Many hoped that the South Asian earthquake would bring together the two parts of divided Kashmir. It hasn't, writes Graham Usher in Muzaffarabad, Pakistan-administered Kashmir It was supposed to be a historic day when a people divided by war were "united by adversity", in the words of one Indian government official. Yet the martial ceremony on 7 November to prise open one chink in the heavily fortified Line of Control (LoC), the de facto border separating Pakistan-controlled from India-controlled Kashmir, served only to highlight that the political fractures dividing this contested territory are every bit as deep as those caused by the earthquake on 8 October, so far at a cost of 86,000 lives, most of them Kashmiris. As Pakistani and Indian commanders exchanged white flags and shook hands, several hundred Kashmiri men, women and children gathered in the hope that they would be allowed to reach their kin on the Indian side of the divide. They were quickly disabused: "access" applied to 25 truckloads of relief goods waiting to cross the line, they were told, not to people. Two fathers and their sons made a dash for the LoC in any case, swelled by dozens more Kashmiris. They were repulsed by tear gas and warning shots. The Kashmiris replied with a cry that is an anathema to the Indian army and only slightly less troubling to the Pakistani. "Independence!" The opening was the protracted response to President Musharraf's call last month that the LoC be rendered "irrelevant" so that relief and relatives could reach the victims of the earthquake. On 29 October the Indian and Pakistani governments agreed that five crossing points would be opened for people and goods, with the first slated for 7 November. So why was there still a ban on people? "There is no hindrance from the Pakistani side," said Tasnim Aslam, spokeswoman for the Pakistani Foreign Office. "During the [29 October] talks we insisted on simple identification papers [to enable people to cross] and a time period of five days for processing them. But... the Indian delegation did not agree." She was less up front as to why India did not agree. On 29 October -- the same day as the agreement -- three bombs ripped through markets in the Indian capital of Delhi, leaving 61 dead and 200 wounded. While making no formal accusation, India believes Pakistani-based Jihadi groups are the likeliest culprits, with the prime suspect being Laskar-e- Tayyaba -- a militia responsible for similar anti-India attacks in the past, formally banned by the Pakistani government but visibly active in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. On 31 October Musharraf promised Pakistan's "total and unequivocal support for any investigation India carries out" should a Pakistani hand be behind the blasts. Divided in disputed circumstances in the partition that created Pakistan from British India in 1947, Kashmir has been cause of two of the three Indian-Pakistani wars. Since 1989, an armed insurgency has raged in Indian Kashmir, initially as a genuine Kashmiri struggle for national independence, but subsequently fuelled by Jihadi groups like Laskar-e-Tayyaba, backed by Pakistan's shadowy Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. Pakistan's aim was to bleed India to force a UN-monitored plebiscite that, it believed, would "return" India's only Muslim-majority province to Pakistan. India's response has been to bleed Kashmir, so far at the loss of 50,000 lives. And India's suspicion is that Pakistan, or at least the ISI, is still "promoting militant Jihad as an instrument of state policy", with the Delhi bombings being the latest instalment and despite the formal peace process begun between the two countries in 2004. Is there any substance to the charge? Yes, says a former Pakistani general who refused to be attributed. "The real problem is that Musharraf thrives on ambivalence. He calls for opening the LoC with India but is hesitant about imposing any real curbs on the militants in Kashmir. It is now obvious to all that 'banned' Jihadi groups are operating in Kashmir and with the connivance of the army and the ISI. It is also clear these groups are becoming increasingly autonomous, even the ISI is losing control over them. This is why I think it likely that a Pakistani group was behind the Delhi bombings but unlikely that it was government-sponsored in any way. This is why Musharraf has to act against the Jihadi groups. There will be no movement in Kashmir without it." Whoever was behind Delhi, it is clear that the earthquake and its aftermath have deepened Kashmiri alienation, not only from India (which has long been seen as an Israeli-like occupier) but also from Pakistan. The inadequacy of the Pakistani government's response to the disaster and the army's powerlessness over opening the LoC has strengthened the Kashmiris' sense of themselves as nation independent from Delhi and Islamabad, says Atik Rahman, a community activist in Muzaffarabad, "capital" of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. "India says Kashmir is 'an integral part of the state'. Pakistan says we are the 'jugular vein' of its nation. But Kashmiris know who we are and what they are -- they are both occupiers. That's why the best solution would be for the two armies to withdraw so that the two parts of the Kashmiri can interact and decide for themselves their future. Then we will see whether it is independence, incorporation in Pakistan or something else".
