Ever since the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai, speculation has been rife in Indian papers as what kind of policy the new U.S. administration intends to take up on South Asia.
Terrorism in South Asia is rarely discussed without mention of the relationship between India and Pakistan, which has been strained since the messy 1947 partition that gave birth to the question of Kashmir. Kashmir is often seen as key to resolving many of South Asia's problems with terrorism, much as bringing solutions to the Israel-Palestine conflict is often naively seen as a way of automatically bringing peace to the greater Middle East. The two conflicts are even often mentioned in the same breath: Robert Creamer, for instance, writing for the
Huffington Post,
recommends that Obama "actively address the two major iconic conflicts that symbolize disrespect and domination of the Muslim world: the conflict between Israel and Palestine, and the conflict in Kashmir."
U.S. foreign policy towards India and Pakistan under the Bush administration consisted in dehyphenation, with the U.S. seeking to pursue its interests with India and Pakistan without giving in to fears about how U.S. relations with one would affect relations with the other. This policy effectively focused little attention on Kashmir. India, the larger and geopolitically more strategic country, was given substantial attention, most probably also in an effort to manage and counterbalance the rising influence and emergence of China. Kashmir, as a result, was quietly put on the back burner so as not to upset the crucial U.S. ally on the subcontinent.
To many in the U.S. and in India, dehyphenation has been seen as successful and worthy of being pursued by the Obama administration (see outgoing US Ambassador to India David Mulford
self-appraisal of the policy in the
Press Trust of India on Tuesday). Dehyphenation, however, has not always been as appreciated by Pakistan. The policy has been seen - quite rightly - as opportunistic. Until 9/11, Pakistan had been slapped by multiple U.S. sanctions, including for nonproliferation since 1990 and for military usurpation in 1999. Immediately following 9/11, diplomatic ties with Islamabad were completely revisited because of Washington's sudden need for Pakistani cooperation on terrorism. Sanctions on Pakistan were immediately withdrawn. These moves are largely responsible for the birth of dehyphenation.
What's more, recent U.S. efforts to rehyphenate Pakistan with another of its neighbors, exemplified by the coining of the term 'Afpak', have irked Pakistani commentators. The significant appointment of Richard Holbrooke as special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan (rather than to South Asia as initially planned, and rather than to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kashmir as later planned), have been especially ill received in Pakistani circles. (See, for example, Shahzad Chaudhry's recent
comment in the
Daily Times). In January, the U.S. state department confirmed that the mandate for Richard Holbrooke would not include Kashmir.
This is something of a turnaround from last year, when on the campaign trail, Obama caught the media's attention for clumsily stating that “The most important thing we are going to have to do with respect to Afghanistan is actually deal with Pakistan…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.”
This is a very Clintonesque understanding of India-Pakistan relations, as it depicts Kashmir as being at the heart of Indo-Pakistani relations. It also implies that the Kashmiri issue prevents Pakistan from correctly dealing with the militants who are supposedly furthering the so-called "war on terror." Since last year, however, we have witnessed a change in position on the Kashmir conflict, with gradual pressure coming from an India who felt wronged by a perceived initial coolness coming out of Obama's Washington (exemplified by the fact that Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was not among the first 20 heads of state to receive introductory phone calls from President Obama). Following Mumbai, heightened moral sympathy towards India coming from the U.S. has resulted in India being able to throw its geopolitical weight around as regards U.S. foreign policy in South Asia. This gradual shift in policy seems to point towards some uncertainty within the Obama administration as to whether to tackle the Kashmir conflict or not, and if so, how overtly to be going about doing so.
Of course, ostensibly shelving the Kashmir issue by removing it from Holbrooke's mandate is a result of heavy pressure from India, who is keen to ensure that the militarization of Jammu and Kashmir, along with the generally prevailing feeling among Kashmiris that they are under occupation, will never be equated with what Israel is doing in Palestine. This clear pandering to India also ignores the fundamental issue at stake in Kashmir: the question of "Kashmir for the Kashmiris". For the vast majority of the often forgotten subjects of the Kashmir dispute do not demand adhesion to Pakistan or a redefinition of Indo-Pak borders, they demand independence.
Whether this aspect of Kashmir is dealt with, overtly or covertly, by the Obama administration, may in large part depend on the upcoming elections in India. India's ruling Congress Party may well be pushed out of office this year by the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, or Indian People's Party, whose Hindutva ideology and hard line on terrorism may make it difficult to return to a constructive Indo-Pakistan dialogue. A less cooperative India would hinder the Obama administration's efforts to keep Pakistan's army focused on fighting the Taliban and other militants along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. And it would most certainly ask the U.S. to refrain from any sort of meddling in internal affairs. And, as India would have us believe, Kashmir is a purely domestic issue. After all, the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, which ruled over India during much of the 20th century, was of Kashmiri extraction.
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