The Kashmir Issue || BCS Written International Affairs

👉🏻The Kashmir conflict is a territorial conflict primarily between India and Pakistan, and China as a third-party role over the Kashmir region.

👉🏻The conflict started after the partition of India in 1947 as both India and Pakistan claimed the entirety of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir as a direct dispute over the region that escalated into three wars between India and Pakistan and several other armed skirmishes. 👉🏻Pakistan has recognized Chinese sovereignty over the Trans-Karakoram Tract and Aksai Chin since 1963.

👉🏻 India controls approximately 55% of the land area of the region and 70% of its population, Pakistan controls approximately 30% of the land, while China controls the remaining 15%. 👉🏻India administers Jammu, the Kashmir Valley, most of Ladakh, and the Siachen Glacier. Pakistan administers Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan. China administers the Aksai Chin region, the mostly uninhabited Trans-Karakoram Tract, and part of the Demchok sector. 👉🏻After the partition of India and a rebellion in the western districts of the state, Pakistani tribal militias invaded Kashmir, leading the Hindu ruler of Jammu and Kashmir to join India and starting the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947 which ended with an UN-mediated ceasefire along a line that was eventually named the Line of Control.

👉🏻After further fighting in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 and the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, the Simla Agreement formally established the Line of Control between the two nations’ controlled territories.

👉🏻In 1999, armed conflict between India and Pakistan broke out again in the Kargil War over the Kargil district.

👉🏻Since 1989, Kashmiri protest movements were created to voice Kashmir’s disputes and grievances with the Indian government in the Indian-controlled Kashmir Valley, with some Kashmiri separatists in armed conflict with the Indian government based on the demand for self-determination.

👉🏻The 2010s were marked by further unrest erupting within the Kashmir Valley. The 2010 Kashmir unrest began after an alleged fake encounter between local youth and security forces. 👉🏻Thousands of youths pelted security forces with rocks, burned government offices, and attacked railway stations and official vehicles in steadily intensifying violence. 👉🏻The Indian government blamed separatists and Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based militant group, for stoking the 2010 protests.

👉🏻The 2016 Kashmir unrest erupted after killing of a Hizbul Mujahideen militant, Burhan Wani, by Indian security forces.

👉🏻Further unrest in the region erupted after the 2019 Pulwama attack.

👉🏻According to scholars, Indian forces have committed many human rights abuses and acts of terror against the Kashmiri civilian population including extrajudicial killing, rape, torture, and enforced disappearances.

👉🏻According to Amnesty International, no member of the Indian military deployed in Jammu and Kashmir has been tried for human rights violations in a civilian court as of June 2015, although there have been military court-martials held.

👉🏻Amnesty International has also accused the Indian government of refusing to prosecute perpetrators of abuses in the region.