Annotated literature review associated with the project, ‘Comparative Perspectives on Conflict Management in Asia’
January 2009
A collaboration between the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue and the Delhi Policy Group
Note
This review contains description from a non-exhaustive selection of material relevant to conflict management in Kashmir, Manipur and the rise of Naxalism. It aims to provide the reader with a broad overview of key points and is not intended to be a strict academic literature review.
I. Kashmir
Swami, Praveen (2007), India, Pakistan and the Secret Jihad, Routledge, Oxford. This book by a well known Indian journalist, traces the genesis of the armed jihad in Kashmir to events that long preceded Partition in 1947. The author argues that the intensity and longevity of the conflict cannot be explained through reasons of a failure in the modern state system or of failed nationhood, but rather that the conflict is the result of the successes of the modern states of India and Pakistan in terms of their geo-strategic and military planning. Even though violence and terrorist activities escalated in Kashmir as late as 1989-1990, Swami argues that a series of covert operations backed by Pakistan immediately after 1947 continued till the mid-1960s to destabilize the political situation and to organise a mass rebellion in the state. Swami argues that till the 1950s, the informal war being fought on the soils of Kashmir by Pakistan was small-scale and had little in it that was new or radical. After the defeat of the 1965 war, Pakistan turned to Algeria and Palestine for inspiration. It was at this time in history that Pakistan realized that the war for Kashmir and the war against India had to collapse into one and that the warriors of the jihad in Jammu and Kashmir would be an integral part of its overall military structure. The recruitment policy of ‘jihadis’ by Pakistan for waging war in Kashmir, became more organised and religion became a...