Kashmir Solutions
* Mansoor Ijaz’s March 1 commentary gives the impression that if the U.N. cease-fire line in Kashmir was converted into an international border, it would resolve the dispute. It won’t. The issue at stake is water. India occupies in Kashmir the headwaters and watersheds of Pakistan’s main rivers, allotted to Pakistan under the 1960 Indus water treaty. These areas have a majority population of pro-Pakistani Kashmiri Muslims unhappy under Indian rule.
If the Indian leaders have any vision, they will look at the billions in future trade with comparatively underdeveloped Pakistan, beyond which lies the oil- and gas-rich markets of Central Asia accessible to India only through Pakistan. They should, in an act of statesmanship, remove the chauvinistic desire to occupy the watersheds of Pakistan’s main rivers. India could then, together with Pakistan, let water engineers draw a line on the ground to divide Kashmir.
No Pakistani government can survive after signing away the watersheds of its main rivers in Kashmir. But any ruler in Islamabad can be prevailed upon, with loans and investments, to give “face” to India, offering equal acreage of land in exchange (in the Siachin and K-2 areas of Pakistani Kashmir, for example) for any adjustment Delhi undertakes in Indian-occupied Kashmir.
AHMAD SHEIKH, President
Kashmir Assn. of North
America, Washington
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