Kashmir conflict

The Kashmir conflict is a territorial dispute over the Kashmir region, mainly between India and Pakistan, with China also involved in the northeastern part. It began after the 1947 partition of India, when both India and Pakistan claimed the entire former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. This disagreement has led to three wars and several armed clashes. India holds about 55% of the region’s land—including Jammu, the Kashmir Valley, most of Ladakh, and the Siachen Glacier—and about 70% of its population. Pakistan controls roughly 30% of the land, comprising Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan. China holds the remaining 15%, which includes the Aksai Chin region, the mostly uninhabited Trans-Karakoram Tract, and part of the Demchok sector.

Following partition and a rebellion in the state’s western districts, Pakistani tribal militias invaded Kashmir, prompting the Hindu ruler of Jammu and Kashmir to accede to India. The resulting Indo-Pakistani War ended with a UN-mediated ceasefire along a line later called the Line of Control. In 1962, China invaded and fought a war with India along the disputed border, including in Indian-administered Ladakh, entering the Kashmir conflict. In 1965, Pakistan tried to infiltrate Indian-administered Kashmir to spark an insurgency, leading to another war. After further fighting in the 1971 war, the Simla Agreement formally established the Line of Control between Indian and Pakistani territories. In 1999, another armed conflict in Kargil left the status quo unchanged.

In 1989, an armed insurgency began in Indian-administered Kashmir Valley, driven by years of political disenfranchisement and alienation, with logistical support from Pakistan. This insurgency was opposed in Jammu and Ladakh, where it revived demands for autonomy from Kashmiri dominance and closer ties with India. Initially led by a group seeking an independent state based on self-determination, the insurgency was taken over within a few years by Pakistan-backed Jihadist groups aiming for merger with Pakistan. The militancy continued through the 1990s and early 2000s—by then driven largely by foreign militants and spreading to parts of the Jammu region—but later declined. The fighting caused tens of thousands of casualties, both combatant and civilian. It also led to the exodus of Kashmiri Hindus from the predominantly Muslim Kashmir Valley in the early 1990s. Indian counterinsurgency involved repression of locals and increased militarization, while insurgent groups engaged in various criminal activities. The 2010s saw civil unrest in the Kashmir Valley, fueled by ongoing militarization, rights violations, misrule, and corruption, with local youths violently clashing with Indian security forces during large-scale demonstrations in 2010 and 2016. Further unrest followed the 2019 Pulwama attack.

Throughout the conflict, especially since the insurgency began, India and Pakistan have been accused of human rights violations in Kashmir, while insurgents and militants have committed many atrocities. Indian security forces, including local police, have committed serious excesses during counterinsurgency in the Kashmir Valley, such as extrajudicial killings, arson, torture, unlawful detentions, rape, and enforced disappearances, along with political repression. Pakistan has committed abuses in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, including enforced disappearances, murder, torture, unlawful detentions, and political repression, and also tacitly permits and sponsors Islamist militant groups there, many of which it created, funds, and arms. Insurgents and militants have killed and assassinated civilians, including several massacres of religious and ethnic minorities—especially Hindus in both the Jammu region and the Kashmir Valley—whom they have also driven out or displaced. They have also carried out abductions, arson, rapes, and terrorist attacks, and forced an Islamic code of conduct on society. Multiple wars and cross-border shelling along the Line of Control, sometimes aimed at enabling militant movement by Pakistan, have caused civilian deaths and displacement. Indian security forces enjoy impunity for their actions, with victims lacking legal redress due to legislation preventing prosecution and a compliant judiciary enabling violations. Because of tight controls on access by Pakistan, human rights violations in Pakistan-administered Kashmir remain underdocumented compared to those on the Indian side. The OHCHR has released two reports on the human rights situation in both Indian-administered and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.