Kashmir conflict

India claims the entire erstwhile British Indian princely state of Jammu and Kashmir based on an instrument of accession signed in 1947. Pakistan claims most of the region based on its Muslim-majority population, whereas China claims the largely uninhabited regions of Aksai Chin and the Shaksgam Valley.

The Kashmir conflict is a territorial conflict over the Kashmir region, primarily between India and Pakistan, and also between China and India in the northeastern portion of the region.[1][2] The conflict started after the partition of India in 1947 as both India and Pakistan claimed the entirety of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. It is a dispute over the region that escalated into three wars between India and Pakistan and several other armed skirmishes. India controls approximately 55% of the land area of the region that includes Jammu, the Kashmir Valley, most of Ladakh, the Siachen Glacier,[3][4] and 70% of its population; Pakistan controls approximately 30% of the land area that includes Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan; and China controls the remaining 15% of the land area that includes the Aksai Chin region, the mostly uninhabited Trans-Karakoram Tract, and part of the Demchok sector.[3][note 1]

After the partition of India and a rebellion in the western districts of the state, Pakistani tribal militias invaded Kashmir, leading the Hindu ruler of Jammu and Kashmir to join India.[11] The resulting Indo-Pakistani War ended with a UN-mediated ceasefire along a line that was eventually named the Line of Control.[12][13] In 1962, China invaded and fought a war with India along the disputed Indo-Chinese border, including in Indian administered-Ladakh, marking their entry to the Kashmir conflict.[14] In 1965, Pakistan attempted to infiltrate Indian-administered Kashmir to precipitate an insurgency there, resulting in another war fought by the two countries over the region. After further fighting during the war of 1971, the Simla Agreement formally established the Line of Control between the territories under Indian and Pakistani control.[15][16] In 1999, an armed conflict between the two countries broke out again in Kargil with no effect on the status quo.[17]

In 1989, an armed insurgency erupted against Indian rule in Indian-administered Kashmir Valley, based on demands for self-determination after years of political disenfranchisement and alienation, with logistical support from Pakistan.[18][19][20][21] Spearheaded by a group seeking creation of an independent state, the insurgency was taken over within the first few years of its outbreak by Pakistan-backed Jihadist groups striving for merger with Pakistan.[22][23][24][25] The militancy continued through the 1990s and early 2000s—by which time it was being driven largely by foreign militants[26][27] and spread to parts of the adjoining Jammu region[28][29][30][31]—but declined thereafter. The insurgency was actively opposed in Jammu and Ladakh, where it revived long-held demands for autonomy from Kashmiri dominance and greater integration with India.[32][33][34][35] The fighting resulted in tens of thousands of casualties, both combatant and civilian. The militancy also resulted in the exodus of Kashmiri Hindus from the predominantly Muslim Kashmir Valley in the early 1990s. Counterinsurgency by the Indian government was coupled with repression of the local population and increased militarisation of the region, while various insurgent groups engaged in a variety of criminal activity.[36][37][38][39] The 2010s were marked by civil unrest within the Kashmir Valley, fuelled by unyielding militarisation, rights violations, mis-rule and corruption,[40][41] wherein protesting local youths violently clashed with Indian security forces,[42] with large-scale demonstrations taking place during the 2010 unrest triggered by an allegedly staged encounter,[43][44] and during the 2016 unrest which ensued after the killing of a young militant from a Jihadist group, who had risen to popularity through social media.[45][46][47] Further unrest in the region erupted after the 2019 Pulwama attack.[48]

According to scholars, Indian forces have committed many human rights abuses and acts of terror against the Kashmiri civilian population, including extrajudicial killing, rape, torture, and enforced disappearances.[49][50] According to Amnesty International, no member of the Indian military deployed in Jammu and Kashmir has been tried for human rights violations in a civilian court as of June 2015, although military courts-martial have been held.[51] Amnesty International has also accused the Indian government of refusing to prosecute perpetrators of abuses in the region.[52] Moreover, there have been instances of human rights abuses in Azad Kashmir, including but not limited to political repressions and forced disappearances.[53] Brad Adams, the Asia director at Human Rights Watch said in 2006 "Although 'Azad' means 'free', the residents of Azad Kashmir are anything but free. The Pakistani authorities govern Azad Kashmir with strict controls on basic freedoms".[54] The OHCHR reports on Kashmir released two reports on "the situation of human rights in Indian-Administered Kashmir and Pakistan-Administered Kashmir".

