LONDON -- Eleven years of killing, over 50,000 dead, and the highest ratio of soldiers to civilians in the world, with a nuclear war between India and Pakistan as the payoff if things get out of hand: The conflict in Kashmir dwarfs every other global confrontation in its potential for harm. But the prospects for peace are actually rising in Kashmir.
As the clock ticks down on India's unilateral ceasefire in Kashmir, first due to expire at the end of Ramadan on Dec. 27, and now extended to Jan. 26, there have been no clear public responses from either Pakistan or the major guerrilla groups in Kashmir. But there has been no flat rejection of the Indian initiative either, and the local situation has remained sufficiently calm that India may well extend the ceasefire. That could be a new beginning for the whole region, and nowhere needs it more.
Not only have Pakistan and India fought two full-scale wars over Kashmir in the past, they almost ended up at war again in the summer of 1999 over Pakistani troops that had infiltrated the Kargil district the previous spring.