India-Pakistan Conflict
History of India Pakistan Relations:
The relationship between the nations of India and Pakistan is one of the most interesting international relationships in the world today. Throughout the history of these two nations, their relationship has been very complex and very hostile to understand why this is we have to go back to the early 20th century when the British Empire ruled India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Malaya all as one state which was known as the British Raj. This rule came to a violent end in 1947 when the British Partition of India happened. This created the two separate states of India and Pakistan along mostly religious lines with Pakistan being Muslims and India being Hindu. As a result of this partition 200,000 to 2,000,000 people lost their lives. This event in history caused a great refugee crisis. It also kicked off the Kashmir conflict. We can trace this tension back to the British Partition. The new governments of India and Pakistan were very much unprepared for a two-way mass migration of religious groups. Both Hindus and Muslims migrated in huge numbers to escape persecution, the two religious faiths in the situation fought against each other and oppressed each other leading to many people being killed. The states of India and Pakistan have been fighting since August 1947. India and Pakistan have gone to war with each other 1947, 1965, 1971 and they've had many skirmishes and border conflicts over the years resulting in thousands of deaths, however, the situation got even more hostile and dangerous when both sides required nuclear weapons. India and Pakistan also used nonstate actors or insurgent groups to hurt the other state. For example, it is widely believed that the Pakistani government supports the terrorists in Afghanistan and India supports the insurgents in Pakistan. Control of the Kashmir region is split between India, Pakistan, and China, but both India and Pakistan claimed the region as 100% their territory serious this situation is probably not likely to get better anytime soon. US foreign policy is in the middle of this conflict because the United States tries to maintain good relationships with both India and Pakistan and we sell weapons to both countries. This might inflame the 10 situations even more, but if we really want to go back to the root of the problem we have to blame the British occupation of India because it was violent and it set different races and religions against each other for generations to come it also carved a region into states based on lines on a map this did not help the situation.
Narendra Modi: India First!:
Well before he became Prime Minister, Narendra Modi has been a controversial figure. As Chief Minister of Gujarat - an Indian state with twice as many as California - he presided annual economic growth rates of 10%; a feat which he was able to translate into a prime ministership. However, in 2002 a train full of Hindu pilgrims derailed resulting in over fifty deaths. In the wake of the tragic accident, many Hindu nationalists blamed Muslim Gujaratis and the resulting riots ended in the deaths of over a thousand people. Many in India and other parts of the world accused Modi, who is often described as a Hindu nationalist, of complicity, or at least indifference. The United States, for example, banned him from receiving visas. However, Modi has never been convicted for anything related to the riots and an investigative team appointed by India’s Supreme Court was unable to find enough evidence to recommend Modi’s prosecution. Nevertheless, his connection to the riots and his right-wing politics continue to follow him. His membership in Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has also caused controversy. RSS is a Hindu nationalist group whose members have, at times, been involved in intercommunal violence, and possesses close ties to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP); Modi’s political party.
Since becoming elected Modi has liberalized regulations, especially those related to foreign direct investment, launched a nationwide sanitation campaign and a “Make in India” initiative to boost manufacturing, announced India’s ambition to achieve manned spaceflight by 2022, and made a controversial decision to demonetize certain banknotes in an attempt to reduce the “shadow economy,” while also presiding over high levels of economic growth. In regards to foreign affairs, he has pursued closer ties with Western countries, such as the U.S., with which he has concluded civil nuclear cooperation and defense cooperation agreements. With China, he has courted investment money on the one hand, while also seeking to balance against Beijing by increasing Indian investment in Southeast Asia and, in conjunction with Japan, Africa. And when China attempted to annex parts of Bhutan - an Indian client state - Modi reacted quickly and forcefully, causing China to back down. With Pakistan, Modi was originally conciliatory, visiting Pakistan in 2015, the first time an Indian Prime Minister has done so in 12 years. However, since then he has pursued an increasingly hardline in light of Islamist terrorism which the Indian government accuses Pakistan of enabling.
Pakistan Prime Minister:
Pakistan's new Prime minister has only added to the uncertainty around Pakistan and Indian relations. Imran Khan was elected Prime Minister this past summer in a controversial manner. Khan election has been accused of being corrupt with the military targeting his political rivals to ensure Khan`s victory. Months before the election Khan's rival political party leaders were arrested and imprisoned. Khan's political rivals also report that soldiers guarded ballot counting rooms and refused to allow them to enter.
Khan is certainly an interesting candidate. An Oxford-educated retired cricket player Khan is said to be incredibly charismatic and comfortable among both western and eastern cultures. Despite this charisma Khan has raises some alarming red flags. Khan is tolerant of extremist organizations and inconsistent in his beliefs. For example, he is outspoken on reforming a Pakistani school system, which he accuses of brainwashing students to support extremist groups, while simultaneously supporting laws that punish those who insult religious figures with everything from a fine to death. This inconsistency coupled with a lack of political experience could cause unexpected actions from Pakistan.
