India and Pakistan: The roots of the cashmere battle | EUROtoday

Just a couple of days earlier than the terrorist assault on Indian vacationers in Kashmir in April, the Pakistani navy chief Syed Asim Munir gave a speech in entrance of Diaspora Pakistans in Islamabad. In it he described Kashmir as “our main artery”. He known as on his listeners to inform their kids in Pakistan, “so that they don’t forget that our forefathers believed that we are different in all aspects of life than Hindus”.

In doing so, he referred to the two-nation idea of the founding father of the state Muhammad Ali Jinnah, with which he formulated the fitting to his personal state for the Muslims of British India. This contains the fitting to the presently managed a part of Kaschmir, through which a transparent majority of the inhabitants is Muslim.

Pakistan won’t ever let the cashmere of their heroic wrestle towards the Indian occupation down, “said military chief Munir. His words show how closely the decades of conflict about the cashmere region, which has escalated again since the Indian air strikes on Wednesday, has been linked to the identity of the Pakistani state – and apparently also with the self -image of the acting military chief.

In India, in turn, the view of cashmere is influenced by the religiously colored Hindu nationalism, which has developed into the prevailing ideology under the government of Narendra Modis. In 2019, Modi had the autonomous special rights deleted, which the Indian constitution had guaranteed the part of Kaschmir controlled by new Delhi until then. He made a long -term promise of the Hindunationalists.

The local resistance to this decision was suppressed with arrests and criminal proceedings. The Muslim population fears that numerous Hindus could now be settled. New Delhi recently spoke of “normalization” in Kashmir, which was underlined by the demonstrative promotion of tourism.

This is also why modes were under pressure to present the terrorist attack in Pahangam as a crime committed from the outside and to proceed accordingly hard against Pakistan. At the same time, thousands of cashmere were temporarily arrested after the crime – an indication of alienation between parts of the population and the state. Part of the Muslim population wants more independence or the connection to Pakistan. Dissatisfaction has been fueling a militant resistance movement since the late 1980s, which made a name for itself with attacks and attacks on Indian security forces.

Historically, the conflict can be traced back to the time of the decolonization of the Indian subcontinent. The British colonial power had chosen the two -state solution, which had been followed by the then leader of the Muslim League and later founding father Pakistan, Jinnah. The various principalities within the former colony were allowed to decide whether they wanted to belong to Muslim Pakistan or the secular India with its Hindu majority.

At the time, the Muslims inhabited by Muslims Himalaya region was a Hindu Maharadscha, who was aiming for his own independent state and initially also received it. But when Pakistani fighters entered the state to force its connection to Pakistan, the Maharadscha explained the connection to the Indian Union to secure military support. The result was the first Indian-Pakistani War, which ended with the division of Kashmir along a ceasefire line, which is now called a line of control.

However, both countries continue to see the entire cashmere as part of their lawful territory. In 1965 another war broke out for the area, but it did not lead to territorial changes. In 1999 another military conflict in the Kargil high mountain region followed with hundreds of deaths on both sides. It was considered particularly dangerous because both countries were already nuclear powers at that time.

In addition to the regular armed forces, there are several Islamist groups in Pakistan who have committed themselves to the Kashmir connection to Pakistan and have pursued this goal with terrorist methods since the 1990s. The Pakistani secret service ISI has maintained connections to these groups in the past, partially financed and trained them.

The groups of Jaish-e-Mohammad (Army of Mohammed) and Lashkar-E-Taiba (army of pure) had committed several devastating attacks in India and in the Indian part of Kashmir. Terrorial attacks on Indian soldiers in Kashmir 2016 and 2019 answered India with retaliation on Pakistan. The then Pakistani army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa also swore to “by no means go away the Kashmiris alone”. However, he was said to have the striving to freeze the conflict as far as possible in order to develop Pakistan economically and to stabilize politically. After the Indian air strikes in 2019, he contributed to avoiding an escalation through the immediate release of a shot down Indian pilot.

His successor Munir now faces the question of how the cashmere conflict should shape its political heritage. In contrast to Bajwa, he is under massive pressure in terms of domestic policy. The military’s reputation has dropped to a historical low since the country’s most popular politician, the former Prime Minister Imran Khan, has been in custody. Khan and Munir are connected in personal hostility. Pakistan has always been dominated by the military.

But the manipulation of the most recent parliamentary election 2024 has additional broken. The safety scenario within the nation can be as unhealthy because it has not lengthy. The variety of terrorist assaults by Belutschische separatic and Islamists has elevated. Against this background, Munir could possibly be tried to profile himself with the cashmere battle.