Kashmir: Sources of conflict, dimensions of peace

This article identifies and develops essential elements of a multi-dimensional approach to gradually incrementally de-escalate the Kashmir conflict. It first pinpoints the essential features of that conflict, stressing that the problem has both exogenous sources in the form of the broader regional conflict between India and Pakistan, and endogenous sources, in the form of the existence of several fundamentally different political allegiances and preferences among the socially heterogeneous population of Kashmir. It also explains why neither plebiscite nor partition present viable means of resolving the Kashmir conundrum, using analogies and examples from Bosnia-Hercegovina and Quebec in the process. The article then develops one by one three interlocking dimensions of an alternative peace-building approach which takes account of the complex intersection of multiple, cumulating 'domestic' and 'international' factors that collectively define the contemporary Kashmir problem. This three-track approach is inspired by the ongoing strategy of building peace in northern Ireland and derives much of its substance from the central aspects of the Good Friday Agreement. The approach takes into account the legitimate concerns of Indian and pakistani state elites with basic issues of territorial sovereignty, national interests and security, while accommodating the equally legitimate aspiration to self-rule of a large segment of the population of Kashmir.