  1. ^ Yahuda, Michael (2 June 2002). "China and the Kashmir crisis". BBC. Retrieved 22 March 2019.
  2. ^ Chang, I-wei Jennifer (9 February 2017). "China's Kashmir Policies and Crisis Management in South Asia". United States Institute of Peace. Retrieved 22 March 2019.
  3. ^ a b Slater, Christopher L.; Hobbs, Joseph J. (2003). Essentials of World Regional Geography (4 ed.). Brooks/Cole Thomson Learning. p. 312. ISBN 9780534168100. LCCN 2002106314 – via Internet Archive. India now holds about 55% of the old state of Kashmir, Pakistan 30%, and China 15%.
  4. ^ Malik, V. P. (2010). Kargil from Surprise to Victory (paperback ed.). HarperCollins Publishers India. p. 54. ISBN 9789350293133.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference Time was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ "Kashmir: region, Indian subcontinent". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 16 July 2016.
  7. ^ "Jammu & Kashmir". European Foundation for South Asian Studies (EFSAS). Retrieved 4 May 2020.
  8. ^ Snow, Shawn (19 September 2016). "Analysis: Why Kashmir Matters". The Diplomat. Retrieved 4 May 2020.
  9. ^ Hobbs, Joseph J. (March 2008). World Regional Geography. CengageBrain. p. 314. ISBN 978-0495389507.
  10. ^ Margolis, Eric (2004). War at the Top of the World: The Struggle for Afghanistan, Kashmir and Tibet (paperback ed.). Routledge. p. 56. ISBN 9781135955595.
  11. ^ Copland, Ian (2003). "Review of War and Diplomacy in Kashmir: 1947-48. By C. Dasgupta". Pacific Affairs. 76 (1): 144–145. ISSN 0030-851X. JSTOR 40024025. As is well known, this Hindu-ruled Muslim majority state could conceivably have joined either India or Pakistan, but procrastinated about making a choice until a tribal invasion - the term is not contentious - forced the ruler's hand.
  12. ^ Lyon, Peter (2008). Conflict Between India and Pakistan: An Encyclopedia. ABC-Clio. p. 80. ISBN 9781576077122.
  13. ^ "Kashmir | History, People, & Conflict". Encyclopedia Britannica. Archived from the original on 30 April 2015.
  14. ^ Bose, Sumantra (2003), Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace, Harvard University Press, p. 76, ISBN 0-674-01173-2, The intervening years [between 1958 and 1962] were notable for China's entry into the international politics of the Kashmir conflict. China's relations with India deteriorated precipitously after the Chinese annexation of Tibet in 1959, and rising tensions flared into a military conflict in late 1962 at a number of disputed border flashpoints stretching in an east-west arc along the Himalayan ranges, including a desolate area called Aksai Chin on Ladakh's frontier with Tibet and China's Xinjiang province.
  15. ^ "Simla Agreement". Bilateral/Multilateral Documents. Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India. Retrieved 27 September 2013.
  16. ^ Fortna, Virginia (2004). Peace time: cease-fire agreements and the durability of peace. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-11512-2.
