Civil War in Kashmir

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The government presence in the area is ensured by military forces and special forces. Local police are not really used because of their sympathy for the insurgency movement. Since 1995 the Special Task Force (STF) et Special Operations Group (SOG) are operating in the area. Those forces were made of non-Muslims and non-Kashmiris police officers to ensure they will have no empathy for the insurgency. Since then, paramilitaries are also engaged in the conflict, like the Ikhwan-ul Muslimoon and Muslim Mujahidin group. Those groups are local auxiliary forces that were armed and trained by the Indian security forces. They function outside of the traditional Indian military framework but are still considered state agents and have indeed the duty to respect International Humanitarian Law and the rules of war. Since a 1990's law members of those forces are immune from being prosecuted for their actions in the Kashmir area which have led to the perpetration of gross human rights violations (as discussed in Part III of this paper) and have enlarged the power gap between insurgent’s groups and the government forces.

The Kashmiri insurgency is the non-state actor facing the government in this conflict. It is a heterogeneous community with numerous different groups having different views on the conflict. Some groups are secular and pro-independence groups like the JKLF, who was the single dominant rebel group the first year of recorded armed conflict (Uppsala Data Conflict Program – UDCP) and others are religious pro-Pakistani armed group, like the Hizb-ul Mujahidin, the Harakat-ul Ansar or the Lashkar-e-Taiba. The insurgency is thus fractionalized in several groups. The unity factor between all the different groups is to put an end to the Indian authority over Kashmir.

Kashmiri’s insurgency is not a united front and internal disputes among them can sometimes be deadly, like in the 1990’s when insurgent groups were really divided and those internal divisions led to confrontations within factions of the group, with the Hizb-ul Mujahidin, launching a campaign of killing in 1991 against pro-independence fighters and pro-independence political and religious figures.

The intra-state conflict between India and Kashmiri insurgent has always been dramatically linked to the inter-state dispute between India and Pakistan. A secondary party to a conflict is a party giving support to one of the primary but without being directly involved in the conflict. Pakistan seems to have that kind of role in this conflict, especially because of the violent history it shares with India about sovereignty on Kashmir. Pakistan has always denied the accusation of India on training and arming the insurgency.

India also accused them of allowing people to cross the Line of Control between Indian and Pakistani Kashmir for those people to join the insurgency, which has been also declared in some medias. People crossing the Line of Control are usually veterans of the Afghan war that want to take part in the jihad against the Indian oppression. Since they are taking part in the confrontations and are giving support to the armed action, they can be considered not as secondary party but rather as nuclear/primary party.

There's a lack of confidence in the political powers in place in Kashmir as they are seen as too close to the Indian government and not really advocating for the independence of Kashmir but more as the puppets of the central government. Moreover, elections in Kashmir have had a tradition on being rigged, so the population seems to have no trust in elected leaders at all or at least don't think that they will be the one able to make changes in the situation.

Regarding the leaders of Kashmiri insurgent groups, they seem to have win the heart of the population but major divisions still exist inside the Kashmiri insurgence, between those who are fighting to access Pakistan and those who are fighting for independence. The internal divisions and the fact that the groups often rely on violence to end their dispute can weaken the all insurgency movement as their interests in the conflict are different in terms of outcome, one solution will not be the one that will be the most satisfying for all. Moreover, those internal divisions can lead to a distrust from the population in the movement, making them lose their support and then a strategical advantage in the conflict.

Both parties have a harsh vision of the others as they seem to feel like they cannot live together peacefully. Kashmiri insurgents have a great aversion against the Indian government and their institution as they feel discriminate and have experienced a severe and violent counter-insurgency by the Indian authorities. We could almost say they see India as "the oppressor". Their actions don't seem to be guided by fear or desire of revenge but more with the will to threatened this adversary, by violent and non-violent means.

During the period 2000-2010 Kashmiri insurgent’s groups were considered by the governments as terrorists, in order for them to be able to use the "global war on terror" justification every time they were told they were too violent in the way they were waging the counter-insurgency. It is true that numerous insurgent groups in the Kashmiri insurgency have or are suspected to have close links with broader terrorist's organization such as Al-Qaeda.

The Kashmiri conflict seems to be facing a stalemate since the objectives the parties are going for can be perceived as total ones. The fact that it is a protracted conflict that is ongoing for several decades now is giving the impression that every party consider its own objective or position as totally non-negotiable and are unwilling to compromise on them. On the one side there is the Kashmiri insurgents and their willingness to separate from India for good, by either accessing Pakistan or becoming independent, thus they are going for either secession or access to another country. On the other side there is the India government and authorities who are not willing to give up on Kashmir, mostly because having a region with a minority is good for the self-proclaimed biggest democracy in the world, as it reflects how secular and democratic India is appearing to be, but also because Kashmir is a real strategic area in terms of location, as mentioned in the introduction. So, the issue at stake seems to be revolution against keeping the status quo; that sounds like incompatible objectives that cannot be solved outside of a zero-sum conflict framework, even though there has been attempt to negotiate an end to the conflict, as we will discuss later. The intractability of the conflict, however, can be challenged here because the issues at stake concern status and power,