With areas claimed by India, Pakistan and China, Kashmir has been the site of three wars and endless fighting since the partition of British India in 1947. Following a background report, Elizabeth Farnsworth and guests discuss the Kashmir dispute and place it in the context of current tension between India and Pakistan.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And we get three perspectives on Kashmir now. Hafeez Malik is professor of political science at Villanova University. He has written extensively about Pakistan where he was born. Sumit Ganguly is professor of political science at Hunter College; he's been to Kashmir many times over the past five years researching his book, "The Crisis in Kashmir, Portents of War, Hopes of Peace," which was published last year. He was born in India and has lived in the United States for 25 years. And Robert Wirsinger, professor at the University of South Carolina, also specializes in South Asia. He was in India last month meeting with government officials and Kashmiri opposition leaders. Thank you all for being with us.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mr. Ganguly, please fill out the picture a little bit for us. How tense is the situation in Kashmir right now?

SUMIT GANGULY: The situation has obviously been tense for quite some time, and right now tensions are probably at an all time high, because there were recent nuclear explosions and obviously there are repercussions that are felt in the valley of Kashmir, which is the locust of the insurgency, which has been going on since December 1989.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: When we hear there is shelling, who is doing it?

SUMIT GANGULY: Well, I suspect both sides are doing it. And shelling is actually not anything terribly new. In many ways because of this greater focus on India and Pakistan in recent days, one has learned about the shelling. But for those of us who in Kashmir this is virtually—I hate to say this—a normal occurrence. In fact, if there isn't shelling, then something is unusual. I mean, border skirmishes have been going on for the good part of the last 30 years or so, frankly, and perhaps the intensity right now is greater along the border, but, on the other hand, shelling is not something terribly out of the ordinary in this highly troubled and volatile border.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And Mr. Ganguly, how many troops on both sides, the Pakistani and Indian?

SUMIT GANGULY: This is a subject of some contention. I have heard allegations that there are as many as ½ million Indian troops and paramilitary forces stationed in Kashmir. On the other hand, my own assessment suggests something like 300,000, and on the Pakistani side about—at the most—1/4 million, possibly less. But on the Pakistani side it's a bit more difficult to assess, because of the smallness of Pakistan and because of the necessity Pakistan feels as a lack—as a consequence of its lack of strategic depth to keep more troops closer to the border. India has much greater strategic depth and thereby does not need to have as many troops as the Pakistanis do.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mr. Wirsing, what kind of weapons are we talking about on each side?

RT WIRSING: The weapons run the whole range of ground force weapons, with often these skirmishes involving small arms fire, machine gun fire, light mortars, heavy mortars, and including a heavy artillery—155 millimeter pieces. There have been so far no use of air power—your fighter aircraft or helicopters in the conflict—but that's one of the possibilities resulting from increased tension is that the weapons used—more lethal weapons might be used by one side or the other.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And, Mr. Wirsing, how many armed insurgents and with what kind of weapons?

ROBERT WIRSING: Here again, you have a lot of controversy. I think estimates generally run somewhere between ten and fifteen thousand at the most, with the largest insurgent force—the Hezbollah Mujahadin—possibly ranging between four and five thousand. Generally speaking, throughout the period of insurgency in the 1990's, they have possessed and used mainly small arms, mines, and so forth, though recently, they have been found to be in possession of heavier weapons.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And, Hafeez Malik, who are the insurgents, and what do they want?

HAFEEZ MALIK: There are three kinds of insurgents in Kashmir. Number one, are those individuals who are determined that Kashmir should become part of Pakistan. Another group of insurgents who think that the best thing for Kashmir would be to have autonomy from India, and that their relationship should be very nominal with the Indian federation. And third group of people—perhaps I should not call them insurgents—they are basically those Kashmir leaders who have traditionally cooperated with India. So this is, by and large, the spectrum insofar as the sentiment is concerned.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Where do the insurgents who are armed get their arms?

HAFEEZ MALIK: Well, initially, when the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan, a fairly sizeable number of individuals from Kashmir had participated in the insurgency against the Soviet Union. They were Arabs and they were Muslims from other countries. It was basically the Islamic sentiment that had brought them there. And weapons in those days were in abundance. And they could use them. Subsequently, I imagine that Pakistan has supported them. Obviously, the weapons have to come from somewhere. They may also obtain weapons in the open market and purchase them somewhere, wherever they can. But I would not be surprised if Pakistan gives them some aid, and perhaps the present government in Afghanistan would also funnel some of the weapons to their care.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And Mr. Wirsing, you've just met with the political leadership of some of these groups in India. What do you have to add to this?

ROBERT WIRSING: I want to reply to what was just said. I think it's very important to be clear here that Pakistan is playing a very substantial role and always has in providing support to the insurgents in the Valley of Kashmir. The government of Pakistan feels that it has full justification for doing so, since it is a disputed territory. They deny that it ever legally acceeded to India. The—without aid from Pakistan of all kinds—armed training and other forms of support—I don't think that the insurgency would have achieved the scale that it has or have lasted as long as it has.