  17. ^ MacDonald, Myra (2017). Defeat is an Orphan: How Pakistan Lost the Great South Asian War. Oxford University Press. pp. 27, 53, 64, 66, 67. ISBN 978-1-84904-858-3. p. 27: It was not so much that India won the Great South Asian War but that Pakistan lost it.
    p. 53: The story of the Kargil War—Pakistan's biggest defeat by India since 1971 —is one that goes to the heart of why it lost the Great South Asian War.
    p. 64: Afterwards, Musharraf and his supporters would claim that Pakistan won the war militarily and lost it diplomatically. In reality, the military and diplomatic tides turned against Pakistan in tandem.
    p. 66: For all its bravado, Pakistan had failed to secure even one inch of land.
    p. 66-67:Less than a year after declaring itself a nuclear-armed power, Pakistan had been humiliated diplomatically and militarily.
  18. ^ Ganguly 2016, p. 10: "In December I989, an indigenous, ethno-religious insurgency erupted in the Indian-controlled portion of the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir. The internal dimensions of this crisis, like that in the Punjab, also stemmed primarily from various shortcomings in India's federal order.".
  19. ^ Metcalf & Metcalf 2006, p. 273: "The year 1989 marked the beginning of a continuing insurgency, fuelled by covert support from Pakistan. The uprising had its origins in Kashmiri frustration at the state’s treatment by Delhi. The imposition of leaders chosen by the centre, with the manipulation of local elections, and the denial of what Kashmiris felt was a promised autonomy boiled over at last in the militancy of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, a movement devoted to political, not religious, objectives.".
  20. ^ Hussain 2018, p. 104: "In the late 1980s, a small group of Kashmiris who had lost faith in Indian democracy decided to take the long-standing conflict between India and Pakistan to a new level. These individuals, mostly jailed MUF political activists, collectively decided to go to Pakistani-administered Kashmir in search of training and weapons. Inspired by the ideology of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), a party that advocated for an independent Kashmir, these individuals, with the support of Pakistan intelligence agencies, initiated an armed rebellion in the Valley and popularized the slogan of aazadi (Khan, 1992, 131–41).".
  21. ^ Mathur, Shubh (2016). The Human Toll of the Kashmir Conflict: Grief and Courage in a South Asian Borderland. Palgrave Macmillan US. pp. 21–. ISBN 978-1-137-54622-7. writers like Baba (2014), Bose (2005), Schofield (2010) and Robinson (2013) see it as an indigenous Kashmiri response to the decades of political repression and the denial of the Kashmiri right to self-determination.
  22. ^ Chowdhary 2016, pp. 111–112: "As militancy gained ground, there was mushrooming of militant organisations with different ideologies and different objectives. While India remained the common target for all these organisations, there were lot of internal differences. The difference was not merely represented by the ultimate objectives of JKLF (complete independence of erstwhile princely state of Jammu and Kashmir from both India and Pakistan) and Hizb (merger with Pakistan) but also with regard to the role of religion in the movement. A number of outfits like Allah Tigers were keen on enforcing ‘Islamic’ code on the people as well. It ‘went about smashing Srinagar’s bars, closing down cinema halls, video parlours and beauty parlours, saying that they were un-Islamic. It was decreed that all women would wear the burqa, and dress according to Islamic tradition’ (Sidhva, 1992: 40–2). There were others who saw armed militancy in Kashmir as part of the Pan-Islamic struggle being waged at the global level. These were jehadis who entered the scenario of militancy quite early. Lashkar-e-Toiba, according to Sikand, entered Kashmir in 1990 and intensified its activities in 1993.".
