Citizen G'kar: Musings on Earth

September 29, 2009

US Orchestrates Pakistan-India Talks While Kashmir Smolders

The US strong arms the Pakistani and Indian government to back channel talks. But it would appear that this is just an attempt to tamp down the secondary war theater in the region.

Satellite view of the w:Siachen Glacier, Kashmir.
Image via Wikipedia


Indian External Affairs Minister S M Krishna and Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi met for over 100 minutes, while their foreign secretaries had met earlier for even longer. The countries - which have fought several wars and which still differ over divided Kashmir - revived a peace initiative in 2004, but it stalled after Pakistan-based militants carried out a deadly raid on the Indian city of Mumbai in November last year.

Speaking after the meeting, Krishna said he rejected a Pakistani proposal to conduct informal talks while they waited for official dialogue to begin. Qureshi described the talks as "frank, positive and honest", saying he had not "minced any words" and that "negotiations are the only way for peaceful resolution of [outstanding] issues between the two countries".

Qureshi continued, "Now the situation in Pakistan is ... against the militants and in favor of peace and dialogue with India. We expect our Indian counterparts to take advantage of this situation and they should also mold public opinion in favor of dialogue."

Despite Krishna ruling out informal talks, the intervention of Washington is making this happen, with Pakistan already assigning Khan as a special envoy. He is a former foreign secretary and a current Pakistan Scholar of the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington.

Asia Times Online has learned that American officials will directly mediate and oversee the process of backchannel negotiations.

Like the billions of dollars annually the United States is giving to Pakistan in non-military and military aid and loans, the negotiations are primarily meant to provide support in the fight against terror.

In a recent report by General Stanley A McChrystal, parts of which were leaked to the press, the top US commander in Afghanistan said that India's political and economic influence in Afghanistan was increasing, including significant development projects and financial investment.

The report said the Afghan government was perceived by Islamabad to be pro-Indian. "While Indian activities largely benefit the Afghan people, increasing Indian influence in Afghanistan is likely to exacerbate regional tensions and encourage Pakistani counter-measures in Afghanistan or India."

via Asia Times Online :: South Asia news, business and economy from India and Pakistan.

Yet all is not in favor of a solution between Pakistan and India. Kashmir looms ominously as a war waiting to happen, in the middle of a region full of powder kegs.
The trouble is that Kashmir sits on the fault lines of a region that is awash in weapons and sliding into chaos. The Kashmiri freedom struggle, with its crystal clear sentiment but fuzzy outlines, is caught in the vortex of several dangerous and conflicting ideologies - Indian nationalism (corporate as well as "Hindu," shading into imperialism), Pakistani nationalism (breaking down under the burden of its own contradictions), US imperialism (made impatient by a tanking economy), and a resurgent medieval-Islamist Taliban (fast gaining legitimacy, despite its insane brutality, because it is seen to be resisting an occupation).

Each of these ideologies is capable of a ruthlessness that can range from genocide to nuclear war. Add Chinese imperial ambitions, an aggressive, reincarnated Russia, and the huge reserves of natural gas in the Caspian region and persistent whispers about natural gas, oil, and uranium reserves in Kashmir and Ladakh, and you have the recipe for a new cold war (which, like the last one, is cold for some and hot for others).

In the midst of all this, Kashmir is set to become the conduit through which the mayhem unfolding in Afghanistan and Pakistan spills into India, where it will find purchase in the anger of the young among India's 150 million Muslims who have been brutalized, humiliated and marginalized. Notice has been given by the series of terrorist strikes that culminated in the Mumbai attacks of 2008.

There is no doubt that the Kashmir dispute ranks right up there, along with Palestine, as one of the oldest, most intractable disputes in the world. That does not mean that it cannot be resolved. Only that the solution will not be completely to the satisfaction of any one party, one country, or one ideology. Negotiators will have to be prepared to deviate from the "party line."

Of course, we haven't yet reached the stage where the government of India is even prepared to admit that there's a problem, let alone negotiate a solution. Right now it has no reason to. Internationally, its stocks are soaring. And while its neighbors deal with bloodshed, civil war, concentration camps, refugees, and army mutinies, India has just concluded a beautiful election. However, "demon-crazy" can't fool all the people all the time. India's temporary, shotgun solutions to the unrest in Kashmir (pardon the pun), have magnified the problem and driven it deep into a place where it is poisoning the aquifers.

Is democracy melting?
Perhaps the story of the Siachen Glacier, the highest battlefield in the world, is the most appropriate metaphor for the insanity of our times. Thousands of Indian and Pakistani soldiers have been deployed there, enduring chill winds and temperatures that dip to minus 40 degrees Celsius. Of the hundreds who have died there, many have died just from the elements.

The glacier has become a garbage dump now, littered with the detritus of war - thousands of empty artillery shells, empty fuel drums, ice axes, old boots, tents, and every other kind of waste that thousands of warring human beings generate. The garbage remains intact, perfectly preserved at those icy temperatures, a pristine monument to human folly.

While the Indian and Pakistani governments spend billions of dollars on weapons and the logistics of high-altitude warfare, the battlefield has begun to melt. Right now, it has shrunk to about half its size. The melting has less to do with the military standoff than with people far away, on the other side of the world, living the good life. They're good people who believe in peace, free speech, and in human rights. They live in thriving democracies whose governments sit on the United Nations Security Council and whose economies depend heavily on the export of war and the sale of weapons to countries like India and Pakistan. (And Rwanda, Sudan, Somalia, the Republic of Congo, Iraq, Afghanistan ... it's a long list.)

The glacial melt will cause severe floods on the subcontinent, and eventually severe drought that will affect the lives of millions of people. That will give us even more reasons to fight. We'll need more weapons. Who knows? That sort of consumer confidence may be just what the world needs to get over the current recession. Then everyone in the thriving democracies will have an even better life - and the glaciers will melt even faster.

via Asia Times Online :: South Asia news, business and economy from India and Pakistan.
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1 comment:

One man’s terrorist and State Sponsored Terrorism « Citizen G'kar: Musings on Earth said...

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October 2, 2009 at 12:40 PM

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