A recurring conflict
July 17, 2014
On Wednesday, July 16, India accused the Pakistani military of killing one of its border guards and injuring seven other people by unilaterally firing along their international border.
Indian officials said the "unprovoked" firing lasted for several hours at a military post in Indian-administered Kashmir. "One Border Security Force officer died and four others were injured," Rajesh Kumar, an Indian police inspector general, told the AFP news agency.
Responding to the Indian claims, Pakistani military officials said it was the Indian army which first attacked the Pakistani Rangers, and that they only fired back in response. No casualty has been reported on the Pakistani side of Kashmir.
A territorial dispute over the northern Kashmir region has been going on between India and Pakistan for more than six decades, with both nuclear-armed countries claiming the territory in its entirety. About 40 UN military observers in Kashmir monitor the Line of Control (LoC) between the two countries that was officially agreed upon in 1949. India and Pakistan have fought two wars over Kashmir since their independence from Britain in 1947.
New Delhi accuses Islamabad of providing financial and military support to Kashmiri separatists who have been waging a deadly insurgency in the Himalayan region since 1989. The fighting between Indian security forces and insurgents has left tens of thousands of people dead.
Peace process at stake
India and Pakistan have largely respected the ceasefire - which was renewed in 2003 - albeit sporadic violations are common. Observers say that the recent border clashes could intensify if both governments do not act swiftly to pacify the situation. They are of the view that the skirmishes have exposed once again the fragility of the Indo-Pakistani peace process, which took off in 2012 after a long hiatus.
The 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai - believed to have been carried out by Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based terrorist group - dealt a major blow to peace efforts between the two rival nations. But analysts say the hanging of Ajmal Kasab, the sole surviving gunman of the attacks, in November last year provided a good opportunity for the leaders of the two countries to bury the hatchet and move ahead.
The Indo-Pakistani relations saw a major boost in May this year when Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif visited New Delhi on the invitation of his India counterpart Narendra Modi to attend the Indian premier's inauguration ceremony.
Farooq Sulehria, a London-based journalist and researcher, says that every time relations between the two countries begin to ease, there are always some "elements" which try to derail the peace process.
"There has never been a real peace process between India and Pakistan. It is only 'cooling down' of emotions and tensions for a brief period of time. This has been happening since 1947," Sulehria said.
A re-emerging conflict
Some analysts fear that the Kashmir dispute is resurfacing, and that it might have a negative impact on the efforts made by Sharif and Modi. On Thursday, July 17, Pakistan's foreign office spokesperson Tasnim Aslam said that Kashmir was a disputed territory under a 1948 United Nations Security Council resolution, and that it would remain so until the UN resolution was implemented.
"We do not accept the accession of Kashmir to India," Aslam said.
Aslam was reacting to India's request to the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) to vacate its office building in New Delhi. Islamabad said the move was an attempt to change the legal status of the Kashmir dispute.
"Asking the UN observers to move out of a building is inconsequential in the context of the status of Jammu and Kashmir. There is a reason why UNMOGIP is present in the first place. Asking them to move out of the building does not abolish the mandate which was given by the UN Security Council in 1951 under Resolution 91," Aslam told reporters in Islamabad at foreign office's weekly press conference.
Baseer Naveed, a senior researcher at the Asian Human Rights Commission in Hong Kong, told DW that if the Kashmir conflict persisted, fundamentalist groups in India and Pakistan would benefit from it. He said that right-wing groups in both countries wanted war and animosity, and that the leadership of both nations should sit down and resolve the dispute.