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We can better understand the War on Terror and the role of Western military forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan by learning the history of the politics in the region. Southwest Asia is marked by many weak state governments and competition for control of them by more powerful neighbors, international superpowers, and non- state actors that include religious jihadists and independence movements. In the September 2009 issue of IJWP we discussed anarchy in unsecured territories, with an emphasis on Africa. Southwest Asia suffers from many of the same political dynamics: (1) state borders that were created by past political conquest, either by expansion by indigenous rulers or conquest by colonial masters, (2) the collapse of European colonialism and the rise of the bi-polar world of the Cold War that had rewarded dictatorial allies, (3) the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of hopes around the world for self-rule, and (4) new contests for state power based on self-determination movements, regional hegemons, and non-state religious and ideological actors.
This issue's first article by Rathnam Indurthy and Muhammad Haque is on the "The Kashmir Conflict." It is followed by a substantial comment by Nasreen Akhtar from Pakistan, and then a rejoinder by Indurthy. This dialogue will help the reader get an understanding of the nature of the problem viewed from several perspectives.
The story of Kashmir and its seeming intractable solution is a product of this history. With a predominately Muslim population since the fourteenth century, the territory was acquired by Sikh rulers in the early nineteenth century and then became a relatively autonomous nation allied with the British Indian Empire later in the nineteenth century. Upon the end of colonialism and the partition of India in 1947, Kashmir wanted independence, but India and Pakistan both had designs on it. The small nation was unable to prevent the occupation of Pakistan and India, whose troops have controlled the country along a line of control (LoC). So it is now essentially two countries, Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) and Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK) divided in a manner not unlike North and South Korea.
Thus, for nearly 200 years, Kashmir has been under the rule of conquerors. Even when it was "independent" it consisted of a predominately Muslim...