Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak

Kashmir
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for India, which, for more than a decade, had sought an end to the
cross-border terrorist attacks. Indeed, Musharraf had no other option,
as his refusal to concede would have had disastrous consequences.
‘If Pakistan had not agreed to end infiltration, and America had not
conveyed that guarantee to India, then war could not have been
averted,’ Vajpayee told an Indian newspaper a week later.
The Musharraf-Armitage agreement was a turning point in Pakistan’s
long-standing policy of using militancy as an instrument for its proxy
war in Kashmir and paved the way for a new relationship between
two nations long divided by a bloody, tense history. In return for his
concession, Musharraf received private assurances from US officials
that they would stay involved. On 5 June, President Bush had called
Musharraf and gave his firm commitment that his administration
would remain engaged to resolve the Kashmir conflict. Musharraf told
Armitage that he expected an early and substantial response from the
Indian side to make his action sustainable. 25
Within days of Armitage’s departure, a thaw was evident. India
responded to Musharraf’s steps to curb cross-border terrorism by
moving its naval fleet back to its base and allowed commercial overflights.
It also announced the revival of diplomatic relations with
Pakistan. That effectively ended the longest military stand-off between
the two countries.
Pakistan’s military and the ISI had always kept a fairly tight control
on their militant clients and the restrictions resulted in an immediate
drop in the infiltration of militants into Kashmir. But it never completely
stopped. Some militant groups were not prepared to toe the new
Pakistani line and continued to send their men into Kashmir. Pakistani
officials argued that it was impossible to completely seal the LoC. 26 For
Musharraf, the major challenge was how to rein in the powerful militant
groups. Predictably, his decision to stop cross-border infiltration,
evoked angry reactions from the militant groups who, for more than a
decade, had fought Pakistan’s proxy war.
The atmosphere in the room was grim. A sense of unease gripped
the two dozen guerrilla commanders, who had come to meet with
a senior ISI officer at an army base in Muzaffarabad in the last week
of May. The capital of Pakistani-controlled Azad Kashmir had long
been the headquarters of more than a dozen Kashmiri militant groups.
Some two hundred kilometres from Islamabad, the city was at an equal
distance from Srinagar, the capital of Indian-administered Kashmir.
‘We don’t have a choice given the tremendous pressure on Pakistan,’