Even before Barack H. Obama assumes the US presidency tomorrow, the American president-elect has been actively working on his South Asia policy, with Kashmir as its centerpiece. Not only did he send his vice president-elect Joe Biden to visit Pakistan, he has also reached out to his defeated presidential rival John McCain upon Mr. McCain's recent return from a Pakistan trip. In an unprecedented move, Mr. Obama has quietly consulted Mr. McCain about many of the new administration’s potential nominees to top national security jobs and about other issues — in one case relaying back a contender’s answers to questions Mr. McCain had suggested, according to the New York Times. More recently, Foreign Policy journal reported of a secret dinner meeting in Washington's Ronald Reagan Building where Obama listened to several key figures including Ahmed Rashid who flew in from Lahore specially for the occasion.
It is widely known that Obama believes the situation in Afghanistan is inextricably linked to the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan. “The most important thing we’re going to have to do with respect to Afghanistan, is actually deal with Pakistan,” Obama said in an interview on October 30 with MSNBC. “And we’ve got work with the newly elected government there in a coherent way that says, terrorism is now a threat to you. Extremism is a threat to you. We should probably try to facilitate a better understanding between Pakistan and India and try to resolve the Kashmir crisis so that they can stay focused not on India, but on the situation with those militants.”
Obama reiterated his emphasis on Kashmir in a December 7 interview on NBC's Meet The Press. He said, "...as I've said before, we can't continue to look at Afghanistan in isolation. We have to see it as a part of a regional problem that includes Pakistan, includes India, includes Kashmir, includes Iran. And part of the kind of foreign policy I want to shape is one in which we have tough, direct diplomacy combined with more effective military operations, focused on what is the number one threat against U.S. interests and U.S. lives. And that's al-Qaeda and, and, and their various affiliates, and we are going to go after them fiercely in the years to come."
During recent Senate confirmation hearings, the US Ambassador-designate to the UN, Susan Rice, identified Kashmir as one of the "hot spots" and included it with conflict-torn regions, including the Balkans and Golan Heights.
Earlier in September, Mr. Bruce Riedel, recently formally appointed as Pakistan adviser by Obama, told a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relation, "We can't expect Pakistan to behave like a normal state, unless it has normal borders. And we can't expect Pakistan to behave the way we would like it to while it's obsessed and fixated on its neighbor and the problem in Kashmir. The problem in Kashmir has been in the doldrums for the past several years. It is now starting to boil really quickly, and when Kashmir boils, the result is Indian-Pakistani tensions that can produce war. We've seen that over and over again," he said.
The Mumbai attacks have only served to strengthen Obama's Kashmir thesis and sharpen his national security team's focus on resolving the biggest obstacle to peace in South Asia. This fact has recently been underlined by his British ally, Foreign Secretary David Miliband. After his recent trip to India and Pakistan, Mr. Miliband wrote for the Guardian as follows: "Resolution of the dispute over Kashmir would help deny extremists in the region one of their main calls to arms and allow Pakistani authorities to focus more effectively on tackling the threat on their western borders."
The Indian government and media have been protesting the statements by Obama and Miliband in the hope of averting a serious intervention by the West to force a resolution of the long-standing Kashmir dispute that can potentially trigger a nuclear holocaust. Former president of the United States and the husband of the incoming US secretary of state Hilary Clinton, Bill Clinton, on the eve of his 2000 visit to the subcontinent, called the ceasefire line that divides Kashmir "the most dangerous place in the world". In spite of the angry noises from New Delhi, there are reports that former United Nations Ambassador Richard Holbrooke will be tapped as Obama's special envoy to South Asia.
Miliband has called the war on terror "mistaken". Obama has refrained from the indiscriminate use of the label of "war on Terror" as a way to avoid solving fundamental issues. What Obama and Miliband are setting out to do will not be easy, either in South Asia or in the Middle East. There will be powerful opposition from the Indian and Israeli governments and their lobbyists and friends in US Congress. There will also be some concerns in Pakistan about imposing a Kashmir solution without taking Kashmiri leaders on board. But, to distance themselves from the misguided Bush policies and to leave a legacy of international peace of prosperity, Obama and his allies need to show tough love to their friends in India and Israel. The kind of tough love that makes two of America's best friends see what is truly in their own best interest.
Here are two videos to explain Kashmir. The first is on the Obama vision of solving the Kashmir issue. The second is a comprehensive video on the origins of Kashmir dispute and the positions of various parties as presented by Pakistani Peace Activist Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy:
Related Links:
Obama's South Asia Policy
Military Occupation of Kashmir
Bruce Riedel Interview
Clues to Obama's South Asia Policy
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In an unprecedented move Obama has appointed Prof. Neal Kumar Katyal as principal deputy general solicitor. See the details http://in.rediff.com/news/2009/jan/20-obama-appoints-neal-katyal-to-top-post.htm. Looking at the details of work done by Prof. Neal, it seems a good move for the masses of India and Pakistan and a direct bad news for the extremists in general.
I hope that our hopes are well-founded, insha'Allah!
