Kashmir conflict

The Kashmir conflict is a territorial conflict over the Kashmir region, primarily between India and Pakistan, with China playing a third-party role. 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. After further fighting in the wars of 1965 and 1971, the Simla Agreement formally established the Line of Control between the two nations' controlled territories. In 1999, an armed conflict between India and Pakistan broke out again in Kargil with no effect on the ''status quo''.

Since 1989, Kashmiri protest movements were created to voice Kashmir's disputes and grievances with the Indian government in the Indian-controlled Kashmir Valley, with some Kashmiri separatists in armed conflict with the Indian government based on the demand for self-determination. Targeted violence by the insurgents also resulted in the large-scale migration of Kashmiri Hindus out of the Kashmir Valley in the early 1990s. The 2010s were marked by further unrest erupting within the Kashmir Valley. The 2010 Kashmir unrest began after an alleged fake encounter between local youth and security forces. Thousands of youths pelted security forces with rocks, burned government offices, and attacked railway stations and official vehicles in steadily intensifying violence. The Indian government blamed separatists and Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based militant group, for stoking the 2010 protests. The 2016 Kashmir unrest erupted after the killing of a Hizbul Mujahideen militant, Burhan Wani, by Indian security forces. Further unrest in the region erupted after the 2019 Pulwama attack.

According to scholars, Indian forces have committed many human rights abuses and acts of terror against the Kashmiri civilian population, including extrajudicial killing, rape, torture, and enforced disappearances. According to Amnesty International, no member of the Indian military deployed in Jammu and Kashmir has been tried for human rights violations in a civilian court , although military courts-martial have been held. Amnesty International has also accused the Indian government of refusing to prosecute perpetrators of abuses in the region. Brad Adams, the Asia director at Human Rights Watch said in 2006 "Although 'Azad' means 'free', the residents of Azad Kashmir are anything but free. The Pakistani authorities govern Azad Kashmir with strict controls on basic freedoms". 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 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 an 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 dominion