Shadow War

Synopsis

A definitive history of the Kashmiri conflict by one of Pakistan's leading reporters

For nearly sixty years, India and Pakistan have battled over the territory of Kashmir. The two nuclear-armed states have fought three bloody wars in the region, but the countries have also fought in the shadows.

Having interviewed a thousand militants in war-torn Kashmir, Arif Jamal presents a news-breaking account of Pakistan's secret battles with India. From the early 1980s, when the Kashmiri conflict lurked in the background of the CIA's proxy war in Afghanistan, to the eruption of insurgent violence in 1988, to recent Kashmiri connections to terrorist financing and training, Jamal brings much to light.

Jamal reveals that the Pakistani military has trained nearly half a million insurgents and, as a matter of defense policy, continued the conflict at great human cost. He also shows how CIA money destined for the Afghan mujahideen was funneled to Kashmiri jihadis, leading to a twenty-year insurgency rarely discussed in Western media.