These wars are over except for fighting

More than 50,000 killed in Kashmir. Some 70,000 dead in Sri Lanka. At least 8,000 lives lost in the West Bank and Gaza since 1988. The death tolls are daunting in three of the most intractable, insoluble conflicts of our time. And more people are destined to die as long as these flashpoints defy diplomatic solution. But it's simply wrong to say they can't be resolved diplomatically. They already have been.

What's truly depressing is that most of the casualties were preventable. The dirty secret of these conflicts is that the fighting carries on even though there's nothing left to fight about. Diplomats and negotiators have already sorted it out – on paper.

We've known this for years. In Sri Lanka and the Middle East, the antagonists long ago agreed to frameworks, created by Norwegian diplomats, to thrash out their differences at the bargaining table – not the battle field.

Now, add Kashmir to the list of trouble spots that diplomats have untangled. In a little-noticed article published this month in the New Yorker, Steve Coll reveals how Pakistan and India conducted secret negotiations over the past few years that found common ground over the disputed territory.