  23. ^ Hussain 2021, (p. 324) "Pakistani support gave a religious tone to the armed insurgency in Kashmir, overshadowing the nationalist vision of an independent and united state of Jammu and Kashmir. ... Fearful that the independent ideology of the JKLF would sideline their interests in the Valley, Pakistan abandoned the JKLF and supported militant groups that would advocate Kashmir’s accession to Pakistan." (p. 325) "After the intervention of Pakistan in Kashmir post 1989, the Jamaat saw Kashmir as a part of the worldwide Muslim community, and its incorporation into the Muslim state of Pakistan as the first step toward eventual unity of all Muslims. Thereafter, the party provided a religious rationale for advocating Kashmir’s accession to Pakistan, and defined the armed struggle against India as a holy war—a jihad. ... In the early 1990s, the Jamaat took center stage in the militant movement, and its armed wing, the Hizbul Mujahideen (HM), gave the jihad a practical shape. This powerful group, funded and supported by Pakistan’s intelligence services, molded the insurgency to suit Pakistan’s interests." (p. 326) "Pakistan also nurtured several small Valley Islamist groups like the Allah Tigers, Al-Umar, and the Muslim Mujahedeen to fragment the support base of the JKLF and popularize the idea of waging an armed struggle along Islamic lines. ... The JKLF’s increasing marginalization in the Valley was accompanied by the suppression of the organization in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.".
  24. ^ Warikoo 2011, p. 78: "During the first phase of militancy in Kashmir which started in 1989, the Islamist militant groups strived to “bring structural changes at cultural levels of Kashmir society”, seeking to Islamicize the socio-political set-up in the Valley to bring it in tune with the Islamic state of Pakistan and the Muslim Ummah. Though militancy in Kashmir was launched initially by the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) ostensibly to achieve azadi (independence), within a few months a number of militant groups emerged advocating Nizam-e-Mustafa as the objective of their struggle. Now the term azadi gave way to jihad. Various Islamist groups like Jamaat-e-Islami and its militant wing Hizbul Mujahideen, women’s wing Dukhtaran-e-Millat, Jamiat- ul-Mujahideen, Allah Tigers, Jamiat-ul-Ulemma Islam, Al Badr, Al Jihad Force, Al Umar Mujahideen, Muslim Mujahideen, Islamic Students League, Zia Tigers etc. proclaimed the objective of their struggle as Islamicization of socio-political and economic set-up, merger of Kashmir with Pakistan, unification of Ummah and establishment of an Islamic Caliphate.".
  25. ^ Webb 2012, p. 44: "The first wave of militancy from 1988 through to 1991 was very much an urban, middle-class affair dominated by the secular, pro-independence Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) (Schofield 1996: 240). Much of the fighting was concentrated in Srinagar, and also certain rural centers such as Anantnag, Baramulla and Kupwara, while most of the militants were unemployed university graduates who had campaigned for the MUF in the 1987 election. ... Gradually the number of militant groups began to increase, with the JKLF losing its position of dominance to the Islamist, pro-Pakistan Hizbul-Mujahideen in the early 1990s (Jones 2008; Kumar 2002). The rise of Islamic, pro-Pakistan groups is frequently associated with a shift to a more rural-based militancy (Howard 1999: 40).".
  26. ^ Chowdhary 2016, p. 112: "According to [Sikand], after the Mujahideen victory in Afghanistan in 1992, ‘numerous jihadist outfits in Pakistan began turning their attention towards Kashmir. By the late 1990s, these Pakistani jihadists were playing a key role in the fighting in Kashmir, eclipsing even local Kashmiri groups’ (Sikand, 2001: 222). Harkat-ul-Ansar, Al-Faran, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and Jaish-e-Mohammed were such organisations that dominated the scenario of militancy at different points in time. The increased number of foreign militants in the period after mid-1990s gets reflected from the large percentage of the killing of these militants by Indian security forces as compared to the local militants – from 5.7 per cent foreign militants killed in 1995, the percentage was increased to 53.9 per cent in 2000 and 69.38 per cent in 2003 (Routray, 2012: 182).".
  27. ^ Behera 2006, 155: "With the Hazratbal siege and surrender of JKLF militants in April 1993, the insurgency took a new course. It became increasingly difficult for the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen to recruit members of the Kashmiri cadre. Attributing this to fatigue, Pakistan decided to push more Afghan veterans, Pakistani nationals, and foreign mercenaries into the Valley. This trend gathered momentum in 1996, when the Taliban marched into Kabul.".
