Why the Article 370 has “actually” been abrogated and diluted?
Is it just about the ruling party fulfilling its promises or Is it a step towards their ideology of Akhand Bharat or Is there something more, that the naked eye cannot see?
The Indian government recently passed a bill in both houses bifurcating Jammu and Kashmir into two union territories , Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir. It has also diluted if not removed the Article 370 that gives special status to Jammu and Kashmir. While the whole nation has debated the positives and negatives of the impact these two major changes are going to bring, let us look at the diplomatic reasons which according to me are the real reasons behind this immediate power and control shift.
This is the region of Kashmir, for which India and Pakistan have been in a tussle for more than 70 years now. They fought wars in 1948, 1965, 1971 and 1999, all of which had India emerging as a winner. In 1948, through UN, India and Pakistan had to reach a ceasefire and had to create a line of control between them until the dispute for Kashmir was not solved. Both countries have tried to create internal conflicts since, Pakistan trying to create separatist tendencies in Kashmir and Punjab, while India has been trying to do the same in Balochistan region of Pakistan.
In 1957, Home Minister of India had visited J&K and proclaimed it as an integral part of India, In 1960, both Supreme Court and Election Commission of India extended their jurisdiction over the state. Pakistan responds with Operation Gibraltar, it was the codename given to the strategy of Pakistan to infiltrate Jammu and Kashmir, and instigate the locals in starting a rebellion against Indian sovereignty.This resulted in the war of 1965, which ended with India having an upper hand.(India had occupied 740 square miles, Pakistan occupied 210 square miles, and both claim to be the winner, sigh!)
In 2019, Home Minister of India dilutes article 370, bifurcates Jammu and Kashmir, makes both Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir as Union Territories(centrally controlled), Pakistan responds by calling it a violation of 17 UN principles, sends Indian envoy back, calls Pakistan’s envoy back, downgrades ties between India and Pakistan, suspends bilateral trade and proclaims to observe August 14 as Independence Day in solidarity with Kashmiris(Ironically,Pakistan had itself bifurcated Gilgit Baltistan from Azad Kashmir in 2009).
Every time the centre tries to take control of Kashmir, Pakistan responds back negatively. India has not crossed the Line of Control, what it is doing is its internal issue, then why does Pakistan want centre not to rule but the state to rule?
It is because every time there is a state government rule in Jammu and Kashmir, it becomes easy for ISI to train vulnerable local Kashmiri youth in Pakistan and it is easier for their militants to come into India and based on sentiments create situations where the masses support Independence from India.
The biggest form of Pro Independence and Pro Pakistani militancy seen in Kashmir was in the 1989 insurgency.
But, there is another story that is running in parallel to this love affair between India and Pakistan, it is a story of a superpower trying to find its way out from a problem it chose for itself.
In 1979, amidst the Cold War between USSR and USA, the Soviet Union had invaded Kabul as the communist government in Afghanistan was facing major issues of regime changes , which led to a rise in local rebels. Seeing this as an opportunity USA financed Pakistan’s ISI trained local groups of Afghanistan known as Mujahideen with funding and arms , it was Pakistan that decided which of the rebel groups had to be funded, the funding from US was more than 20 Bn $ just to train the Mujahideen, against whom the Soviet Union succumbed and finally led to the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1989 allowing US to emerge as the sole superpower in the world.
The funding that CIA of USA sent through ISI of Pakistan went to Haqqani Network and Hekmatyar who were key allies of Osama bin Laden for many years. Post Soviet disintegration, USA immediately stopped all funding to Afghanistan, and retreated, which led to the rise of Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. These groups fundamentally criticised the support of Israel by USA , and attacked USA’s twin towers on September 11 , 2001. USA responded back with a “War on Terror” programme sending NATO troops to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban. By December 2001, the Taliban were mostly defeated, and a new government was set up through elections in 2004 under the presidentship of Hamid Karzai.
But the Taliban reorganised and fought back to such an extent, that Donald Trump in 2019 has agreed to pull its troops out by September 1 if the Taliban agrees to not organise any terror activity in Afghanistan, while Taliban has asked the Afghanistan government (which it does not even recognise) to stay out of it. This is a war America is certainly not winning and wishes to exit from, as soon as possible.
What has the India-Pakistan conflict to do with US-Taliban Conflict?
In the same year of 1989 , after the fall of the Soviet Union, these rebel groups who fought successfully against USSR, were used by Pakistan’s ISI for insurgency missions in Kashmir, creating a series of demonstrations, strikes and attacks on the Indian government, which during the 1990s escalated into the most important internal security issue in India.
India has had very friendly and cordial relations with the Afghan government of Hamid Karzai and has invested more than 5 Bn$ in Afghanistan. After the USA, the biggest ally of the Afghanistan government is India, while Pakistan has been Taliban and all extremist groups’ favourite ally, in fact Pakistan’s ISI has put its own internal security at risk and ruptured ties with USA in order to bring Taliban to power in Afghanistan.
Why is Afghanistan so important to Pakistan?
India’s population (1.2 billion) and its economy (GDP of $ 2.7 trillion) are about ten times the size of Pakistan’s (180 million Pakistanis generating an annual GDP of $210 billion). During the period of India’s greatest growth, which lasted from 2006 to 2010, there were four years during which the annual increase in the Indian economy was almost equal to the entire Pakistani economy.It is very easy to understand, how scared Pakistan would be and should be.
After 1971, Pakistan needed a secure refuge in case of a future war with India, for which the porous border with Afghanistan offers a route by which Pakistani leaders, troops and other assets, including its nuclear weapons, could retreat to the northwest in the case of an Indian invasion. For this , it is essential that Pakistan has Afghanistan as its ally and willing to fight India.
What does Kashmir coming under center’s control have to do with all this?
Mark Twain once said “ History may not repeat itself , but it often rhymes.”
In 1989, Extremist groups were used from Afghanistan to create havoc in Kashmir, by the ISI.Since 1989 , most of the insurgency has occurred when state governments were ruling the state and were in control when the state was under centre’s rule.
Just days after Mr. Trump’s special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad reached a tentative deal with the Taliban in late January 2019 , a suicide bombing claimed by a Pakistan-based terrorist group killed 41 Indian paramilitary soldiers in Pulwama, triggering tit-for-tat Indian and Pakistani airstrikes and fears of a wider military conflict.
Khalizad’s statement on August 5, said that it had excellent progress in peace with Taliban which implicitly means that USA has agreed to Pakistan’s supremacy in Taliban ruled Afghanistan.USA which had cut all economic relief to Pakistan has agreed to double the relief .
20 years later, in September 2019, the Taliban will again be the most powerful organization in Afghanistan, an organization whom even the most powerful country in the world with the most advanced military technology and force has not been able to defeat even after 18 years of struggle. After the US troops evacuate, the primary target for Taliban would be Karzai and its allies, to be specific, India.
India at any cost has to defend its borders and its people from any kind of terror activity, and with the military intelligence of the Pakistani Army along with its 40 jihadist groups and the force of Taliban and its extremist groups, it could be a very dangerous situation to be in.
Thus, as a pre-emptive measure India has safeguarded its security through the J&K action by bringing the territory under central control. It may be represented as a vision of the ruling party’s founder, an ideology of the right wing, an Anti Muslim decision, but irrespective of what ideology would have been present at the centre, whether it would have been BJP or Congress or any other party, territorial integrity and national security had to be placed above everything else.
