The ongoing United States war against global terrorism in Afghanistan could spark a Kashmir solution. A growing consensus envisions a heavy United Nations role in segueing from the terrorist Taliban regime to a broad based decentralized government standing on the consent of the governed-Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbecks, and Hazaras alike.

Kashmir shares commonalties with Afghanistan which make United Nations intervention attractive and persuasive. Its 13 million population is divided between Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and Sikhs, which militates in favor of a decentralized constitutional regime. Moreover, the United Nations Security Council has been involved in the disputed territory since 1948, when it first adopted a resolution mandating a self-determination plebiscite to end the conflict. That resolution has slumbered unimplemented for 53 years because of India's fear that a free and fair vote would reject accession to its sovereignty.

India, however, has paid a steep price for its intransigence. Multiple billions in dollars and hundreds of thousands in military and paramilitary personnel have been squandered in propping up a popularly reviled puppet civilian government in Kashmir. Elections there are virtually universally boycotted as symbolic expressions of indigenous dissent. The so-called Afghan based terrorism was not the crux of the Kashmir resistance to India's colonial-like rule when it commenced in October 1947, and it is not the crux today. It is inconceivable that India would be impotent to crush terrorism in the territory if it enjoyed even a crumb of popular support. But it doesn't for twofold reasons: India has apostatized from its categorical pledge of self-determination for Kashmiris, akin to Great Britain if it had broken its promise of independence for India after World War II. India's human rights record in Kashmir has been equally squalid. In the last decade alone, it has featured more than 65,000 extrajudicial killings coupled with commonplace torture, rape, abductions, plunder, custodial disappearances, detentions without trial, and ruthless suppression of peaceful political dissent. India's military forces have been cloaked with legal immunity for human rights atrocities in Kashmir, which only aggravates their propensity for cruelty.

India quarantines Kashmir from the international media and human rights organizations to forestall the humanitarian outrage that would explode with transparency. Further, it contrives terrorist incidents to justify its Kashmir brutalities, like Hitler employed the burning of the Reichstag to justify an end to civil liberties. For instance, India recently feigned a hijacking of a civilian passenger aircraft with 52 on board, and later sheepishly confessed the reported incident was a hoax.