Recent Conflict:
There have been continuous tensions between nuclear powers India and Pakistan, which has escalated after each country carried out airstrikes against the other, leading to concerns over the potential outbreak of a war in South Asia. Indian warplanes bombed targets inside Pakistan hitting what Indian officials described as a terrorist training camp, which tensions have been rising after a Kashmiri militant killed 40 Indian paramilitary police officers. The strikes came after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he would retaliate after the suicide bombing attack on the officers in Kashmir. The attacker was Kashmiri, who is a member of Jaish-e-Mohammad, Pakistan denies any connection to the bombing and says terrorist groups don’t operate inside its borders. India has held Jaish-e-Mohammad responsible for several previous attacks in India. Indian officials said the airstrikes were designed to prevent new terrorist attacks inside India. The Pakistani military retaliated back by shooting down two Indian planes. Pakistan also said it had arrested an Indian Air Force (IAF) pilot whose plane crash-landed on its side of the Line of Control (LoC) that divides the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K). After a couple of tense days, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan told lawmakers that they “are releasing the Indian pilot as a goodwill message.”
Recommendation:
This issue has several difficult factors regarding the two nations of India and Pakistan. Both of these nations are trade partners with the United States. Since we sell weapons to both sides the United States has a vested interest in remaining relatively neutral. This puts the United States in a questionable place morally. Since the United States tends to take the humanitarian side when intervening with other countries. This leads to the conflict that must be considered. It would seem to be in our interest to try and play an indirect role in this so as to not cause one nation to turn against us. To do this we could choose to lessen our sales of weapons to Pakistan if we believe that they may be falling into the hands of terrorists. This way we would not be taking an active stance in the conflict but would still be assisting the civilians being hurt from these conflicts.
Bibliography
Antholis, William J. “India’s Most Admired and Most Feared Politician: Narendra Modi.” March 16, 2012. Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2012/03/16/indias-most-admired-and-most-feared-politician-narendra-modi/.
Ayoob, M. "Long-Term Trends in India-Pakistan Relations." India International Centre Quarterly 3, no. 4 (1976): 253-65. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23001749.
BBC News. “Profile: Narendra Modi.” last modified November 11, 2015.
Cnn. “Narendra Modi Fast Facts.” last modified September 12, 2018.
Gettleman, J. (2018,July 29) Imran Khan, as New Leader, Could Help Pakistan Reshape Its
Image. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/29/world/asia/pakistan-election-imran-khan.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FKhan%2C%20Imran.
Indurthy, Rathnam, and Muhammad Haque. "THE KASHMIR CONFLICT: WHY IT DEFIES SOLUTION." International Journal on World Peace 27, no. 1 (2010): 9-44. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20752914.
Kumar, Radha. "The Troubled History of Partition." Foreign Affairs 76, no. 1 (1997): 22-34. doi:10.2307/20047907.
This is an interesting recommendation made at the end of your blog. I think that decrease in sales of arms to one country and not the other could send a dangerous message to that country. I think it would make it appear that the US is siding with India and not Pakistan. It is also difficult for the US to entirely stop selling weapons to both countries since they are the leading weapons exporter in the world. This is a very lucrative market for the US and it seems like it would be more simple for the US to say "we only sell the weapons and what these countries do with them is not our concern." This is a dangerous foreign policy strategy since it could destabilize the region even more than it already is, however, what does the US have to gain or lose by adjusting their sales or arms to these countries?
ReplyDeleteI think this memo was well written and very detailed. I certainly did not know much about the India-Pakistan conflict, especially the history behind it, so I appreciated that part of the memo and learned a lot from it. I think the connection to the US at the end was good, but I was hoping there would be more connections throughout the memo, not just at the end. I was wondering if the US has conducted any negotiations or diplomacy with the Indian or Pakistani prime ministers? In addition, I understand the US has a connection to both countries through arms sales; however, I was hoping there would be more details on other possible reasons why the US might be have invested interest in these countries. Perhaps the US may be interested in India's investment in Southeast Asia and Africa, for example. Overall, good job!
ReplyDeleteYour memo did a great job of summarizing the historical relationship between these two countries. A lot of the problems between India and Pakistan do in fact stem from their founding in the middle of the twentieth century so it was good that you explained this. I agree with your recommendation that the US should play a mediating role between these two countries because they are both nuclear powers and, if one of the countries have internal instability, the nuclear material could get into the hands of a hostile actor. China's influence in the region also means that, what role the US does not fill, China would be more than happy to fill in order to further extend its influence in this very populous region.
