Tim Willasey-Wilsey is a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at King’s College, London and a former senior British diplomat.
Pakistan has decided not to annex its parts of Kashmir. Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan are collectively known as Pakistan Held Kashmir-PHK. Islamabad fears that such a move would provide propaganda for India and that it could lead to serious disaffection, or even insurgency, in PHK amongst those who prefer independence over integration with Pakistan.
Pakistan has been deeply frustrated by the lack of global criticism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to revoke Article 370 and to annex those parts of Kashmir which it has administered since 1947; Indian Held Kashmir (IHK). In particular, Islamabad is disappointed that the Muslim world, with only a few exceptions, has failed to show solidarity with the Kashmiri people.
Pakistan’s diplomatic efforts have failed for a variety of reasons. Some Gulf countries have been irked by Pakistan’s recent foreign policy. Saudi Arabia has recently bailed out Pakistan’s economy but many Saudis remember Islamabad’s refusal to support them over Yemen when requested in 2015. The Saudis were also irritated by Pakistan’s initial willingness to attend a forum in Kuala Lumpur which Riyadh saw as a rival to the Jeddah-based Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). Other Arab states, notably the UAE, have invested in renewed relationships with India and have been keen to de-hyphenate their foreign policies on the Subcontinent.
A second and more injudicious approach by Pakistan has been to shock the international community by talking up the dangers of nuclear war. The President of Azad Kashmir, Masood Khan, told Newsweek magazine in October that “any military exchange will not remain limited, it can, and we fear it would, escalate to the nuclear level that is tantamount to nuclear Armageddon”. A few days earlier, Prime Minister Imran Khan told the United Nations "My belief is we will fight, and when a nuclear-armed country fights till the end, it will have consequences far beyond the borders.”
In the absence of diplomatic success, Pakistan then considered the option of annexing its two parts of Kashmir; Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan (formerly known as the Northern Areas). In December, Azad Kashmir’s Prime Minister Farooq Haider Khan even suggested in public that he might be the last Prime Minister of Azad Kashmir. His meaning was unambiguous.
The arguments for taking this step were substantial. India will never give up its parts of Kashmir (the mainly-Muslim Kashmir Valley, the largely Hindu area of Jammu and the Buddhist and Shia Muslim region of Ladakh). The chances of a plebiscite (as originally demanded by the UN) are negligible and the likelihood of a negotiated solution, such as the one which President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh so nearly agreed in 2008, are now minimal. Why not, therefore, reciprocate India’s move and seize Pakistan’s areas of the former princely state? The Line of Control would then become the de facto national border as so often proposed by mediators since the 1950s.
The arguments against might initially have seemed less compelling. Certainly annexation would damage Pakistan’s legal case at the UN; but the UN are most unlikely to solve the Kashmir dispute. Retaining the ‘moral high ground’ has limited practical value. The Chinese might prefer Pakistan to do nothing to disturb the security of its CPEC (China Pakistan Economic Corridor) which crosses Gilgit-Baltistan. On the other hand, China might welcome the certainty which would come with annexation. Pakistan must also have debated whether India would regard annexation as a casus belli. A junior Indian minister said in September that “the Modi government is now aiming at retrieving parts of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir to make them part of the Indian mainland”. But Pakistan would not have been deterred by such remarks. Its defences are considerable and reinforced, of course, by a nuclear capability.
So why did Pakistan hesitate? There was an understandable reluctance to gift India a rare public relations coup at a time when the Modi government has been under widespread attack for its Citizenship Amendment Act. But there was another equally cogent reason.
The answer can be found in a report published by Chatham House (the London-based think-tank) in 2010. It provided polling data from both Indian and Pakistan administered areas of Kashmir. The sample size was quite small (3774) but some of the results were fascinating.
The figures for the Indian-administered areas were predictable for Kashmir-watchers. 86% of respondents in Jammu and 87% in Udhampur wanted to be part of India whereas 82% in Srinagar and 95% in Baramula favoured independence. These figures include those who wished the LoC to become the international border. Pakistan would have been disappointed by how few people in IHK wished to join Pakistan; just 2%.
However, the much bigger news was on the other side of the Line of Control (LoC) in PHK. Although only 1% wished to become part of India, a hefty 44% wanted independence whereas 51% preferred to join Pakistan. In Poonch, those wishing independence reached 58%. For those who thought that residents of Azad Kashmir were more solidly in favour of remaining in Pakistan this came as a major surprise. Sadly, the Chatham House report did not produce polling data for Gilgit-Baltistan. It may be that Gilgit-Baltistan, with its very different demographics, would be more amenable to annexation.
Pakistan will have its own means of measuring the popular mood but it will have noted the furious response to Farooq Haider’s comments. The Pakistan army has spent the past decade fighting in the Tribal Areas on the Afghan frontier and knows a lot about the dangers of trying to impose central authority on unwilling or divided populations. It has concluded, for now, that the dangers of annexing Azad Kashmir are too great. The last thing that Pakistan needs is another insurgency; and one which would cause Islamabad considerable embarrassment. Islamabad would prefer any trouble in Kashmir to be associated only with India.
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