With Simla Agreement Questioned, Does UN Military Observer Group Have Any Role Left?
New Delhi: Pakistan’s assertion of its right to suspend the Simla Agreement of 1972 earlier this week, in response to escalating tensions with India over the April 22 terrorist attack in Kashmir which killed 26 tourists, evokes a long-forgotten antecedent to this binned treaty which, surprisingly, still endures – the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP), established in 1949.
Possibly one of the UN's oldest continuing peacekeeping missions, albeit somewhat wobbly, the turbulent history of the 76-year-old UNMOGIP, essentially parallels that of Kashmir’s decades-long chronic unrest. It came into being soon after India referred the first war it fought with Pakistan over Jammu and Kashmir, between October 1947 and January 1949, to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on New Year’s Day in 1948. Days later, this led to Resolution 39, establishing a UN Commission for India and Pakistan to investigate and eventually mediate matters over the Kashmir issue.
The follow-up, UNSC Resolution 47 in April 1948, called for a ceasefire – the withdrawal of all-occupying Pakistani forces from Kashmir and the concomitant reduction of Indian military presence to the minimum level necessary to maintain law and order. The resolution sought to oversee a plebiscite to determine the disputed principality’s future, which clearly has not ensued.
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These terms came into effect on January 1, 1949, and to oversee them, the UN’s first Secretary General Trygve Lie from Norway instituted the UNMOGIP.
The UNMOGIP was tasked with monitoring the ceasefire line, or CFL. This later became the Line of Control (LoC) after the third India-Pakistan war via the Simla Agreement, 1972.
Role of UNMOGIP
Headquartered jointly at Srinagar and Islamabad, the UNMOGIP had field stations close to flashpoints along the CFL at Rawalakot, Kotli, Bhimber, Domel, Skardu, Gilgit and Sialkot. So, for the next 22 years, until the 1971 war, the observer group relayed frequent ceasefire violations back to their UN headquarters in New York.
It also recorded in detail Pakistan’s blatant undermining of the UNSC resolution via the secret 1949 Karachi Agreement, which was outed only in the 1990s. This clandestine agreement illicitly imposed the Pakistani federal government's administrative control over Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir (PoK). Additionally, it arbitrarily separated Gilgit and Baltistan, or the Northern Areas, as they were then designated from PoK, rendering them separate entities.
Further contravening the UNSC resolution, Pakistan illegally ceded to its military ally, China, about 5,180 sq km of the Shaksgam Valley – also known as the Trans-Karakoram Tract – which was originally part of the Gilgit-Baltistan region, and subject to eventual settlement with India. China then constructed its strategic Karakoram highway through the Shaksgam Valley, giving it access to critical Arabian Sea ports like Gwadar on Pakistan’s southwest coast.
The UNSC resolution, for its part, had decreed that Jammu and Kashmir’s entire territory, as it existed under its maharaja in 1947, was to be treated as a single disputed unit, with neither side altering its status, before a UN-supervised plebiscite was conducted. But with time and subsequent events, this became infructuous.
Meanwhile, during the second India-Pakistan war in September 1965, blue-helmeted UNMOGIP personnel documented the rival armies' movements focusing primarily on their respective operations. After significant losses on both sides, the war culminated in a UN-brokered ceasefire, with a UNSC resolution calling for an immediate cessation of hostilities.
This came into effect on September 23, 1965, and once again the UNMOGIP's role became critical in monitoring this ceasefire and in verifying compliance with its sundry conditions for several months till the Tashkent Agreement, brokered by Moscow, was inked a few months later, in January 1966.
Thereafter, the UNMOGIP continued its benign presence, assisting in maintaining a degree of stability and sobriety in the disputed region. During these times, UNMOGIP staff travelled overland to both countries through agreed transit points – like the Uri-Muzaffarabad route – following permission from either side.
Simla Agreement of 1972
This arrangement lasted for another six years, till the 1971 war between the neighbours which was followed by the Simla Agreement in July 1972. Under the pact, agreed by India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Pakistan’s President (later PM) Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the CFL was converted into the LoC and the warring neighbours agreed that the Kashmir dispute would be discussed and resolved bilaterally, without third-party mediation.
Severely humiliated, after India had decisively defeated the Pakistan Army on the Eastern front, captured over 93,000 of its soldiers and civilians and created Bangladesh, Islamabad had initially acquiesced to the Simla Agreement.
But almost immediately upon returning home, Bhutto savaged the treaty he had just signed in a fiery speech in parliament, vociferously declaring that Islamabad had not abandoned its struggle to occupy Kashmir in its entirety. Moreover, in gross contravention of the Simla Agreement, he openly flaunted the option of employing international mediation, in consonance with the original UNSC resolution, to secure this goal.
Do these matter now?
Over subsequent decades, successive civilian and military governments in Islamabad parroted this sentiment but conveniently avoided all reference to the UNSC resolution clause calling for the withdrawal of all Pakistani forces from the Kashmiri territory they had forcibly occupied in 1947-48 through deceit and subterfuge.
In the meantime, after the Simla Agreement, India unilaterally declared the UNMOGIP as extraneous and limited interaction with it to a minimum, rendering its presence little more than symbolic. In summary, it told the UNMOGIP that its mandate had lapsed and that its presence was no longer needed on Indian territory.
Later, in 2014, the UNMOGIP was forced by the Indian government into vacating the rent-free bungalow it had occupied for 65 years on Purana Qila Road, near India Gate in Delhi, with then foreign office spokesman Syed Akaruddin declaring that the UN peacekeepers had ‘outlived their relevance’.
That being said, the UNMOGIP has still not officially been withdrawn and maintains a token presence in Srinagar and at a non-descript liaison office in Delhi. But unlike earlier, its personnel are barred from conducting patrols in Jammu and Kashmir, field investigations or even visiting the LoC.
Pakistan, however, continues to support the UNMOGIP, based at Islamabad, and reportedly regularly files complaints on Indian infringements of the LoC. However, it is believed to deny the UN peacekeepers access to the ad hoc frontier with India.
But with Pakistan declaring its option to suspend the Simla Agreement, it remains to be seen if the penury-ridden UN will, after more than three-quarters-of-a-century, withdraw the UNMOGIP, signalling the closing of an outdated chapter and asserting that Kashmir’s future will be decided not by foreign observers but by its own people and sovereign will.
Note: An earlier headline and opening para of this story created the incorrect impression that Pakistan has suspended the Simla Agreement of 1972. While the Pakistan governemnt has "reserved the right to suspend" the agreement, it has in fact not done so as yet.
This article went live on April twenty-seventh, two thousand twenty five, at sixteen minutes past six in the evening.The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.
