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. 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, 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.
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. The resulting Indo-Pakistani War ended with a UN-mediated ceasefire along a line that was eventually named the Line of Control. 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. 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. In 1999, an armed conflict between the two countries broke out again in Kargil with no effect on the status quo.
In 1989, an armed insurgency erupted against Indian rule in Indian-administered Kashmir Valley, after years of political disenfranchisement and alienation, with logistical support from Pakistan. 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. Spearheaded by a group seeking creation of an independent state based on demands for self-determination, the insurgency was taken over within the first few years of its outbreak by Pakistan-backed Jihadist groups striving for merger with Pakistan. The militancy continued through the 1990s and early 2000s—by which time it was being driven largely by foreign militants and spread to parts of the adjoining Jammu region—but declined thereafter. 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. The 2010s were marked by civil unrest within the Kashmir Valley, fuelled by unyielding militarisation, rights violations, mis-rule and corruption, wherein protesting local youths violently clashed with Indian security forces, with large-scale demonstrations taking place during the 2010 and 2016 unrests. Further unrest in the region erupted after the 2019 Pulwama attack.
Over the course of the long conflict, and especially since the outbreak of insurgency, India and Pakistan have been accused of violating human rights in the Kashmir region, while insurgents and militants have committed many atrocities in the region. Indian security forces, including local police from the region, have committed serious excesses during counterinsurgency in the Kashmir Valley, which include human rights abuses such as extrajudicial killings, arson, torture, unlawful detentions, rape and enforced disappearances, while the government has also caused political repression in the region. Pakistan has committed abuses in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, including enforced disappearances, murder, torture, unlawful detentions and political repression, and also tacitly permits and sponsors operations of Islamist militant groups there, many of which it created, funds and arms. Insurgents and militants have committed killings and assassinations of civilians, including several massacres of religious and ethnic minorities, especially Hindus in both Jammu region and the Kashmir Valley, whom they have also driven out of the region or displaced within it, as well as abductions, arson, rapes and terrorist attacks, and forced an Islamic code of conduct on the larger society. Multiple wars and cross-border shelling between India and Pakistan along the LOC, at times aimed to enable cross-border movement of militants by Pakistan, has also caused civilian deaths and displacement. Indian security forces enjoy impunity for their actions and victims of their abuse lack legal redressal, with legislation preventing prosecution for abuses, and the government and a compliant judiciary enabling continued violations. Owing to tight controls on access by Pakistan, human rights violations in Pakistan-administered Kashmir remain underdocumented unlike those on the Indian side. The OHCHR reports on Kashmir released two reports on "the situation of human rights in Indian-Administered Kashmir and Pakistan-Administered Kashmir".
India–Pakistan conflict
Background
The Afghan Durrani Empire ruled Kashmir Valley from 1752 until its 1819 conquest by the Sikh Empire under Ranjit Singh. The Raja of Jammu Gulab Singh, who was a vassal of the Sikh Empire and an influential noble in the Sikh court, sent expeditions to various border kingdoms and ended up encircling Kashmir by 1840. Following the First Anglo-Sikh War (18451846), Kashmir was ceded under the Treaty of Lahore to the East India Company, which transferred it to Gulab Singh through the Treaty of Amritsar, in return for the payment of indemnity owed by the Sikh empire. Gulab Singh took the title of the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir.
From 1846 till the 1947 partition of India, Kashmir was ruled by maharajas of Gulab Singh's Dogra dynasty, as a princely state under British Paramountcy. The British Raj managed the defence, external affairs, and communications for the princely state and stationed a British Resident in Srinagar to oversee the internal administration. According to the 1941 census, the state's population was 77 percent Muslim, 20 percent Hindu and 3 percent others (Sikhs and Buddhists). Despite its Muslim majority, the princely rule was overwhelmingly a Hindu-dominated state. The Muslim majority suffered under the high taxes of the administration and had few opportunities for growth and advancement.
Partition and invasion
British rule in the Indian subcontinent ended in 1947 with the creation of new states: the dominions of Pakistan and India, as the successor states to British India. The British Paramountcy over the 562 Indian princely states ended. States were thereafter left to choose whether to join India or Pakistan or to remain independent. Jammu and Kashmir, the largest of the princely states, had a predominantly Muslim population ruled by the Hindu Maharaja Hari Singh. The Maharaja decided to stay independent because he expected that the State's Muslims would be unhappy with accession to India, and the Hindus and Sikhs would become vulnerable if he joined Pakistan. On 11 August, the Maharaja dismissed his prime minister Ram Chandra Kak, who had advocated equidistance from India and Pakistan. Observers and scholars interpreted this action as a tilt towards accession to India. Pakistanis decided to preempt this possibility by wresting Kashmir by force if necessary.
Pakistan made various efforts to persuade the Maharaja of Kashmir to join Pakistan. In July 1947, Mohammad Ali Jinnah is believed to have written to the Maharaja promising "every sort of favourable treatment", followed by the lobbying of the State's Prime Minister by leaders of Jinnah's Muslim League party. Faced with the Maharaja's indecision on accession, the Muslim League agents clandestinely worked in Poonch to encourage the local Muslims to an armed revolt, exploiting an internal unrest regarding economic grievances. The authorities in Pakistani Punjab waged a 'private war' by obstructing supplies of fuel and essential commodities to the State. Later in September, Muslim League officials in the Northwest Frontier Province, including the Chief Minister Abdul Qayyum Khan, assisted and possibly organized a large-scale invasion of Kashmir by Pathan tribesmen. Several sources indicate that the plans were finalised on 12 September by the Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, based on proposals prepared by Colonel Akbar Khan and Sardar Shaukat Hayat Khan. One plan called for organising an armed insurgency in the western districts of the state and the other for organising a Pushtoon tribal invasion. Both were set in motion.
The Jammu division of the state got caught up in the Partition violence. Large numbers of Hindus and Sikhs from Rawalpindi and Sialkot started arriving in March 1947 following massacres in Rawalpindi, bringing "harrowing stories of Muslim atrocities." According to Ilyas Chattha, this provoked counter-violence on Jammu Muslims, which had "many parallels with that in Sialkot." The violence in the eastern districts of Jammu that started in September, developed into a widespread massacre of Muslims around October, organised by the Hindu Dogra troops of the State and perpetrated by the local Hindus, including members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, and the Hindus and Sikhs displaced from the neighbouring areas of West Pakistan. The Maharaja himself was implicated in some instances. A large number of Muslims were killed. Others fled to West Pakistan, some of whom made their way to the western districts of Poonch and Mirpur, which were undergoing rebellion. Many of these Muslims believed that the Maharaja ordered the killings in Jammu which instigated the Muslims in West Pakistan to join the uprising in Poonch and help in the formation of the Azad Kashmir government.
The rebel forces in the western districts of Jammu were organised under the leadership of Sardar Ibrahim, a Muslim Conference leader. They took control of most of the western parts of the State by 22 October. On 24 October, they formed a provisional Azad Kashmir (free Kashmir) government based in Palandri.
Accession
Justice Mehr Chand Mahajan, the Maharaja's nominee for his next prime minister, visited Nehru and Patel in Delhi on 19 September 1947, requesting essential supplies which had been blockaded by Pakistan since the beginning of September. He communicated the Maharaja's willingness to accede to India. Nehru, however, demanded that the jailed political leader, Sheikh Abdullah, be released from prison and involved in the state government. Only then would he allow the state to accede. The Maharaja released Sheikh Abdullah on 29 September.