This chapter first characterizes the fundamental purposes of the WTO and trade agreements, which should be viewed as much broader than trade liberalization. It then presents the major challenges that the trade system now faces. Special emphasis is paid to technological change since the WTO was created in 1995, namely, the development of global value chains. Finally, the author contends that trade agreements, in response, must be designed and conditioned upon social policy commitments. They should include, or be conditioned upon, agreements that cover: coordinated tax policy to combat harmful tax competition, tax avoidance, and tax evasion; domestic social security and job retraining, supported by trade adjustment commitments; labor protection; protections against social dumping; and accommodation of industrial policy experimentation for development. It will not be an easy process to reconceive trade agreements to better ensure social inclusion through these means, but the current system otherwise could unravel.

This chapter examines what is commonly referred to as the borderland in the Kashmir context and the epistemological consequences of this conceptualization. It focuses on the border spaces on both sides of the LoC and the conditions for political life there. Borderlands have been broadly defined as zones located on both sides of an international border (the edge) where the social dynamics are largely affected by the existence of this border, which regulates interactions between the two sides. Borders are institutions; they are the result of multiple activities of government and thus people's interactions have to be considered within the constraints of these institutions. As institutions, they produce norms that regulate social actions within a specific space, even in contexts where borders are contested – which brings up the question of enforcement. Although borders are relatively persistent and stable over time, the norms that regulate them are continuously challenged from outside (i.e., by grassroot-level movements) or from within the state, leading to the border's transformation. The border creates the borderland, in which the rupture caused by the border is ‘stitched together’ again through new societal arrangements and processes.

The borderland

Borderlands have commonly been examined through the lens of the state's periphery: they are considered to have evolved from a process of territorialization in which the areas known as borderlands end up on the edges of power centres. This spatial perspective implies an epistemology of the study of borderlands as peripheries, based on the pre-eminence of the nation-state as a normative category.

The contours of the Kashmir disputed map convey the idea of a spatial continuum, making it seem as if those who live within the contours of the former princely state inherently share some kind of bond, rather than simply having come to live side by side under the same ruler as the result of territorial conquests. As Winichakul Thongchai notes on the differences between pre-modern and modern maps as representations of spatial reality in his work on the making of Siam as a nation, ‘boundary lines must exist before a map’ because maps refer to an existing reality. The map of the Kashmir dispute also expresses an idea that this region is a politically integrated territory rather than a collection of loosely administered areas. In his seminal work Mapping an Empire, Mathew Edney points out that the mapping of British India through the Great Trigonometrical Survey served as the key ‘to the conceptual consolidation of a pre-existent India’. Similarly, it can be said that the mapped configuration of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir and its continued reproduction as a unit (albeit partitioned between India and Pakistan by a discontinuous line) over multiple decades demonstrates an essentialist understanding of the disputed territory. The unity conveys an idea of territorial contiguity that overlooks the fragments and fissures of the princely state that were never fully administratively integrated but rather shared an economic and political centre in the Kashmir Valley.

Manifestations and understandings of the Kashmir dispute differ from place to place. In the Kashmir Valley there is a context of open violence, while in AJK there is a question of freedom of expression. Moreover, proximity to the LoC enforces separation and militarization, with various consequences for the populations living in the area. The next two chapters explore these consequences in four urban areas on either side of the LoC by examining what it means for their inhabitants to be part of the dispute. The locations chosen are the Muzaffarabad and Srinagar municipalities in AJK and the Kashmir Valley, respectively, and Skardu, Baltistan and Kargil, Ladakh. For practical purposes I refer to these urban areas as ‘cities’, although not all of them qualify as such. While Srinagar has more than one million inhabitants, Kargil can be considered a small town with a population of a little over 15,000. Muzaffarabad's municipality is the home of around half a million people (Muzaffarabad district has 650,000 inhabitants), while Skardu, pending the publication of official data from the 2017 census, can be estimated to have a population of around 131,000. Fieldwork has been conducted mainly in these locations of significant human agglomeration and therefore the findings cannot necessary be extended to other locations or to rural contexts. Their condition as ‘border cities’ can also be called into question, because their distance from the LoC ranges from 10 kilometres in the case of Kargil to some 120 kilometres in the case of Srinagar.

