KASHMIR CONFLICT AN EMERGING GENOCIDE

In the first half of the first millennium, the Kashmir region became an important center of Hinduism and later of Buddhism; later still, in the ninth century, Kashmir Shaivism arose. In 1339, Shah Mir became the first Muslim ruler of Kashmir, inaugurating the Shah Mir Dynasty. Kashmir was part of the Mughal Empire from 1586 to 1751, and thereafter, until 1820, of the Afghan Durrani Empire. That year, the Sikhs, under Ranjit Singh, annexed Kashmir. In 1846, after the Sikh defeat in the First Anglo Sikh-War, and upon the purchase of the region from the British under the Treaty of Arimstar the Raja of Jammu, Gulab Singh, became the new ruler of Kashmir. The rule of his descendants, under the British Crown, lasted until the partition of India in 1947, when the former princely state of the British Indian Empire became a disputed territory. The Kashmir Conflict is a territorial conflict over the Kashmir Region, primarily between India and Pakistan, with China playing a third-party role. The conflict started after the partition of India in 1947 as both India and Pakistan claimed the entirety of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir with Pakistan recognizing Chinese sovereignty over the Trans-Karakoram Tract and Aksai Chin since 1963. It is a dispute over the region that escalated into three wars between India and Pakistan and several other armed skirmishes. India controls approximately 55% of the land area of the region that includes Jammu, the Kashmir Valley, most of Ladakh, the Siachen Glacier and 70% of its population, Pakistan controls approximately 30% of the land area that includes Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan while China controls the remaining 15% of the land area that includes the Aksai Chin region, the mostly uninhabited Trans-Karakoram Tract, and part of the Demchok Sector. After the partition of India and a rebellion in the western sector of the states, Pakistani tribal militias invaded Kashmir, leading the Hindu ruler of Jammu and Kashmir to join India and starting the Indo-Pakistani war of 1947 which ended with a U.N-mediated ceasefire along a line that was eventually named the Line of Control After further fighting in the Indo-Pakistani war of 1965 and the Indo-Pakistani war of 1971, the Simla Agreement formally established the Line of Control between the two nations’ controlled territories. In 1999, armed conflict between India and Pakistan broke out again in the Kargil War over the Kargil
District.