Pakistan - Kashmir

Once upon a time-a long, long time ago . . . in a galaxy far, far away-Kashmir was one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world. Not any more. Instead Kashmir now takes up a rather large slice of both Pakistan and India's defense budget, with both sides playing that well known game of "our-artillery-is-more-accurate-than-yours" along the 700-kilometer-long Line of Control. Things heated up a bit in 1999 when Indian soldiers went back up the Siachen glacier, as the snows melted, to find that the high ground had been taken by a large number of guerrillas who had infiltrated from Pakistan. And the aforementioned guerrillas didn't seem to want to leave or have their passports stamped. In nearly two months of fighting there were an estimated 3,500 casualties. The problem originated in 1947, when the princes who ran the "princely states" cut a quick deal with mainly Hindu India instead and screwed their predominately Muslim subjects. The Kashmir dispute, which caused the 1948 and 1965 wars with India (Pakistan was whipped both times), remains unresolved. The Simla Agreement after the 1971 Bangladesh war adjusted the boundary between the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir and the Pakistani state of Azad and Kashmir. The Muslims in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir demand greater autonomy from Hindu India.

The separatist elements in the province, particularly the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), and the Shura-e-Jihad (a Kashmiri based organization that is made of seven separatist groups) openly receive training and military equipment from Pakistan.

So today, Kashmir has turned into a war zone with both sides owning and squabbling over large chunks of land. Much of the trouble goes back to the period of the Afghan conflict (the one with the Russians), when Pakistani parties allied and trained with Afghan mujahedin to kick ass out of the Russians. Some of the less academic groups thought that it would be cool to have a bit of jihad in Kashmir as well. So, while Pakistani groups like Jamiat-i-Islami trained alongside their mates in Afghanistan (in the case of the latter it was Hezb-i-Islami, led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar), what no one really noticed at the time was that all these groups had close connections with Hezb-ul-Mujahedin, the armed wing of the Kashmiri Jamiat-i-Islami political faction. Oops!

Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF)

http://shell.comsats.net.pk/~jklf/index.html

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/8215/index.html

Information

http://www.jammu-kashmir.com