  28. ^ Kumar & Puri 2009, p. 268: "By the end of the 1990s, there were more Pakistanis than Kashmiris amongst the mujahideen. The Lashkar’s list of ‘martyred commanders’, for example, named men from all over Pakistan. The mujahideen had more sophisticated arms, communications and planning, and they inflicted much greater damage in raids on army and police posts, convoys and barracks, government buildings and civilians. Within Kashmir, conflict spread from the Kashmir valley to the Muslim majority districts of Jammu, where Hindus and nomads began to be targeted in the border villages.".
  29. ^ Bhatia 2020, p. 8: "Insurgency originated in Kashmir as an indigenous secessionist movement. However, by the time it spread widely to various parts of Jammu, it had turned extremist and ruthlessly violent in character due to the involvement of non-Kashmiri militants sneaking in from across the India–Pakistan borders. For around a decade, insurgency was at its peak in various parts of Jammu, resulting in public killings due to frequent incidents of blasts and attacks by militants in and around Jammu city.".
  30. ^ Bose 2021, p. 100: "With the help of the renegades, the Indian forces were able to reassert control over most of the Kashmir Valley. Guerrilla activity moved out to remote, forested parts of the Valley, and in the late 1990s a new, deadly theatre of insurgency opened up in the Jammu region’s Rajouri and Poonch districts (on which more below), in addition to the Doda-Kishtwar zone.".
  31. ^ Bhatia 2021, p. 84: "That being so, when Kashmir-based insurgency spread to parts of Jammu in the late 1990s and early 2000, many Muslim youth of these districts joined insurgency alongside Kashmiris and many extremist Pakistan-backed groups. Insurgency, thus, took a brutal shape when it hit these regions and many communal killings have been recorded during those periods. Hindus were targeted and killed in a few villages, during marriage ceremonies and while travelling in buses (Swami, 1998, Puri, 2008). In these districts, the responses of the Hindu communities was also extreme, as many vehemently endorsed the right-wing politics.".
  32. ^ Zutshi 2019, p. 133: "Far from desiring autonomy from India, Jammu and Ladakhi politics was based on demands for autonomy from Kashmir and its repressive governments instead, and greater integration with India. … The insurgency, thus, widened the divides among the sub-regions of Kashmir, the long-term repercussions of which on state politics are only recently becoming clearer.".
  33. ^ Behera 2006, (p. 115) "The winter of 1989–90 marked the onset of the Kashmiri insurgency … while the Ladakhi Buddhists began their violent agitation for status as a union territory in August 1989. The next few years witnessed a growing communalization of the political idiom, strategies, and goals of various political movements in the state. Where the Kashmiris cast their demand for secession in terms of a Hindu-Muslim divide, especially after the Pandit exodus in 1990, the Buddhists mobilized against the Kashmiris on the basis of a Buddhist-Muslim divide, which they also extended to the Shias of Leh, who are almost all of Balti stock and ethnically similar to Ladakhi Buddhists." (p. 122) "After suffering political and economic neglect at the hands of successive state governments, Jammu began making demands again as well. These ranged from a separate state of Jammu to regional autonomy and a regional council. Significantly, the proposals were all rooted in Jammu’s regional aspirations, while the religious (Hindu) identity remained dormant.".
  34. ^ Schofield 2003, pp. 184–185:"Neither the Buddhists of Ladakh nor the Hindus of Jammu share the objectives of the Muslim Kashmiris of the valley. Their main concern has been to press for autonomy against dominance from the more populous valley. … In Ladakh, the troubles between Muslims of the Kargil district and Buddhists which erupted in 1989 have now subsided. … However, even the Muslims of Jammu, who are not Kashmiri speaking, do not necessarily support the demands of the valley Kashmiri Muslims. … Mistrust, however, remains between Muslims and the displaced Kashmiri Pandits, some of whom are now demanding a separate homeland in the valley for the 700,000 Pandits living in different parts of India.".