Here's the latest from Washington Post:
Inside a chandeliered ballroom Thursday, Indian diplomats and business leaders and American officials held forth about a new "Cooperation Triangle" for the United States, China and India. But little mention was made at the Asia Foundation's conference on Indo-U.S. relations of the Indian government's recent diplomatic slam-dunk.
India managed to prune the portfolio of the Obama administration's top envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard C. Holbrooke -- basically eliminating the contested region of Kashmir from his job description. The deletion is seen as a significant diplomatic concession to India that reflects increasingly warm ties between the country and the United States, according to South Asia analysts.
Indian diplomats, worried about Holbrooke's tough-as-nails reputation, didn't want him meddling in Kashmir, according to several Indian officials and Indian news media reports. Holbrooke is nicknamed "the Bulldozer" for arm-twisting warring leaders to the negotiating table as he hammered out the 1995 Dayton peace accords that ended the war in Bosnia, a peace that has stuck.
"I think it is time for us -- having fobbed off Holbrooke -- to sit quietly and ask where are we and how do we manage the situation," said C. Raja Mohan, an Indian strategic analyst who served on India's national security advisory board in 2006.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/29/AR2009012903737_pf.html
From The Daily Times today....
Why not have a joint Kashmir?’
* PDP president calls for having ‘dual currency’ to encourage trade
* Says LoC should be made ‘irrelevant’
NEW DELHI: The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in Indian-held Kashmir has called for unifying both Kashmirs and having a “dual currency” to encourage trade.
Speaking at an Indo-Pak conference on Sunday, PDP President Mehbooba Mufti said, “Can’t there be any joint mechanism between the two Kashmirs? Why can’t we have a joint council consisting of representatives from both sides?”
LoC: She said the Line of Control (LoC) dividing Kashmir should be made “irrelevant”. She said the recent militancy-related incidents in IHK should not influence New Delhi’s decision to withdraw troops from the disputed territory. “We know that the aim of any terror attack is to sabotage the dialogue process. The Lal Chowk attack should not influence the intention of the Indian government to withdraw forces [from IHK],” she said. The PDP leader said wars between India and Pakistan had only resulted in accumulation of security forces in IHK. Mehbooba said the peace process should be de-linked from terror incidents, adding that resumption of composite dialogue between India and Pakistan was the need of the hour.
The situation in IHK “has improved over the period of time and the people are turning to peaceful means to raise their grievances”, she said. Mehbooba said India and Pakistan should engage themselves in a result-oriented dialogue, adding that Hurriyat leader Abdul Gani Lone was killed because “he wanted dialogue”. The PDP president urged the two countries to make a policy shift on Kashmir by reaching out to the people and practicing peaceful and democratic ways to build a new South Asia.
Mufti said that Kashmir would be the “first and the worst victim” if something happens to Pakistan. iftikhar gilani
Here's an interesting survey of Kashmiris reported by the BBC:
A survey which a British academic says is the first systematic attempt to establish the opinions of Kashmiris has produced "striking results".
Robert Bradnock interviewed more than 3,700 people in Indian- and Pakistani-administered Kashmir to assess their views on various issues.
One of the key questions put to respondents was how they saw the future of the territory.
Nearly half of those interviewed said they wanted independence.
Another question asked for their views over the continuing insurgency.
Dr Bradnock - an associate fellow at the Chatham House think-tank in London - says that the survey has produced startling conclusions, especially in relation to the future of the territory.
No 'simple fixes'
It revealed that on average 44% of people in Pakistani-administered Kashmir favoured independence, compared with 43% in Indian-administered Kashmir.
"However while this is the most popular option overall, it fails to carry an overall majority on either side.
"In fact on the Indian side of the Line of Control [LoC] - which separates the two regions - opinions are heavily polarised," Dr Bradnock told the BBC.
The survey found that the "overwhelming majority" of people want a solution to the dispute, even though there are no "simple fixes".
Dr Bradnock said that in the Kashmir valley - the mainly Muslim area at the centre of the insurgency - support for independence is between 74% and 95%.
But in the predominantly Hindu Jammu division to the south, support is under 1%.
Other findings include:
* 80% of Kashmiris on both sides of the LoC say that the dispute is important to them personally
* Concern over human rights abuses stands at 43% on the Indian side and 19% on the Pakistani side
* Concern over unemployment is strong across the territory - 66% on the Pakistani side and 87% on the Indian side
* Few are optimistic over peace talks - only 27% on the Pakistani side and 57% on the Indian side thought they would succeed.
Dr Bradnock said that it was "clear" that a plebiscite on the future of Kashmir - along the lines envisaged in UN resolutions of 1948-49 - is "extremely unlikely to offer a solution today".
"The results of the polls show that that there is no single proposition for the future of Kashmir which could be put to the population... and get majority support," he said.
"The poll offers no simple fixes but offers signposts - through which the political process, engaging India, Pakistan and wider Kashmiri representation - could move it towards resolution."
The arrest of Ghulam Nabi Fai signaling US shift in position to favor India on Kashmir will not change the ground realities of Indian Occupied Kashmir.
India's military occupation of Kashmir will not last, and increasing brutality and repression of the people of Kashmir will only make the situation worse. And it'll continue to make a mockery of India's claim to "democracy".
