For more than half a century, the Kashmir region has been a flashpoint in a sensitive region of the world, and has been the cause of conflict between India, China, and Pakistan, which led to several wars and dragged the region into an arms race that wasted the energies of this long-colonized region and made development difficult, as the region, which is shared by the three countries, has ignored the wishes of its people for self-determination. The latest step in this direction was India's move under Prime Minister Narendra Modi to partition the region, revoke Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which had granted the region special status for more than half a century, without consulting the Kashmiris, impose a complete closure of the region, imprison Kashmiri politicians, and paralyze political life, which could plunge the region into a state of unprecedented tension.

Introduction

This paper attempts to understand the backgrounds and motives behind the Indian government's decision to repeal Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which guaranteed a special status for the state of Jammu and Kashmir, and to understand the international interactions towards it, the impact of this on the future of India and the state in particular, and to seek to foresee the implications of this, especially with regard to Kashmir and India's relationship with Pakistan, while trying to link these motives with local and international backgrounds, tracing the historical context of events and their interconnection with the decision.

Geographical location

Border

Kashmir is located in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent, bordered to the northeast by the Uygur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang and to the east by Tibet, both of which are under Chinese rule. To the south, it is bordered by the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh and Punjab, to the west by Pakistan, and to the northwest by Afghanistan, and the total area of the Kashmir region is about 222,200 km².