  35. ^ Metcalf & Metcalf 2006, p. 273–274: "Upwards of 100,000 of [Kashmiri Hindus] left the state during the early 1990s; their cause was quickly taken up by the Hindu right. As the government sought to locate ‘suspects’ and weed out Pakistani ‘infiltrators’, the entire population was subjected to a fierce repression. By the end of the 1990s, the Indian military presence had escalated to approximately one soldier or paramilitary policeman for every five Kashmiris, and some 30,000 people had died in the conflict. Subsequent years saw a reduction in violence coupled with widespread participation in Indian elections, and a consequent lowering of troop strength despite the absence of a settlement. The general consensus is that the Kashmiris seek a degree of regional autonomy, not a union with Pakistan.".
  36. ^ Kumar & Puri 2009, p. 268: "The Indian government adopted increasingly draconian measures in response, and civilians were frequently trapped in the battle between Indian troops and the Islamic militias. The counter-insurgency policy of using erstwhile mujahideen to fight present ones worsened an already fragile law and order infrastructure, letting in revenge killings. By the end of the decade, more than 35,000 people had been killed, the vast majority Muslim, and families who had lost one member at the hands of Islamic militias and another at the hands of the security forces were more a norm than exceptions in the Kashmir valley.".
  37. ^ Webb 2012, p. 45: "The Islamization and internationalization of militancy in Kashmir was also accompanied by its criminalization (Schofield 1996: 267–8). Initially the militants enjoyed wide popular support; however, as people became increasingly war-weary from the steadily mounting number of casualties, this support gradually began to evaporate. Consequently, the militants were forced to resort to tactics such as kidnapping to extort money and food from the local population (Ganguly 1997: 139; Baweja 1995: 19–25). This, however, only further alienated the militants from common Kashmiris and initiated a vicious cycle of increasing resentment and violence perpetrated both by the militants and Indian security forces, who increasingly engaged in torture, rape and extra-judicial killings (Amnesty International 1995; Asia Watch and Physicians for Human Rights 1993). Indian apologists claim that such allegations are usually false or grossly exaggerated and point out that the militants themselves are guilty of the same crimes (Kumar n.d.: 136). That both sides of the conflict are guilty of human rights abuses is undeniable, as is the fact that most victims of the violence are innocent civilians. Various estimates of the number killed since 1989 range from 20,000 to 50,000, while some 200,000, mostly Hindu, Kashmiris have fled the Valley and live as refugees in Jammu and elsewhere in India (Wirsing 1998: 126).".
  38. ^ Bose 2021, pp. 131–132: "That new phase of the Kashmir conflict came to be symbolised not by the gun-wielding insurgent – armed militancy did not revive significantly – but by the stone-pelter. Mass stone-pelting at the enforcers of the state-of-exception regime revived a decades-old tradition of protest in the Valley, which had been temporarily displaced by the Kalashnikov-carrying insurgents from 1990 to the mid-2000s. Major stone-pelting uprisings led by a new generation of youth born in the 1990s broke out in the Kashmir Valley in 2010 and again in 2016, and during the decade the stone replaced the AK-47s wielded by the previous generation as the weapon of everyday struggle.".
  39. ^ Webb 2012, p. 49: "Since mid-2010, Srinagar and other areas of the Valley have been regularly shut down by violent protests, strikes and curfews, as a new generation of Kashmiris who have grown up surrounded by political violence continue to press the claim for separation from India.".
  40. ^ Snedden 2021, p. 280: "In 2010, over 120 ‘unarmed’ Kashmiris were killed by police in protests that followed the security forces’ alleged staged killings of three Kashmiri civilians in Kupwara District.75 (Six Army personnel were later court martialled and sentenced to life imprisonment, but were bailed in 2017 pending a retrial.) One of the protesters was a young Kashmiri whose death further enraged Kashmiris.".
