India’s Muslim-majority region of Kashmir is experiencing its worst outbreak of violence in decades, setting off fears of a confrontation over the divided state with India's nuclear-armed rival, Pakistan.
Over the past month, stone-wielding protesters demanding independence from India have clashed with paramilitary security forces in Kashmir’s capital, Srinagar.
Troops, razor wire, sweeping arrests and deadly force have done little to dissuade demonstrators, who returned to the Kashmiri streets Wednesday en masse following round-the-clock curfews.
Security forces have responded to the protests with live fire, killing at least 15 people in the last four weeks, many of them teenagers. An Indian army major was killed and six soldiers were injured in gun battles with rebels on Wednesday.
Both India and Pakistan lay claim to Kashmir, which has been the source of two of the rivals' four wars and numerous armed conflicts since the partition of the sub-continent in 1947.
In 1989, an armed separatist insurgency against Indian rule broke out in the Himalayan region, setting off two decades of violence that have claimed tens of thousands of lives in the region, mostly civilians. Like a seasonal allergy, violence returns to Kashmir every summer to put its people on boil.
India accuses Pakistan of fueling the Kashmir insurgency from across the border, training armed militants and inciting young protesters to commit violent acts against security forces.
On Tuesday, a top political official in Pakistan, speaking to an audience of thousands of members of banned militant groups, vowed to continue the fight for Kashmir.
The ongoing dispute over the Himalayan region threatens the tenuous peace between India and Pakistan, who share a heavily militarized border, a legacy of war, a taste for the world’s most dangerous weapon, and a refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
In 2008, terrorists from a Kashmiri separatist group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, attacked the Indian economic center of Mumbai, killing 170 people and driving the countries closer to war.
This week, the nuclear neighbors are set to have their first high-level meeting since the attacks put their mutual peace efforts in a deep freeze.
Kashmir ranks high among the planet's most dangerous flashpoints, enhanced by India and Pakistan's growing nuclear stockpiles.
Nowhere else in the world do two nuclear-armed neighbors stand toe-to-toe on such an intractable source of unrest. If the world should ever see a nuclear war, chances are, the first shot will be fired over Kashmir.
While the START Treaty goes a long way in reducing the planet’s stockpile of nuclear weapons, resolving the issue of Kashmir is critical in stemming the threat of nuclear war.
Comments