In this book I have tackled the question of how the Kashmir dispute is understood on both sides of the LoC by focusing on the space of conflict, that is, what is perceived as contested by those living in the affected territories. This space of conflict coincides with the borderland, and is characterized by differentiation done through bordering processes that set spatial hierarchies which are critical for interpreting international reality. As highlighted in Chapter 2, although not recognized as political entities, borderlands are essential spaces for the inquiry about transformations in the international reality. The adoption of a borderland perspective for examining the Kashmir conflict has underscored the difference between the representation of the dispute as an interstate and intrastate affair, and the manifestation of conflict in everyday life in the disputed territories. In so doing, this perspective has unravelled the problem, caused by territorial fixation, of people's exclusion and marginalization from state belonging, which is contrasted with their experiences of ‘multi-territoriality’ or the possibility of accessing or connecting to diverse territories.

For those living in the disputed territories, the Kashmir issue is essentially about the impossibility of participating in a political project or taking a decision about their own political future. This sentiment is mainly articulated in terms of belonging – that is, by tracing a relationship with a multitude of places and spaces – but also in terms of departing from an experience of dispossession or rootlessness.

In this chapter I discuss border space transformations near the LoC. I argue that the ambivalent legal nature of the LoC as a border, rather than preserving the status quo, is an essential part of this transformative activity. The limited opening of the LoC in 2005 for separated families and the exchange of goods was framed as part of a broader understanding by the governments of India and Pakistan that viewing borders as barriers is no longer sustainable because of the pressure of globalization. However, this mobility is still ‘filtered’ through bureaucratic procedures and new technologies of surveillance and control. I maintain that the opening of crossing points is itself a bordering process, by which the two states attempt to gain control over the edges of their polity where state sovereignty is uncertain. These edges are currently held through exceptional legal means and authoritarian politics, but the aim is to incorporate them into the rest of the state's territory through economic and infrastructural interventions. Unable to negotiate the political dissent that arises in such disputed territories, the state attempts to ‘normalize’ life there by making them, materially and symbolically, into ‘normal’ state spaces.

The opening of the LoC

On 7 April 2005, the inauguration – amid great security – of a fortnightly bus service linking Srinagar and Muzaffarabad symbolized the first ‘formal’ opening of the LoC since 1949.

Not all the places that are involved in the Kashmir dispute have the same importance for the states of India and Pakistan and for an eventual agreement on a territorial settlement. As has been described in the previous chapter, the Kashmir Valley plays a central role and AJK is tightly linked to the conflict, but other areas such as Gilgit-Baltistan and Ladakh can be considered marginal. This does not mean that they are not affected by the conflict dynamics – they are, though in a different way – but the people living in these territories do not feel attached to the political problems in the Kashmir Valley and AJK. Residents of Skardu and Kargil are aware that the dispute is ‘because of the Valley’ and generally see themselves as having a marginal role in the whole question despite suffering from it.

There are cultural and social differences that explain this situation, apart from the incapacity of Kashmiri nationalism to mobilize people in these areas to undertake a united political project. For those in Baltistan and Ladakh, the link with Kashmir is their conquest by the Dogra chiefs of Jammu and then, after the formation of the princely state, their incorporation as part of that political entity.

This book examines the Kashmir dispute from a borderland perspective. It explores the conflict by considering the views of those affected who live on both sides of the Line of Control (LoC), especially in the less-researched territories of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK or Azad Kashmir) and Baltistan. The work investigates the distinct political space that the border has created: a space that is not strictly seen as a state space nor entirely considered a non-state space. This is the space of conflict, characterized by the uncertainty regarding future political developments that permeates the lives of the inhabitants at all levels. The borderland reveals itself as an arena for competition between the different actors and groups with claims to the territory: people are dragged into the space of conflict even though they may not subscribe to the dominant ways the dispute has been defined. This analysis of the Kashmir borderland shows how the conflict is manifested in territory – specific locations with geopolitical meanings – thereby providing evidence of the discrepancies between ‘representations’ and the ‘living’. It also demonstrates how the main source of insecurity in securitization discourses emanates from the making of the postcolonial state.

Following critical approaches – mainly in the fields of political geography, political science, and international relations, with a focus on border studies – this work questions the limits of explaining the dispute as an interstate conflict or as a case of (Muslim) nationalist separatism (in its various identity explanations). These broad perspectives do not say much about local dynamics in the disputed territories or about the inhabitants’ views and trajectories. Such understandings neither elaborate on the distinctive nature of the postcolonial state as a process in the making, nor provide an account of the interrelations between the various territories, since state perspectives revolve around categories that represent the political reality within a specific territorial container. Considerations of the Kashmir dispute from a state perspective ignore the fact that the state is the main source of insecurity at the border. They also fall into what John Agnew has defined as the ‘territorial trap’ of state territoriality. While the border can be seen as a ‘site’ for examining statehood, it also becomes a producer of particular conditions for understanding that reality.