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| Strategic importance of Gilgit-Baltistan for India | | Respect the 1992 Indian resolve | | Early Times Report
JAMMU, Apr 22: The dispute between India and Pakistan over the territory of the former princely State of Jammu and Kashmir is invariably referred to as "Kashmir dispute". This has cast a long shadow over Gilgit-Baltistan, an area that is strategically very important for India. Interestingly, a very vast majority of people Gilgit-Baltistan -- all Shiite Muslims who are fed up with Islamabad because of its oppressive policies -wants very close relations with New Delhi. In fact there are important Shiite leaders in this area who want India to intervene and reintegrate Gilgit-Baltistan into India. Glgit-Baltistan, like the so-called Azad Kashmir, is an integral part of India and strategically very crucial for India.
The Indian territory, which is under the illegal occupation of Pakistan, consists of the so-called Azad Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK) and Gilgit-Baltistan, also called Northern Territories. PoJK is about five times smaller and about ten times more densely populated than the latter. While outside attention remains largely focused on terrorist camps in PoJK, Gilgit-Baltistan is far more important to Pakistan for several reasons. The rivers and glaciers of sparsely populated Gilgit-Baltistan are vital for Pakistan's water, food, and energy security. Before entering Pakistan, the vital Indus River passes through Gilgit-Baltistan, while a very important glacier, Siachen, is also located in this region. Building dams in Gilgit-Baltistan is not politically costly for a number of reasons: it is sparsely populated, it is not represented in the Pakistani parliament, its citizens cannot approach the Supreme Court of Pakistan, and it is largely shielded from the international media. Pakistan's dependence on Gilgit-Baltistan will only grow because of its explosive population growth, climate change, and continued dependence of a large sector of its population on agriculture.
Gilgit-Baltistan provides Pakistan with road connectivity to the purportedly all-weather-friend China. Its vast, inhospitable territory insulates Pakistan's Pashtun region (Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, formerly, NWFP, and Federally Administered Tribal Area, FATA), as well as Afghanistan, from India. While it is commonplace to argue that India abandoned NWFP to Pakistan, very few note that without Gilgit-Baltistan, India had no land connectivity to NWFP in the first place. Without Gilgit-Baltistan, PoJK alone cannot pose a serious threat to the security of this part of Jammu and Kashmir.
But Pakistan's control over the strategically important Gilgit-Baltistan is tenuous. Its Constitution restrains complete integration of Gilgit-Baltistan pending resolution of the so-called Kashmir dispute. Pakistan's army and intelligence establishments have, however, turned this constraint into an "opportunity" to carve out an exceptional territory, which has not endeared Pakistan to the people of Gilgit-Baltistan. There is growing unrest among the long-neglected local population, which is ethnically, linguistically, and culturally different from Pakistan and PoJK, and rather, closer to Kargil and Leh in India.
Pakistan has compounded its problems by gradually allowing China a greater role in the area, beginning with its cession of a part of Gilgit-Baltistan to China in the 1960s, without consulting the people. More recently, Pakistan allowed in the Chinese Army under the garb of rebuilding infrastructure in the aftermath of floods and earthquake. In the long run, Gilgit-Baltistan is important for future Chinese passage to the Indian Ocean. But in the short run, i.e., in the aftermath of NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan, Gilgit-Baltistan is crucial for Chinese attempts to insulate Xinjiang, its restive Muslim province, from the hub of Islamic radicalism along the AfPak border. When stationed in Gilgit-Baltistan, the Chinese Army can monitor Xinjiang-bound traffic.
Now that there are voices in Gilgit-Baltistan that favour the reintegration of these areas into India, it is time for New Delhi to revisit February 1992 to read the Indian Parliament's unanimous resolution on Jammu and Kashmir and implement it in letter and spirit. That was a national resolve and the Indian government is duty bound to respect it. |
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