India and Its Neighbours by Dr. S K Shah

Author:Dr. S K Shah [Shah, S K]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Alpha Editions
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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India and Pakistan : Relations, Conflict and Border Problems

United States’ role and Influence on the India-Pakistan Conflict

Although the Soviet Union played a critical role in formally ending the second India-Pakistan war in 1965—through the Tashkent Declaration—its close military and security relationships with Delhi during much of the Cold War years decreased its influence over Islamabad, which became increasingly linked to the United States for the supply of arms. China’s discreet missile and nuclear linkages with Islamabad, along with memories of the India-China border war of 1962, precluded Beijing’s influence over the India-Pakistan dispute.

Despite an apparent shift in Beijing’s position since 1996 (especially during the Kargil conflict in 1999 when it refrained from publicly supporting Pakistan, and due to its concerns over Islamist extremists in Xinjiang province), elements of future India-China competition make it difficult for Beijing to influence Delhi. While French, European Union or Japanese influence appear limited, a potential British role exists only alongside the United States, with the latter doing much of the ‘heavy lifting’. Notwithstanding Washington’s unprecedented and simultaneous influence over both Delhi and Islamabad, the nature and extent of its future engagement in the India-Pakistan conflict remains unclear.

Kashmir Dispute

In view of India’s asymmetrical relationship with Pakistan—population, size, economic strength and relative military power—Delhi has invariably resisted the role of a third party or the United Nations in its conflict with Pakistan; it is precisely for these reasons that Islamabad has favoured such a role, with the hope that ‘internationalization’ would provide a favourable resolution of the Kashmir dispute. India’s disillusionment with the international community over Kashmir began soon after Independence, when Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru took Pakistan’s aggression against India in Kashmir to the United Nations on 1 January 1948.

Instead of being seen as the aggrieved party, losing Indian territory to an armed attack by Pakistan—following the signing of the Instrument of Accession by the Hindu ruler of the predominantly Muslim province of Jammu and Kashmir on 26 October 1947— India became a party to the dispute.

Subsequent UN Security Council resolutions advocating the future of Kashmir on the basis of a UN-mandated plebiscite—after the withdrawal of armed forces by both countries from divided Kashmir—were ignored by Delhi, as was the United Nations force, the UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP). Since the UN-sponsored ceasefire to the first India-Pakistan war over Kashmir on 1 January 1949, UNMOGIP has been deployed to monitor the ceasefire line—currently, the Line of Control (LoC) (the de facto border dividing Indianand Pakistan-administered Kashmir).

For Islamabad, however, the UN Security Council resolutions on Kashmir boosted its position on Kashmir, and justified its stance that it was a territorial dispute between the two sides. This contradicted Delhi’s view that Kashmir was ‘not a disputed territory’, with the only point of contention being Pakistan’s ‘illegal occupation of a portion of the state’, fortified by a Parliamentary resolution to this effect in the early 1990s. Even though it was clear that neither Pakistan nor India were inclined to withdraw forces

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