than oth-
ers: Jammu and Ladakh are loyally Indian,
and in truth the Kashmiris of Pakistan have
few links left with their cousins across theVale of darkness
Kashmir is trapped in a tragic cycleborder. The trouble lies with the 7m inhabit-
ants of the Vale, who have chafed at India’s
mix of democratic carrot and military stick.
“They treat us like a servant in a Brahmin
kitchen, who has to be scolded twice a day to
be kept in line,” says Mr Hussain.
Yet Pakistan is no better. Repeating
their folly and expecting a different outcome,
the generals have kept sending waves of
armed “volunteers”. India, forced to main-
tain a huge garrison on permanent alert,
hunts the intruders as terrorists, trampling
on ordinary Kashmiris as it does so.
Public opinion on both sides remains in
a state of agitation. Pakistanis see the Vale
as a stolen inheritance, and pity the poor
Kashmiris who, in fact, enjoy greater free-
doms than they do. India—particularly now
under the Hindu-nationalist BJP—resents its
beautiful “crown” being inhabited by traitors
and ingrates, as it sees them. Since the
mid-1980s political turmoil has killed at least
44,000 in the Vale, and sadly forced the flight
of its ancient 150,000-strong Hindu minor-
ity. The violence peaked in the early 2000s,
and eventually fell to a tenth of that level,
but in a renewed bout since last year more
than 400 people have died. “Whether by
intent or de facto, there has repeatedly been
collusion between India and Pakistan over
Kashmir, mainly to deny a voice to the Kash-
miris themselves,” says Siddiq Wahid, a
Kashmiri historian. As for the Vale, the few
credible polls suggest its people want neither
India nor Pakistan but simply freedom,
whatever that may mean.PAKISTANINDIA
DelhiArea held
by China,
claimed
by India
Disputed
borderArea ceded by
Pakistan to China,
claimed by IndiaCHINAJAMMU &
KASHMIR
(administered by India)KASHMIR
(administered by
Pakistan)IslamabadKabulTAJIKISTANNEPALPeshawarAFGHAN-
ISTANLahore AmritsarKashmir ValleyPUNJABLadakh
JammuSrinagarGilgitLine of control250 km