  41. ^ Chowdhary 2016, p. 151: "However, it was in 2010 that Kashmir witnessed massive resistance politics. For five months of summer, the normal political processes came to a halt and whole of Kashmir was overtaken by separatist upsurge. The background to this upsurge was provided by the continuous eruption over the incidents of human rights violations by the security forces. Though there were other protests in the early months of 2010, it was the case of the killing of three civilians in Machail sector that resulted in massive protests. The killing of 17-year-old boy Tufail Mattoo during these protests led to further protests. In a cycle of protests and killing during the protests around 110 people were killed. The protests with each killing became intensified.".
  42. ^ Bose 2021, pp. 180–181: "In July 2016, the Kashmir Valley descended into a maelstrom of violence that lasted six months before tapering off in early 2017. The trigger was the death of Burhan Wani, a militant in his early twenties. ... His career as a guerrilla was rather curious. Although he was an active militant for almost six years and evaded capture by hiding out in the forested upper reaches of Tral, he is not known to have engaged in any significant operations against the Indian forces. That may explain the longevity of his guerrilla existence – six years is an unusually long time for a militant to survive on the run in Kashmir. ... During his guerrilla years, Burhan Wani became a household name in the Kashmir Valley – as a social-media celebrity. He used Facebook to post photographs of himself and his comrades, and audio and video clips in which he sermonised about armed struggle and resistance.".
  43. ^ Snedden 2021, pp. 280–281: "In July 2016, severely agitated Kashmiris staged massive protests after the Indian security forces killed the young, high-profile and popular, Kashmiri militant, Burhan Wani, from the Hizbul Mujahideen. According to Indian Army officers, Wani was a ‘Facebook fighter’: he ‘fought’ using social media rather than in actual kinetic operations against India’s security forces. Kashmiris saw him otherwise: they considered him to be a more moderate and inclusive fighter, a ‘poster boy’ militant, even ‘a phenomenon, the glamorous hero of an almost romantic anti-State rebellion’.".
  44. ^ Kazi 2018, pp. 173–174: "In 2016 Kashmir witnessed an extraordinary revolt in the aftermath of the extrajudicial murder of Burhan Wani, a young militant commander, in an encounter with the army and the police in Pulwama. Unlike previous protests that spread from urban to rural areas, Wani’s death prompted a spontaneous mass revolt across Kashmir, especially in rural areas of southern Kashmir that had been relatively pacified. The Indian state sought to contain the uprising through a brutal, punitive response, resulting in a spate of killings, the blinding of civilians through the use of pellet guns, the destruction of civilian property, violence and assault against women by security forces, the arrest and/or disappearance of protesting youths, and a blockade of civil supplies amid an undeclared albeit formidable siege across Kashmir Valley.".
  45. ^ "Pakistan warns India against attacking". BBC News. 19 February 2019.
  46. ^ Iqbal, Sajid; Hossain, Zoheb; Mathur, Shubh (2014). "Reconciliation and truth in Kashmir: a case study". Race & Class. 56 (2): 51–65. doi:10.1177/0306396814542917. ISSN 0306-3968. S2CID 147586397.
  47. ^ Kazi, Rape, Impunity and Justice in Kashmir 2014, pp. 14–46.
  48. ^ "India: "Denied": Failures in accountability for human rights violations by security force personnel in Jammu and Kashmir". Amnesty International. 30 June 2015. Retrieved 4 July 2015.
  49. ^ Essa, Azad (10 September 2015). "India 'covering up abuses' in Kashmir: report". Al Jazeera. Retrieved 13 November 2021.
  50. ^ Asian Legal Resource Centre (27 August 2010). "Pakistan: Thousands Of Persons Remain Missing". Scoop. Archived from the original on 4 October 2012. Retrieved 10 March 2012.
  51. ^ Adams, Brad (21 September 2006). "Pakistan: 'Free Kashmir' Far From Free". Human Rights Watch. Archived from the original on 14 March 2013. Retrieved 8 August 2012.


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