Kashmir Rebel Group Calls End to Cease-Fire

A fledgling bid for peace in the dangerous region of Kashmir collapsed Tuesday when a guerrilla group fighting to expel the Indian government from the territory called off its 2-week-old cease-fire.

The leader of Hizbul Moujahedeen, one of the main militant groups fighting in Kashmir, said his group was ending talks with Indian leaders because of their refusal to include the Pakistani government in the negotiations.

“We direct all the commanders with the Moujahedeen in the field to break the cease-fire and go ahead with all target-oriented missions,” Syed Salahuddin told a news conference in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital.

The announcement ended what had been considered the most significant breakthrough since the insurgency in Indian-ruled Kashmir began in 1989. Government spokesmen in India and Pakistan, the archrivals who stand on opposite sides of the conflict, each blamed the other side for the breakdown.

The end of the cease-fire seemed to presage another round of bloodletting in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, a beautiful Himalayan area where more than 30,000 people have been killed in the past decade. On Tuesday, Indian soldiers said they had killed 13 guerrillas--members of another Kashmiri group--and lost three of their own troops. Indian army leaders vowed to strike Hizbul Moujahedeen if the group resumed its attacks.

The Kashmir conflict dates to 1947, when India and Pakistan divided the region as they broke from the British Empire. Both countries claim the entire area, and twice they have gone to war over it. Several rebel groups, including Hizbul Moujahedeen, are battling to expel the Indian army from Kashmir. Pakistani leaders say they provide moral and political support for the groups, but they are widely believed to provide military support as well.

The conflict is fueled in part by religion. India is a majority Hindu country, and Kashmir is its only Muslim-dominated state. Pakistan is almost entirely Muslim. Many of the militants fighting in Kashmir are not Kashmiri but Muslims from other countries--Pakistan and Afghanistan, for example--trying to stop what they regard as persecution of their brethren.

With both India and Pakistan now possessing nuclear weapons, Kashmir is considered one of the most likely starting points for a nuclear war. In a visit to the region earlier this year, President Clinton called the Indian subcontinent “the most dangerous place in the world” and urged all parties to start talking.

The leaders of Hizbul Moujahedeen declared a three-month cease-fire July 24 and said they wanted to talk to India’s leaders. The announcement was unexpected, but it followed a period of reduced tensions in Kashmir. The Indian government had recently released many jailed Kashmiri independence leaders, and the state assembly in Kashmir--widely viewed by Indian Kashmiris as a puppet of the central government--had passed a resolution favoring increased self-rule for the region. India responded to the cease-fire offer by halting offensive operations against the guerrilla group.

Exactly what prompted the cease-fire offer was not apparent. From the outset, however, it was clear that many other militant groups disagreed with it. More than 100 Kashmiri civilians, most of them Hindus, were massacred last week in attacks that appeared to be the work of Kashmiri rebels.

Some Indian commentators suspected a Pakistani role in the aborted offer. Others suggested that it actually amounted to an effort by Hizbul Moujahedeen to break away from Pakistani control of the insurgency. While Pakistani militants and other Muslim foreigners have come to dominate some of the other militant groups, Hizbul Moujahedeen is still believed to be largely Kashmiri.

On Tuesday, some experts said the group’s insistence that Pakistan be included in peace talks--a condition not originally part of the truce offer--could reflect intense political pressures both within the group and from the outside.

“There may well have been pressure from Pakistan to get them involved,” said Pran Chopra of the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi.

Other experts blamed Indian intransigence for the failure of the talks. Earlier this week, Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee declared that Kashmir will always remain part of India.

Even as the news looked bad Tuesday, many people in the region clung to the hope that public pressure will ultimately force the two sides to start talking again.

“The Kashmiris are completely exhausted,” said Amitabh Mattoo, professor of politics at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. “Anyone who wants to advance themselves politically in Kashmir has to speak the language of nonviolence.”