An Indian child stands near Chenab River in Baglihar, about 155 km (96 miles) northwest of Jammu, 2 Oct. 2005 REUTERS/Amit Gupta
AlertNet spoke to Vernon Hewitt, an author on Kashmir&${esc.hash}39;s history and senior lecturer in politics at the University of Bristol, England. AlertNet: Neither India nor Pakistan seem to have softened their line on Kashmir much in the interests of earthquake relief as they respond to the disaster that struck on Oct. 8.Vernon Hewitt: The earthquake underlines the absurdity of the line of control. It&${esc.hash}39;s a clich&${esc.hash}39;, but nature has no regard for this kind of boundary. It splits up the Kashmiris. Kashmiris on the Indian side were trying to help not only themselves, but relatives on the Pakistani side, and being frustrated by this securitisation of the boundary.
Initially, I was really optimistic that this would depoliticise some of the issues and push the peace process forward. Ironically, given the location, which is actually on the line of control, the Indians are in a much better position to assist in Azad Kashmir (the Pakistani name for the most contentious region of Kashmir under its control, the location of the epicentre of the earthquake and on the line dividing Indian- and Pakistani-administered areas)&${esc.hash}39; The geography from Pooch district (on the Indian side) to get into Azad Kashmir by helicopter is straightforward &${esc.hash}39; it&${esc.hash}39;s almost flat.
AN: How hard is it usually to cross the border in Kashmir?VH: It&${esc.hash}39;s pretty hard to get over. It&${esc.hash}39;s massively militarised, even now. It&${esc.hash}39;s been a nightmare until about 2002- 2003. Then they opened these two transit areas. The Indian position is they&${esc.hash}39;ve always wanted this line to be a soft border. Then once you had the insurgency in the 1980s, 1990s, they sealed the border.
You can&${esc.hash}39;t really make a phone call internationally (to Pakistan) from Srinigar (on the Indian side). They can control the old trunk call. But transmission from mobiles is getting through.
The places aid workers are operating are usually impossible to access. Why are the governments &${esc.hash}39; Pakistan especially -- so sensitive about maps and satellite images of the area?The district around Pooch is very active in terms of militants. In the late 1990s, it was very hard to get accurate maps. All the maps are disputed. There was anxiety from the Pakistani side about revealing any links they have had with militants and helping smuggle them over the line of control into India. So they are concerned that maps might show something to the Indians.
How valid is Pakistan&${esc.hash}39;s security concern?It&${esc.hash}39;s not particularly valid. I suspect some of it is an institutional response from the military. In 2000, up until 2002, these two states were pretty close to a shooting war in that part of the world. It&${esc.hash}39;s not that long ago that in these districts you had quarter of a million Indian troops.
How important is Kashmir to Pakistan?People in Pakistan are very passionate about Kashmir. Pakistan&${esc.hash}39;s political leaders linked Kashmir to Pakistani identity. It was a real litmus test of who they were and what they wanted. And that&${esc.hash}39;s why (President Pervez) Musharraf came to power, because his predecessor &${esc.hash}39; Nawaz Sharif -- appeared to go a bit soft on this. The military get involved in Kashmir and it&${esc.hash}39;s extremely popular. The prime minister at the time tries to stop it, and there&${esc.hash}39;s outrage that he is seen to betray what the army had done on the ground, and that&${esc.hash}39;s what leads to the coup when Sharif is deposed and Musharraf takes over. It&${esc.hash}39;s ironic that Kashmir was part of the reason he legitimated taking power, so he&${esc.hash}39;s got to succeed on that, even though it is marginal.
What do you think about Pakistan&${esc.hash}39;s response to the earthquake?It raises questions to me about the capacity of the state to respond. It&${esc.hash}39;s not been bad given the scale, but you&${esc.hash}39;ve got this irritating failure to get into areas around Azad Kashmir. My understanding is that it&${esc.hash}39;s a classic dilemma of the army being very effective in terms of structure and organisation and yet also very security-conscious.
Could Musharraf&${esc.hash}39;s leadership be at risk if his earthquake response looks inadequate?The fact that he&${esc.hash}39;s survived five or six assassination attempts -- some of those coming from within the military &${esc.hash}39; I think he would be very anxious about that. And if there&${esc.hash}39;s a sense that&${esc.hash}39; the administration he&${esc.hash}39;s running is no longer capable of doing anything, then the army will be saying: &${esc.hash}39;We&${esc.hash}39;ve got to do something.&${esc.hash}39; Some of them are saying he&${esc.hash}39;s already a lame duck.
Before this happened, Musharraf had his own problems with the military and the peace process. Which could explain him clamping down on cross-border movement, because he&${esc.hash}39;s seen as a dove by some members of the military. I think his popularity has already turned. He&${esc.hash}39;s on the unfortunate classic downward slope you can identify with Pakistani leaders in the past. So he&${esc.hash}39;s got to avoid the sense that the state has failed to deliver.
Is there a possibility that militants in the region could profit from the earthquake to gain local support by being involved in the relief effort?It was interesting that Jamat -- the militant wing of (the Tehran-backed militant Lebanese group) Hizbollah in Kashmir -- called a ceasefire and have been assisting in Muzaffarabad, where they originally had a lot of political support which began to peter out a bit in the late 1990s. So I think there is a bit of a PR exercise. In India it&${esc.hash}39;s much more intangible. You&${esc.hash}39;ve got a divergent set of militants who are competing against each other and have little &${esc.hash}39; and in some cases no &${esc.hash}39; support.
How do people in the region make a living?It&${esc.hash}39;s predominantly agrarian. It&${esc.hash}39;s a wheat-producing area, you&${esc.hash}39;ve maize, barley, wheat. You&${esc.hash}39;ve got herding and pastoralism in the valleys. You&${esc.hash}39;ve also got lots of orchards, almond production, apple production. Handicrafts and local textile production would have gone to an international tourist market, but that disintegrated in 1989. You&${esc.hash}39;ve got peasants producing goods for the (local) market, and in bad years not producing a surplus at all. These are very poor economies. Azad Kashmir in particular is one of the poorest regions of the country, (with) no manufacturing or industry&${esc.hash}39; and very poor infrastructure. It&${esc.hash}39;s all one-in-three (gradient roads) with very tight roads going around valleys.
I understand Kashmir has a large diaspora.A lot of Azadi Kashmiris migrated because there was nothing there. A lot of British Kashmiri are Pakistanis, although they don&${esc.hash}39;t want to be called that &${esc.hash}39; they&${esc.hash}39;re Mirpuris because they came from the Mirpur distict. (The main centres for Mirpuris in Britain are) parts of Bradford (in northeast England) and also Bedford and Luton (in the southeast).
Are there any factors working in the president&${esc.hash}39;s favour?If this disaster had been concentrated in Islamabad and down through Punjab and Sindh, the consequences would have been much more dramatic, because that&${esc.hash}39;s where your political elite live. The fact that this is marginal &${esc.hash}39; highly sensitive but still marginal &${esc.hash}39; to the country, has helped him to some extent. And you can make an argument that this is a very hard area to get round. Two years ago there was a very heavy winter in Azad Kashmir. Lots of people died, with villages cut off, so there is a kind of expectation that this happens in this part of the world, and I suspect (Musharraf) might play on that.
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