The journey from Islamabad to Muzaffarabad, the capital of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, is a memorable one. Mine was made over 17 years ago when most folk were fixated on Al Qaeda, though Kashmiri militant group Ansar ur-Tawhid wal Jihad in Kashmir would later support Al Qaeda. As it happened, I was just as interested in the concept of Kashmir belonging to the Kashmiris—not to India, not to Pakistan. Something former Pakistan cricket captain Shahid Afridi also later argued for. Wishing a pear to fall from the ceiling is an old Kashmiri proverb. It means vain hope. Was it really in vain to believe in an independent Kashmir?
I remember winding through the hills of Murree. At Lower Topa, the road becomes Bhurban Road, also called Khakan Abbasi Road, leading to Kohala. From there, you trace the Jhelum River to Muzaffarabad. ‘Kashmir has always been more than a mere place,’ wrote the wonderful journalist, travel writer and historian Jan Morris. ‘It has the quality of an experience, or a state of mind, or perhaps an ideal.’ I recall snowy glaciers. Surprisingly dense forests. A child walking with a raised chair over its head to shelter from the rain. (I filmed this.) Verdant meadows. A loya jirga. (I filmed that too.) Valleys. Gorgeous gorges. Fluent rivers. It was all so beautiful. Lyrical. Not Led Zeppelin lyrical—their song Kashmir was weak by comparison.
I had also wanted to visit Abbottabad south of Kashmir in the Orash Valley but my Pakistani companion had said nothing ever happens there. Of course, Abbottabad was about to become famous not just for its 1850s founder James Abbott of the Bengal Army, who once blew all his money elsewhere on a three-day party with local Hazaras, but as the oddly public hideout of Osama bin Laden—until 14 years ago, almost to the day.
But let’s be clear: it was the British not Al Qaeda who carved out the lines of conflict and violence that still bleed into Kashmir today. Many Kashmiri Brits still tell us this. They also say that unless properly acknowledged, even now, there can be no path to redress.
While India and Pakistan have been ‘trying’ not to nuke each other these past few weeks, I’ve been scouring news on this. Even after the ceasefire and return of villagers to their homes, journalist Yashraj Sharma had noted continued violations by Indian forces along the famous Line of Control (LoC). Pakistani drones were also reportedly abuzz above Srinagar.
Alexander Evans was on the case. Many moons ago, we met in Pakistan. Though a Brit, he was advising the US on Pakistan after being recruited by Richard Holbrooke. Now a popular LSE professor here in London, I remember him sitting on a white plastic chair in the late Islamabad sun—we shared AfPak interests—putting the world to rights. Last week, Evans wrote: ‘Nuclear weapons may provide a degree of power-matching, but emerging technologies and India’s massive military advantage risk degrading Pakistan’s command and control. This has Pakistani generals worrying, including about a potential Indian strike to eliminate Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.’
David Loyn, it must be said, also knows his Pakistan. For a people who authored many of the region’s problems, we Brits don’t half retain an interest in them—perhaps this is a case of late-stage remorse. (Will we be seeing likewise with Americans one day regarding their 133 military conflicts to date?) I first encountered Loyn’s work through his book Frontline: The True Story of the British Mavericks Who Changed the Face of War Reporting, more recently coming across his name while trying to help free a friend of mine and central figure in his book held by the Taliban. (He is home now.) Last week, Loyn wrote of the recent spat: ‘The group who carried out the attack on 22 April called themselves the ‘Resistance Front,’ but were just another avatar of the Pakistan-financed LeT and JeM factions. Earlier this year, India wanted them included in the UN’s six-monthly global assessment of terrorist threats. Pakistan opposed it.’
Today, of course, it is Chinese influence we ‘see’ on the march. Journalist and author Con Coughlin was reminding us of this when he stated that between 2017 and 2021, nearly half of China’s total arms exports went to Pakistan—as much a testament to Pakistan’s role in China’s long-term Belt and Road ambitions as anything. ‘They’re halfway through a 150-year plan,’ a well-informed friend half-joked to me only the other day.
Meanwhile, Trump in three of seven Gulf Arab states—the richest ones—was shaking Arab hand after Arab hand while his hosts did likewise with the entourage of American businessmen. Regards the continued India-Pakistan ceasefire 1700 miles away, India’s PM Modi remained oddly quiet about Trump’s self-trumpeted role. Amidst all this, also, were so many hosts in exquisite traditional Bedouin garb that I found myself indulgently drifting off to my own brief shemagh-wearing days in the desert.
The shemagh. Red and white. Knitted edge. Sandstorm-proof. No one quite wore theirs like my Bedouin companion Ibrahim al-Hirsh—though an English colleague, with whom I would later survive a nasty car crash, did a pretty good job.
On the subject of dress, while we’re at it, few things rival the Kashmiri pheran—two gowns layered atop each other. Despite the rise in popularity of the shalwar kameez—a racing green version of which was gifted to me by the late Afghan commander Abdul Haq and worn throughout my time filming the mujahideen in Afghanistan—the pheran is unmatched. In winter, wool. In summer, cotton. It fends off the cold like nobody’s business.
But none of this can distract from the fact that the greatest British crime of all in Kashmir was the 1846 Treaty of Amritsar. After the First Anglo-Sikh War, the East India Company sold Kashmir to Maharaja Gulab Singh for 7.5 million rupees—land, people, and all. To many Kashmiris, it was a literal sale of their lives. By ignoring Kashmir’s ethnic, cultural, and religious makeup, it made conflict inevitable.
‘There are things you break that can’t be put back together again,’ wrote the great survivalist Salman Rushdie, whose masked attacker Hadi Matar has just been sentenced to 25 years. ‘And Kashmir may be one of them.’ The 1947 partition of Pakistan left Kashmir’s fate dangling. The Instrument of Accession with India, allowing Indian military intervention, was conditional on a plebiscite. It never happened. Decades of dispute have followed.
Even during the Cold War, British interests continued to stoke conflict. Alliances with Pakistan seemed more about control than resolution. I saw this geopolitical obsessiveness first-hand in the early ’80s during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Though the Brits had officially exited the Indian subcontinent as far back as 1947—when they left behind fractured sovereignty, contested borders, and deep mistrust—once again, this legacy bled into the present. Not to mention the very real wars: 1949, 1965, 1999. Deadly eruptions of violence followed in 2016 and 2019.
Today, while India’s Northern Army Command visit the Poonch and Naushera districts of Jammu and Kashmir to check up on things, and while activists still gather for Free Kashmir rallies outside India House in London, arguably only Kashmiri writers show workable unity. This they do with verse, one of the greatest weapons of all, embracing the still troubled terrain with echoes of memory and resilience. After the 2005 earthquake near Muzaffarabad, for example, Kashmiri poetry rose from the rubble in a manner as resilient as the people themselves. As Mohammad Ayub Betab penned: ‘Far away on an upland near the stars, my mother’s house is a sky made of sapphire.’
Kashmir. A place of beauty. A place of scars. A place—formerly—of Brits. And maybe, in time, the odd pear falling from the ceiling.
Peter Bach lives in London.
@CP
