ABSTRACT
Two major threats drive Pakistan’s security policy: the Indo–Pakistani conflict over Kashmir and the challenge of internal security and governance. The first can be traced to the circumstances of the emergence of India and Pakistan as independent states from the detritus of the British Indian Empire in 1947. These two successor states have from the very outset been involved in a continuing anti-irredentist conflict over the state of Kashmir. This conflict, contrary to popular belief, has little to do with possession of a body of territory. Pakistan’s claim to Kashmir goes to the very foundations of the Pakistani state, in that Pakistan constituted the homeland of a South Asian Muslim nation. 1 According to this logic, at the time of independence and partition, Kashmir’s location and its predominantly Muslim population should have let it accede to Pakistan. Pakistan insists that Kashmir’s accession to India in 1947 was coerced and violated the will of the Kashmiri people.
