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Analysis: Pakistan's Other Border

Council on Foreign Relations

May 23, 2008
Author: Jayshree Bajoria

South Asia's nuclear-armed neighbors India and Pakistan resumed peace talks May 20 amid reminders of how vulnerable the two nations are to terrorism. Bombings in Jaipur (IANS) allegedly by Bangladeshi extremists and heightened tension (CSM) with Pakistan across the long-disputed border in Kashmir has New Delhi on edge. The U.S. State Department's 2007 report on terrorism ranked India among the world’s most terror-afflicted countries. Since peace talks began in 2004, India acknowledges that the level of infiltration by Islamist militants from Pakistan into India's part of Kashmir across the Line of Control (LOC) has decreased. Still, the question of Kashmir, a Muslim-majority territory which both India and Pakistan claim, remains devilishly difficult to resolve.

The May 20 talks produced only limited results. While India and Pakistan did not make much progress on Kashmir, they made efforts toward increasing cross-LOC movement of people and granting greater access to prisoners (BBC) in each other's jails. Pakistan also promised to work with India to combat terrorism (NDTV). In an interview to the Hindustan Times, however, Pakistan's former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who is now a partner in the ruling parliamentary coalition, dismissed India's concerns regarding militant operations in Pakistan. Pakistan, meanwhile, accuses India of fueling insurgency in its Balochistan province and is wary of India's increasing influence in Afghanistan. But experts say instability in Pakistan's government has narrowed the prospects (Bloomberg) for reaching any major agreements on Kashmir. The stability of the newly formed coalition in Islamabad is already threatened by disputes over the reinstatement of the judges sacked by President Pervez Musharraf in November 2007.

The United States would like to see a resolution to the Kashmir problem, given Pakistan's status as a crucible for militant extremism in the region.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2008 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.