India and Pakistan need to agree on practical steps for the resumption of “normal civil life” in the divided region of Kashmir, says a US-based non-governmental organisation (NGO) after a fact-finding mission to South Asia.

The Kashmir Study Group, based in Larchmont, New York, says that a five-member team sent to the region last spring found wide support among Pakistani, Indian and Kashmiri leaders and intellectuals for the normalisation of the disputed territory. The report has been presented to both the Pakistani and Indian governments.

Among the steps recommended to defuse tension – the group argues in its report ‘The Kashmir Dispute at Fifty; Charting Paths to Peace’ – is a “significant reduction in the number of security forces that India maintains” in Kashmir.

At the same time, the group calls for the acceptance by Pakistan of “an adequately staffed regional or other international body with a fresh mandate for observing and reporting all cross-border activity.”

The report also calls on both nations to strengthen joint peacekeeping work, and suggests that they could even replace the current U.N. monitoring group (or UNMOGIP) currently stationed at the Kashmiri line of control between the two forces. Such steps, notes team member Howard Schaffer – a former U.S.ambassador now at Georgetown University – could go a long way in restoring normal civil life to Kashmir and “we hope that (the governments) will take our recommendations seriously.”

The state of Jammu and Kashmir, claimed by India in 1947, has been the site of a brutal crackdown by the Indian Army since a violent, anti-Indian insurgency began in 1989. Pakistan has claimed a third of the territory, most of which it calls ‘Azad (Free) Kashmir,’ while China controls the small Aksai Chin enclave.

Since the Kashmiri insurgency and Indian crackdown began, Schaffer argued, Indian officials and intellectuals alike have expressed the desire that New Delhi “do more to bring back the hearts and minds of the Kashmiri people.”

He said the team was surprised to find that even prosperous businessmen in the Valley of Kashmir expressed alienation from India. “We kept hearing the phrase, ‘We’re not treated like human beings’,” he added.

Despite such alienation few Indians interviewed by the team “saw any great urgency” in resolving the Kashmir dispute. “The general view was that the worst was over…Time, most seemed to believe, was on the (Indian) government’s side,” the report says.

Schaffer added that the team found “a sense of triumphalism” among Indians that the economically ailing Pakistani government is unable to compete with their larger neighbour in the international field. By contrast, a wide range of Pakistani officials contended that Islamabad could moderate, or even drop, a decades-old demand for a plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir by which the Muslim-majority population could decide whether to remain with India, join Pakistan or seek independence.

At the same time, team member and Columbia University professor Ainslie Embree added, Pakistanis are adamant that the Kashmir dispute is central to any resolution of the differences between the two countries. “Neither in private nor in public are (the Pakistani leaders) willing to put Kashmir on a back burner,” Embree said.

Given both sides’ insistence on their positions in Kashmir, the team found little hope that any other diplomatic improvements, such as expanded trade relations between the two countries, would accomplish much. “The impression we got is that, while trade is important, nobody regards it as making any difference in the basic issues between India and Pakistan,” Embree said.

For now, the governments of Indian Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif seem unlikely to adopt the steps urged by the Study Group. Although Sharif last month met Gujral in New York and offered India a non-aggression pact, the Pakistani leader insisted on several Indian concessions – notably a reduction in Indian troops in Kashmir – before any progress could be made.

The Gujral-Sharif meeting offered little advance, prompting Sharif to comment afterward, “What we did not achieve in 50 years we cannot expect to achieve in 50 days…We are still poles apart.” A senior Indian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, countered that while India favours “non-acrimonious” dialogue, it contends that Kashmir is “not to be discussed in isolation (but) as part of an overall package.”

The Kashmir Study Group, for its part, refrained from determining how the dispute over Kashmir’s status should be decided. “We felt that what was needed now was not another blueprint,” Schaffer said. The report, he added, “does not call for the re-opening of the broader issue. We felt that no practical purpose would be served by it.”

Similarly, the team noted long-standing Indian opposition to UNMOGIP and to international involvement in settling the Kashmir question, and advocated that regional groups, like the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), be more involved in peacekeeping there.

“UNMOGIP is no longer accepted in India,” Schaffer said. “Given these Indian attitudes…it would be helpful to have different organisations, like regional ones,” involved in policing the line of control.

That is a proposal neither side is likely to accept, said one Pakistani official here. “How could they call for pulling out the U.N. presence?” he asked. “There is no credible force that could replace them.”