Indian manipulation of US South Asian strategy

By Sajjad Shaukat

Although US new strategy in South Asia, focusing terrorism is still under review, yet it has started showing its clear signs initially, indicating deviation of American new President Barack Obama's earlier pragmatic approach in the region. In fact, India which has already been manipulating American war on terror in achieving its real designs against Pakistan and other regional states continues its overt and covert intrigues. During his election campaign, while realising an inter-relationship between war against terrorism in Afghanistan, Pakistan's tribal areas and issue of Kashmir, Obama repeatedly remarked that he wanted to increase troops in Afghanistan for combating terrorism, but admitted that the United States should help in resolving the Kashmir dispute to deal with the problem of militancy in the region. In this context, on September 25, 2008, Obama, while accusing President Bush's policies, offered it as part of his policy to encourage India and Pakistan to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and resolve the Kashmir problem to reduce nuclear dangers in South Asia. Even after his election as the president of the sole superpower, his aides have also expressed similar thoughts. For example, Mr Riedel disclosed that settling the Kashmir issue "is essential for fighting terrorism."

The fact of the matter is that New Delhi has started exploiting Barack Obama's realistic policy of South Asia. Its intensity could be judged from the shift, one could clearly note through the latest development. Recently, President Obama appointed Richard Holbrooke as a special envoy of the US administration for South Asia to deal with various related issues of terrorism. But quite contrarily to the previous statements of Obama, the thorny dispute of Kashmir was excluded from the agenda of Holbrooke who is going to visit the region within a couple of days. In this regard, on January 28, State Department spokesman Robert Wood said: "Kashmir was not part of Holbrooke's mandate" and his "sole job is to go out and try to help bring stability to Afghanistan, working closely with Pakistan to try to deal with situation in the FATA region." Washington Post reported on January 30, 2009 that India managed to prune the portfolio Osama's top envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, Holbrooke-basically eliminating the contested region of Kashmir from his job description. The omission is seen as a significant diplomatic concession to India that reflects its warm ties with the United States. The Post further elaborated that it follows Indian government's victory in securing a deal with the United States that gives India access to civilian nuclear technology, even though it is not a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The paper added, "Indian diplomats and business leaders and American officials held forth about a new "Cooperation Triangle" for the United States, China and India." In fact, New Delhi has been distracting the attention of Obama from Kashmir, focusing his South Asian strategy only on terrorism, relating to Afghanistan and Pakistan, which has become possible due to the support of Jewish lobbies and pressure groups. As regards the influence of Indo-Israeli lobbies in America, on October 19, 2007, the special issue of South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal wrote : "In the past few years, Indian American community has gained an unprecedented visibility in the international arena and now constitutes influential ethnic lobbies in Washington. Among other factors, Hindu aligned with Jewish pressure groups in relation to the war against terrorism and to further the India-Israel-US strategic partnership play a major role in exaggerating Islamophobic overtones in the Indian American lobbies". However, since the Bush era, by manipulating the world phenomena of terrorism and anti-Muslim approach of the west, both India and Israel have been availing the golden opportunity to achieve their covert goals by convincing the US-led European states that a 'nuclearized' Pakistan is sponsoring cross-border terrorism in Afghanistan and Kashmir.

Since then, equation of 'war of liberation' in Kashmir and Palestine with terrorism has become the main target of New Delhi and Tel Aviv who intend to divert the attention of the west from their own atrocities, being perpetrated in the occupied territories. Particularly, India wants to digress the attention of the US new administration from its anti-Pakistan goals. New Delhi has established more than 200 foreign offices and training camps in Afghanistan where RAW's intelligence officials are imparting training to Afghans and nationals of the Central Asian Republics. Border Road Organization (BRO) is being used in facilitating weapons to the anti-Pakistan agents. Every day, ideologically motivated terrorists with sophisticated weapons are being sent to Pakistan to fight against our security forces. Besides, they have been destroying girls schools, video shops, other government installations etc. These miscreants also conducted a number of suicide attacks and bomb blasts in Pakistan, killing innocent persons and personnel of the security forces. In this regard, the most devastating suicide attack on the Marriot Hotel in Islamabad on September 20 could be noted as an instance. Indian sole aim behind is to destabilise Pakistan by supporting the insurgents of FATA and the separatist elements of Balochistan. India which already has 20,000 military troops in Afghanistan has been deploying more than 150,000 troops there so as to control this strategically important country, linking Central and South Asia in order to sabotage the political and economic interests of Pakistan and China. Nevertheless, exclusion of Kashmir from Obama's policy is likely to become a basic obstacle to South Asian peace, connecting other concerned disputes between Pakistan and India including regional terrorism in the wake of New Delhi's blame game against Islamabad in the post-Mumbai terror attacks.

In this respect, Indian continued intransigence to disallow the Kashmiris their right of self-determination and suppression of their war of liberation through brutal tactics of state terrorism since partition have motivated Afghans and Pakistan's tribal militants to resist the American policies. On the one hand, Indians are secretly manipulating US-led fruitless military strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan's FATA regions (through drone attacks), while on the other, they are perpetrating every technique of military terrorism in the Indian-held Kashmir which is the root cause of militancy in the region. While taking cognizance of the Kashmir dimension in relation to regional terrorism, even, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband who visited New Delhi and Islamabad in the post-Mumbai carnage recognised that complete de-escalation of situation between Pakistan and India was fully linked to resolution of Kashmir issue, saying that India should cooperate with Pakistan in this context. Recently, British government also rejected Indian protest on his factual statement. In the recent past, a number of western politicians and think tanks have clearly indicated the defeat of the NATO forces in coping with the insurgents of Afghanistan through the use of force. As a matter of fact the employment of ambivalent policy through military paradigm and economic aid cannot succeed as its failure has proved during the Bush era.

In this context, the daily, Guardian had already quoted British former Foreign Secretary David Miliband saying, "There is "no military solution to the spread of extremism in Afghanistan and Pakistan's tribal areas", and "backed the pursuit of political reconciliation" Just like terrorism, Indian acquisition and further development of sophisticated arms entailing missiles are equal threat to Pakistan and America. Without any doubt, it was New Delhi which tested first atomic bomb in South Asia in 1974 and conducted five nuclear experiments in 1998, forcing Pakistan to follow the suit. Islamabad has already announced to depend upon the minimum deterrence.

So, it is better for Obama that he must try to abolish Indo-American nuclear deal as terrorism is the greater threat for Washington in his views than the South Asian nuclear arms race. It is of particular attention that the US new strategy which will still pay a greater concentration on elimination of terrorism from Afghanistan and Pakistan's FATA must consider India to be responsible for terrorism in the region. And solution of Kashmir is very essential to combat militancy in South Asia. Most alarming point in this connection is that Indian sinister strategic designs under the pretext of so-called Islamic terrorism are not only creating obstacles in the East-West cultural cooperation, but are also taking the world to the brink of clash of civilizations. Backing out of his early realistic approach, US President Obama's South Asian strategy will fail as India will impede it not only to divert US new administration from Kashmir, but also to get favourable bargaining leverage over Pakistan. His policy to convince the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan that terrorism poses greater threat than India will hardly meet success as stability of these states are directly or indirectly linked with Kashmir. The Kashmir dispute generates other issues, equally harmful to Pakistan and other regional states.

There is no doubt that all major issues and developments have co-relationship, so Obama and his team need an impartial and pragmatic approach, while devising new strategy for South Asia.

sajjad_logic@yahoo.com