Case 356 - The Kashmir Back Channel: India-Pakistan Negotiations on Kashmir from 2004 to 2007

Happymon Jacob In early 2007, Indian and Pakistani back-channel interlocutors, appointed by the respective heads of government, were preparing to finalize a secret deal to resolve their dispute over Kashmir. Had the negotiators managed to finalize a deal, the two counties would have signed it in a public ceremony. Such a deal could have brought the decades-long Kashmir conflict to a peaceful end. However, the deal, which was confidentially negotiated in secret third country locations for a period of close to three years, was neither finalized nor signed due to domestic political upheaval in Pakistan. Successive governments in Pakistan tried to continue the negotiations with the Indian government to complete the agreement, but those attempts did not succeed. This was the first time India and Pakistan had engaged in a serious, sustained and structured back-channel negotiation to resolve the most severe conflict between them. This case study provides deeper insights into the conflict d