ReplyDelete-Adam Miller
This was a good post, it was helpful to get the history of the India-Pakistan conflict to really see the tensions that exist in those two countries and the surrounding area. I think the issues with Modi and the PM of Pakistan lend themselves to the conversation we had with Professor Buckman in class. Are these people freedom fighters or terrorists? The Indian citizens believe Modi to be a freedom fighter while the Pakistanis would see him as a terrorist. This confusion creates even more of a divide between the two nations. I liked the recommendations at the end and wonder if diplomacy would win out over money from weapons deals.
ReplyDeleteI knew very little about this conflict between Pakistan and India, so I found this memo very informative and interesting. However, I think this memo could be a little bit stronger if you split up the introductory section into multiple sections or maybe proceed more chronologically in order to make it easier to follow. My other recommendation would be to include more information about the United States and more explicitly discuss their role in the conflict: Does the United States have more of an economic interest in one country than the other? Does either country have special strategic value for the United States?
ReplyDeleteOverall, I thought this was an excellent memo on such a divided topic. I believe that the US should intervene in the region through peace talks given the simple fact of both countries having nuclear weapons capability and the consequences of leaving that power unchecked. Further, I agree with the memo in that the US taking a side with a specific country would put the US in a poor position due to our positive relations with both countries involved.
ReplyDeleteOverall I thought this was a great blog post that addresses a conflict that many Americans know by name but do not truly understand. One thing I immediately noticed was there was no executive summary, but instead a large section detailing the history of the conflict. While this section is definitely valuable in explaining the roots of the rivalry, it also includes a few points that would be better highlighted in a separate summary section. I also agree with your recommendation that the United States should stay neutral in the conflict, but I think if we cut arms sales to one country we will have contradicted this standpoint. Instead, it might be more strategic to renegotiate these arms deals to include provisions that ensure weapons cannot be placed in the hands of extremists. By doing so the United States can remain neutral while simultaneously taking an active role to prevent civilian harm in the region.
ReplyDeleteThis background knowledge of the India and Pakistan relations was exceptionally well written as is essential to know where the current conflict stems from. Before reading this memo I did not know much about the Pakistan and India conflict, and the memo did a great job at explaining what is going on in the region. I would have liked to see a section in the memo about how other nations are being affected by the conflict. Also, I think that the recommendation section of the memo does provide a well thought out explanation. I understand that maybe lessening the sale of weapons to Pakistan will possibly help civilians, but I think another stance should be taken to decrease tensions in the region.
ReplyDeleteI think this memo was written really well and was incredibly informative. I know personally I did not know much about the India-Pakistan conflict. The history of such was incredible to read. I think it is incredible to see that the conflict could be traced back to the issue of Settler Colonialism. That the colonization of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Malaya by the British was the ultimate source of instability. This of course is something prevalent across the globe where other countries were up-ended and settled by outside nations and powers that truly did not understand the culture of the people they were trying to, but ultimately failed to, reconstruct in their image.
ReplyDelete-Shannon S
ReplyDeleteThe Indian and Pakistani Conflict is an issue that many are aware of, but don't fully understand. Therefore, I think the memo did a great job of providing background information that was necessary for understanding this conflict. I agree with your recommendations section that the U.S. should stay neutral when it comes to Pakistan and India, but I believe this is already contested by the fact that the U.S. supplies weapons to the two countries. Also, I think the memo could have mentioned why the U.S. has any interests in the two countries throughout the memo instead of just at the end. Overall the memo was very interesting to read and was very informative.
I liked that the memo focused on a topic you rarely see when reading Western news headlines. I think it is an issue that we should focus on and learn more about, especially because India is a rising economy and will greatly impact Asia and the rest of the globe for years to come. One issue was that the memo lacked an executive summary so I was not aware of what the entire memo would be about. Also, the heading was absent so it is difficult to assume what the topic of the memo would be.
ReplyDeleteOwen de Graaf-
ReplyDeleteYou did an excellent job on this memo and I appreciated how well you discussed the topics and fully argued them. I definitely agree that the US should stay neutral in this conflict because while they may have interests in the region they aren't fully invested and don't need to be choosing a side that could ultimately hurt them in the long run. Overall though I thought you guys did a great job at bringing up the topics and shared very important things to note. Good Job!
This group did an excellent job informing me about this conflict. I thought this memo was well done and easy to follow along with. It is so important for places that are so rich in history to be summarize well which I think this group did a great job of. By telling the British rule came to a violent end in 1947 when the British Partition of India happened. This created the two separate states of India and Pakistan along mostly religious lines with Pakistan being Muslims and India being Hindu. As a result of this partition 200,000 to 2,000,000 people lost their lives. It stresses the important of refugees. This background is important to understand the continuous tensions between nuclear powers India and Pakistan, which has escalated after each country carried out airstrikes against the other, leading to concerns over the potential outbreak of a war in South Asia. This conflict is definitely tricky going forward but the group brings up good points about the two nations of India and Pakistan both nations are trade partners with the United States.
ReplyDeleteJoslyn janeczek