ABSTRACT
Every counterinsurgency (COIN) campaign has unique features that shape the struggle for the allegiance of the population. India’s COIN campaign in Jammu and Kashmir (Kashmir) from the late 1980s until the early 2000s exhibits such features, especially in the manner in which India had to adjust to the insurgency’s transformation into proxy war and terrorism sponsored by Pakistan. In one sense, this transformation into Pakistani-supported violence is not surprising because India and Pakistan have been in conflict over Kashmir since the partition of British India into India and Pakistan in 1947. This larger context of conflict between India and Pakistan raised, however, the stakes of India’s ability to cope with insurgency in Kashmir effectively. This chapter analyzes India’s COIN campaign in Kashmir and the lessons India learned from grappling with the insurgency’s evolution over time into proxy war and terrorism. My experiences as a member of the Indian Army in multiple tours of duty in
Kashmir inform this chapter’s analysis. As a practitioner of conventional operations and COIN in Kashmir, I have witnessed the successes and failures of India’s civilian and military capabilities in this region over the course of decades. I draw on these experiences in evaluating India’s COIN campaign in Kashmir because, I believe, they add the practitioner’s perspective to the extensive academic and journalistic writing that has focused on the Kashmir problem.