Here's a piece by Ananya Vajpeyi on exceptions to Indian "constitutional democracy":
By enforcing extraordinary laws, by sending in armed forces, by granting impunity to soldiers and paramilitaries for their actions against armed or unarmed civilians, by denying citizens redress, justice or compensation, by creating a war-like situation for a population that has political, social, cultural and economic grievances possible to address without force, it is the state that sets aside the Constitution. The Indian state has done this too many times, in too many places, and for too long.
It is time for citizens in the so-called ‘normal’ parts of the country to consider how they want to defend their Constitution against such misuse and ill-treatment by the state, a procedure that leaves millions of people exposed to both everyday as well as excessive violence, and ultimately turns them against India. If the Indian Union sees any attrition to its territory in the coming years on account of separatism and civil strife (not such an unlikely scenario as hawkish policy-makers like to believe), this will have come to pass at least partly because the state allowed the cancer of exception to eat away at the body politic, and did not administer the medicine of constitutional reinstatement and restitution in time. It bears repeating that periodic exercises in the electoral process do not always prove to be a sufficient counterweight to the toxic effects of the AFSPA, even if elections are relatively free and fair (a tough challenge), and even if significant percentages of the relevant populations do turn out to vote.
The state’s reasoning for why military, paramilitary and police must replace civil agencies in the work of everyday governance, a step which can and does go horribly wrong, is that disruptive violence (from secessionist and insurgent groups) has to be met with restorative counter-violence (from the state) in order to ensure overall security for the population, and preserve the integrity of the Union of India. Defenders of the AFSPA insist that this is a sound rationale. But inevitably, questions arise: What are the limits of the immunity that such an extraordinary law grants to the armed forces, when does the justifiable control of terror become overkill, and when should a quantitative assessment about the necessary degree of force give way to a qualitative judgment about whether force is necessary at all, over and above alternative – peaceful – means of addressing the situation?
There appears to be a dire need for a system of checks-and-balances, perhaps also originating from the Constitution, to be instituted, so that the explicitly democratic mandate of the Indian republic may be strengthened against an always lurking authoritarian tendency (a legacy of the post-colonial state’s colonialist and imperialist predecessor).
http://udayprakash05.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-people-of-india-are-skeptical.html
Here's WSJ blog on Indian claims to Kashmir:
OK, so everyone knows that India, like Pakistan, claims the divided region of Kashmir in its entirety.
Everyone also knows that the seven-decade stalemate that has split the Himalayan territory between India- and Pakistan-administered portions is unlikely to change any time soon.
So, why does India get so upset every time a government, company or international body fails on a map of the region, however small, to show India’s territorial claims over the Pakistan-administered portion of Kashmir?
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India’s Ministry of External Affairs lamented the “gross inaccuracies” in the map and said it had conveyed its displeasure to the Embassy. The whole of Kashmir is an “integral part” of India, it said, and maps “should depict the boundaries of our country correctly.”
It’s one thing for a customs official insisting on black-penning the Indian version of the border onto a child’s imported globe (yes, this happened.) But for it to reach the level of official, public MEA statements is absurd.
India has become increasingly militant over its cartographic claims. Editions of The Economist magazine, including the current one, have been held up by Indian customs over objections they showed the effective borders in Kashmir rather than only India’s claims.
Why India believes other countries and international publications must show its territorial claims and not the situation on the ground is unclear, and not matched by how map-makers deal with other disputed borders.
Take the 38th Parallel, for instance, the cease-fire line that has divided the Korean peninsula since 1945. Fighting between North and South Korea ended in 1953, but the border has never been formalized. Yet South Korea doesn’t yell publicly when Google Inc.’s maps show the 38th Parallel as the nation’s effective border with North Korea.
When Google did the same thing with India last year, showing its de facto rather than claimed border with Pakistan-administered Kashmir, it caused a furor here. (Google relented and, today, if you access its maps in India, you’ll confusingly see India sharing a border with Afghanistan, which might be India’s claim but is not reality.)
It is now customary to mark a map of Kashmir with dotted lines with labels that say “controlled by Pakistan and claimed by India” and “controlled by India and claimed by Pakistan.” (China controls a part which is claimed by India, but that’s another story.)
But the U.S. State Department map, part of an A-Z of thumbnail sketches of countries with whom America has diplomatic relations, was by no means meant to show this level of detail.
A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi acknowledged there were “inaccuracies” and said the State Department had removed the map. But he added it “was not meant to represent the same precision and intricacies of a scientific map.”
There was much gnashing of teeth in the Indian press. One Times of India report even went so far as to claim these cartographic missteps are starting to anger not only officials but also journalists.
It’s clear that India will have to move beyond this kind of petty griping if it’s going to take the lead in a peace deal with Pakistan, an unstable country that is fast losing the support of the U.S.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has made peace with Pakistan a key plank of his administration, and a settlement on Kashmir will be key.
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Brahma Chellaney, an analyst at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research, contacted by the Times of India, went as far as to say the map showed a “pro-Pakistan cartographic tilt.”....
http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2011/11/22/are-all-these-maps-really-pro-pakistan/?mod=google_news_blog
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