Al Jazeera | By Robert Grenier | 14 July 2010
Losing Kashmir
Since 9/11 the US has focused on terrorism but has not promoted more legitimate means for people to address their grievances (AFP
The first occurred in 1999.
In a meeting with a senior Pakistani official, the topic came around, as it usually did, to US pressure on Pakistan to crack down on militants crossing the Line of Control to engage in “terrorist acts” in Indian administered Kashmir.
Such infiltration, of course, was widely believed to be facilitated by Pakistan’s infamous intelligence service, the ISI.
Dropping for a moment the usual protests of innocence, the official challenged me to distinguish between a “terrorist” and a “freedom fighter”.
That was easy, I said: “The terrorist targets civilians.”
The unspoken assumption in my response was that the US would look differently upon militants engaged in legitimate resistance to oppression, provided those militants restricted themselves to “legitimate” military or security related targets.
I knew, however, that this was not a distinction my government would willingly concede; and the Pakistani, not wishing to acknowledge the legitimacy of my distinction, did not press me on it.
Fast-forward then to another conversation, this time with a senior official in the US department of defence.
It was early 2002, just months after the attacks of 9/11.
The US had just launched its “war on terrorism,” and this official, perfectly innocent of any South Asian background, was trying to get a full grasp of all the terrorism we had set out to eliminate.
“What about what’s going in Kashmir?” he asked. “Isn’t that terrorism?”
Nearly falling out of my chair, I strongly cautioned him against setting his sights on Kashmir in the way we were already focusing on al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
There was a long history behind the Kashmir dispute, I pointed out earnestly, and it would be a big mistake to focus myopically on the terrorism without trying to solve the dispute itself.
Focus on terrorism
Talks must address the grievances of Kashmiris (EPA)
The US failure in this regard has been compounded by its encouragement of similar attitudes on the part of other nations, including India, which are seen as fellow victims of terrorism, and therefore natural allies in the “war on terror”.
When Shah Mehmood Qureshi, the Pakistani foreign minister, meets with his Indian counterpart, S.M. Krishna, the threat of terrorism will hover over the proceedings in at least two respects.
The prospect of Indo-Pakistani rapprochement, finally gaining slight momentum after the debacle of Mumbai, will pose a highly attractive target for extremists who see peace between the two leading secular South Asian democracies as a threat.
Senior officials from both India and Pakistan have stressed the menace posed by extremist spoilers, and the corresponding need to make the peace process impervious to such threats.
Perhaps even more importantly, though, preoccupation with terrorism emanating from Pakistan has encouraged the Indian side to focus on the eradication of the terrorist threat as an effective precondition to serious talks.
Indeed, the concern with terrorism dominates Indian rhetoric about the upcoming talks, with Krishna having recently reiterated that “Mumbai is a deep scar; [Pakistan] must pursue those who were responsible for, conspired and perpetrated Mumbai”.
While such concerns are certainly understandable, they nonetheless constitute an overwhelming distraction from the matter at hand.
Indeed, it is clear that the upcoming talks will essentially be “talks about talks”.
Such concrete steps as might be taken will clearly fall into the category of “confidence-building measures,” designed to create an environment of greater “trust”.
The Pakistanis, too, are falling into the same trap, with Salman Bashir, the Pakistani foreign secretary, having recently said “I think what we’re trying to do here is create the right environment”.
We have seen all this before.
Such a process driven approach, if sustained, will doom the current effort to the fate suffered by all previous ones: Abject failure.
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