{
  "id": "RL31587",
  "type": "CRS Report",
  "typeId": "REPORTS",
  "number": "RL31587",
  "active": false,
  "source": "EveryCRSReport.com",
  "versions": [
    {
      "source": "EveryCRSReport.com",
      "id": 101389,
      "date": "2002-09-30",
      "retrieved": "2016-05-24T20:04:10.388941",
      "title": "Kashmiri Separatists: Origins, Competing Ideologies, and Prospects for Resolution of the Conflict",
      "summary": "The recent military standoff and threatened nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan have\nlately\nfocused congressional attention on the longstanding territorial dispute over the former princely state\nof Kashmir. Although recent trips to the region by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and\nDeputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage have dampened the rhetoric of both nations' leaders,\nstate elections set for October of 2002 on the Indian side of the Line of Control raise the specter of\nmore violence in the disputed area and a continued threat of war. And although Pakistani President\nPervez Musharraf has largely reduced infiltrations by Islamic militants into Jammu and Kashmir\nstate in India, recent reports indicate that this may be an unsustainable long-term policy for any\nPakistani leader, at least in the country's current political climate. Thus despite India's insistence\nthat the Kashmiri insurgency is a domestic issue and adamant rejection of any international\nintervention, the dispute has been seen by many State Department officials as \"that other conflict\"\nwhose nuclear character may make the dispute as dangerous to regional stability as that of the most\nrecent round of Israeli-Palestinian conflict.\n  This report focuses exclusively on the uprising in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir,\nwhich has been disputed since both countries became independent in 1947. By many accounts the\nuprising began when anger over an allegedly rigged election in 1987 became a militant insurgency\nby 1989. Since the end of the 1999 fighting in Kargil, which U.S. officials say came close to\nbecoming a full scale war, the uprising has become the central point of contention between the two\ncountries. India believes that Pakistan is using Islamic militant attacks to fight a proxy war over\nKashmir, while Pakistan accuses India of refusing to engage in meaningful negotiation. Examining\nboth the Indian and Pakistani strategies and perspectives in Kashmir, this report outlines the various\nparties to the conflict, including descriptions of the main militant groups active in Kashmir, and\nprovides an analysis of three possible settlements that policy makers have recently proposed for the\nregion.\n  \n  Many have argued that militant forces and political leaders in the Kashmir insurgency have, in\nrecent years, begun to fall into two competing groups. The first group has a Kashmiri nationalist,\nor  Kashmiriyat , vision of the former princely state, and is largely struggling for complete\nindependence from both India and Pakistan. The second group, originating in the\n\" jihadi \" subculture\nin Pakistan and Afghanistan, sees the Kashmir dispute as a religious conflict to free an oppressed\nIslamic population from the rule of neo-colonial powers (mainly India, but also including Pakistan). \nSome extremist members of this group see the conflict as the first battle in a larger struggle to build\na pan-Islamic state throughout South Asia and re-establish a central Sunni leader, or\n Caliph . The\nreport outlines the battle that has emerged between the members of these groups and the effect that\nit has had on the uprising as a whole.",
      "type": "CRS Report",
      "typeId": "REPORTS",
      "active": false,
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      "topics": []
    }
  ],
  "topics": [
    "Foreign Affairs",
    "Intelligence and National Security"
  ]
}