HAFEEZ MALIK: I'm not denying—

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Excuse me just one second. And, Mr. Wirsing, before we leave you, what did you learn about the current situation from the meetings just in the last month or so in India?

ROBERT WIRSING: From those meetings I learned that conditions in the valley have certainly changed from those that prevailed there in the early years of this decade. That is, to a certain extent India has been able to prevail militarily over the insurgents, who are now mainly to be found in the mountainous areas on the periphery of Jammu and Kashmir. So the cities are a lot quieter. Life has been returned to normalcy to a certain extent. And the Indians can claim to a certain extent to have contained it. Remaining, of course, is the denial of civil liberties to the Kashmiri people and an intimidating and coercive environment, which is inevitable in a situation where you have three hundred and fifty or four hundred thousand troops. Human rights violations continue to be reported in very large numbers. So although life on the surface has been returned to normal in certain respects, certainly that part of life that has to do with political freedoms and a feeling of security, perhaps even a feeling of self-government, they have a long ways to go before India will have reached that point in Kashmir.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Okay. Mr. Malik, you wanted to respond. And then tell us why Kashmir—briefly—is so important to Pakistan.

HAFEEZ MALIK: I think it should be kept in mind that the insurgency is local. It's the Kashmiri people who are fighting. It is true—and I have already pointed out—that Pakistan has supported them. This is open. This is an open secret. Nobody denies that.

And, in fact, Pakistan has been involved in it since the beginning—since 1947. But without indigenous insurgency, no matter what kind of support Pakistan could give, the insurgency wouldn't have achieved the status as it has. I think the indigenous of the insurgency has to be emphasized. The second point is why is Kashmir important for Pakistan? First of all, the issue goes back to the year 1947. Pakistanis feel very strongly, very passionately that in India cheated Pakistan out of Kashmir. Now, obviously, this is involved in history, and we do not have the time to go into it—

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: No. I'm afraid we don't.

HAFEEZ MALIK: But the second issue is strategic. Kashmir is located at a place where out of five rivers that flow into Pakistan four of them originate from Kashmir. It is true that a treaty has been signed between India and Pakistan in 1960, which divided the distribution of the waters coming from these rivers. But Pakistanis feel that in a major conflict India could shut off the waters from the rivers.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Okay.

HAFEEZ MALIK: But—

SUMIT GANGULY: I'd like to interject at this point.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Yes. Please do.

SUMIT GANGULY: Because much as I agree with Hafeez completely that the roots of the insurgency are quintessentially indigenous—and I have written as much on a number of occasions—and I also agree with Bob that Pakistan's involvement has significantly exacerbated their insurgency—I need to point to a historical fact. Even during the 1965 war or the 1971 war, neither India nor Pakistan—in fairness—bombed the head works off these water arrangements, and more importantly, India did not shut off water when it very easily could have.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Okay. Mr. Ganguly, I need to bring you up to the present, because we don't have that much time.

SUMIT GANGULY: Okay.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Given all these differences—given India's claim over this region—given Pakistan's claim over this region, how likely is a war that now—that both countries have at least the capability to make nuclear weapons—could go nuclear?

SUMIT GANGULY: Ironically, I think the likelihood of war has actually diminished and will continue to diminish in the foreseeable future, especially if both India and Pakistan do not go ahead further and marry warheads with ballistic missiles. Nuclear weapons represent a qualitatively different change in the environment of the subcontinent, and anyone on the Indian and Pakistani side who has the slightest understanding of nuclear weapons realizes that these are not weapons you trifle with. And as a consequence, there will be an enormous emphasis on avoiding escalation from a conventional conflict for fear that you move to the nuclear level from which you hit the point of no return.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And, Mr. Wirsing, what do you think needs to be done by the five declared nuclear powers at their meeting Thursday to lessen tensions in Kashmir?

ROBERT WIRSING: I would suggest two things that need to be done: One is for the international community to put maximum pressure on India and Pakistan to resume the talks, the dialogues that they had underway about a year ago and that got stalled in September. That dialogue had resulted by June last year in a very promising agreement to create an instrument or a mechanism in which India and Pakistan would address all major issues between—including Kashmir. That was a landmark agreement. Unfortunately, it has gone by the wayside. The talks need to be resurrected, and I would suggest the first thing on the agenda and something for the international community to press for is an immediate cease-fire along the entire length of the line of control, because although I agree very much with Sumit that the likelihood of war is not all that great, surely the existence of this flash point and this almost daily firing back and forth often with very destructive consequences is the kind of situation which I think is intolerable as these two nations acquire increasing nuclear weapons capability.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Okay. Well, thank you all very much for being with us.