[Abernathy]

Could someone please explain the Kashmir issue for me in simple terms that an idiot like me can comprehend ?

I'm not particularly interested in it, but my new MP, Tahir Ali, seems to be utterly pre-occupied with it, at the expense of every other issue.

I understand that the Brits are the bad guys, having drawn an arbitrary border line across a map with no regard for the people living there. Because the British can be cast as the bad guys, that's why the Trots love it, in particular.

But I'm also dimly aware that the Indians are maybe the bad guys, too, though I'm far from sure about that.

British Pakistani muslims in a seat like mine all seem to be a bit fanatical about the issue, which is why our previous MP, Roger Godsiff, was so keen to keep them onside (loads of them in the Bham Hall Green constituency).

Anybody able to provide a simple explanation for an idiot like me ?

[Andy McDandy]

It's Pakistan's Falklands (it's what the K in Pakistan stands for) and India's Malvinas.

It's a rather pretty area, consisting of alpine meadows and valleys and many impassable mountains, of no real strategic value at all (because if the Russians or Chinese ever did decide to roll south, they wouldn't do it through the mountains). The population are pretty much evenly split between Muslims and Hindus and Yetis, and don't really care who rules them. The Pakistani and Indian armies maintain garrisons there, watching the other and providing a really unpopular place to be posted to. But backing down would mean losing face, and in the case of Pakistan they can point to the 1948 partition and say that it's theirs and besides what do you think that K stands for, while the Indians say "OK then, come and take it".