Following the terrorist attack at Pahalgam in Kashmir on April 22 that left 26 people — all unarmed civilians — dead, tensions between India and Pakistan have escalated. Underscoring the “cross-border linkages of the terrorist attack,” India announced punitive measures against Pakistan, including holding the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) “in abeyance with immediate effect,” canceling visas of Pakistanis in India, and shutting the border crossing.
In a tit-for-tat response, Pakistan announced the cancellation of visas for Indians (except Sikh pilgrims), and halted trade with India and access for Indian aircraft to Pakistani airspace. Describing India’s suspension of the IWT as an “act of war,” Islamabad warned that it would hold “in abeyance” its participation in all bilateral agreements with India, including the Simla Agreement.
“Should Pakistan suspend participation in the Simla Agreement, the situation in Kashmir would be destabilized significantly,” an official in India’s security establishment told The Diplomat, pointing out that the “historic” Simla Agreement had “served to hold the peace, even if only a flawed one” between India and Pakistan for over 50 years.
With the “guardrails of an international treaty that withholds them from engaging in armed hostilities” gone, an “open season” on the LoC [Line of Control] can be expected, Indian defense analyst Ajai Shukla, a blogger for The Diplomat, told Al Jazeera.
India and Pakistan can be expected “to act to alter the ground situation in their favor. This would lead to a significant escalation in hostilities in Kashmir,” the Indian security official warned.
The Simla Agreement followed the 1971 India-Pakistan War, which India won and led to the creation of Bangladesh. It was signed by then-Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Pakistani President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto on July 2, 1972, in the Indian Himalayan town of Simla (today’s Shimla).
The agreement put in place a framework for post-war relations between the two countries. To establish a “durable peace in the sub-continent,” India and Pakistan agreed “to settle their differences by peaceful means through bilateral negotiations or by any other peaceful means mutually agreed upon between them.” In essence, they committed to not using force to settle their disputes and not going to international forums or third parties for their resolution.
Importantly, the Simla Agreement formalized areas under Indian and Pakistani control in Jammu and Kashmir. Not only was the ceasefire line of December 17, 1971 converted into the Line of Control (LoC) between India and Pakistan but also, the two sides agreed that “neither side shall seek to alter it unilaterally, irrespective of mutual differences and legal interpretations,” and undertook to refrain from the threat or the use of force in violation of this Line. In effect, the Simla Agreement made the LoC the de facto international border in Jammu and Kashmir. In fact, there were reports that Gandhi and Bhutto had reached a secret understanding to take gradual steps to make the LoC an international border.
However, long before such steps could be taken, the Simla Agreement ran into trouble. Under fire for abandoning Pakistan’s goal of taking control of all of Kashmir, Bhutto slammed the agreement in a speech in the Pakistani Parliament soon after returning from Simla.
In India, meanwhile, Gandhi was criticized for not leveraging the 93,000 Pakistani prisoners of war in Indian custody to force Pakistan to accord de jure status to the LoC as the international border. Indeed, to date, India’s strategic community despairs that the Simla Agreement lost at the negotiating table what the military had won on the battlefield — an outright victory over Pakistan.
Within five years of signing the Simla Agreement, Gandhi and Bhutto were out of power; Gandhi was defeated in the general elections in March 1977, and Bhutto was ousted in a military coup in July that year. In 1979, Bhutto was hanged, and five years later, Gandhi was assassinated.
After the exit of the two leaders, there was “little sustained effort to implement the Simla Agreement, especially in Pakistan, which came under military rule,” a Pakistani journalist told The Diplomat. Besides, both sides began to “brazenly violate it.”
Pakistan alleges that India has violated the Simla Agreement several times: through the Indian military operation to take control of the Siachen Glacier in 1984; the Indian Parliament resolution in 1994 that all of Jammu and Kashmir, including areas under Pakistani control, was “an integral part of India;” and the Narendra Modi government’s revocation of Article 370 in 2019 that altered Jammu and Kashmir’s status.
India, on its part, has accused Pakistan of breaching the Simla Agreement by arming and infiltrating militants across the LoC into India, even sending its soldiers to alter the status quo on the ground during the 1999 Kargil conflict, and by repeatedly raising the Kashmir issue at the United Nations and OIC meetings to internationalize a bilateral conflict.
The failure of the Simla Agreement to usher in a durable peace and its repeated violation have prompted analysts in both countries to question its relevance. “The Shimla Agreement has run its course. Resurrecting its ghost will not serve any real purpose,” academic Mohammed Ayoob wrote in 2022.
Following Pakistan’s threat to hold it in abeyance, T.P. Sreenivasan, a former Indian ambassador, wrote that such action is “like beating a horse that it [Pakistan] had killed years ago by violating its major provisions repeatedly.”
“For Pakistan to raise it in the present context simply to bury it is farcical, to say the least,” he said.
According to the Pakistani journalist, Islamabad has little interest in keeping the agreement alive. Should it suspend its participation in the Simla Agreement, it can “be expected to raise the Kashmir issue more frequently and forcefully in global forums than in the past.” Pakistan will “push for a plebiscite and step up operations in Kashmir to alter the ground situation.”
As for India, “unlike in the past, when it was keen to maintain the status quo in Kashmir and therefore uphold the Simla Agreement, the Modi government will not shy away from attempting to take control of Pakistan-administered Kashmir,” the Pakistani journalist pointed out.
According to Shukla, “both sides feel the agreement is not safeguarding their interests.” Consequently, both countries could be waiting for the other to withdraw from the Simla Agreement.
Has Pakistan blundered by threatening to suspend participation in the agreement? The Modi government may not be worried should it do so.