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COVER NOV 30th 2009
REGULARBACK COVER
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State Affairs Limits of US Diplomacy in Kashmir By Luv Puri On the eve of election of Barack Obama as President of United States of America, the chairman of a faction of All Party Hurriyat Conference, Syed Ali Shah Geelani said the election of Obama is a ‘historic event’ for America and added, “We hope that he will use his good offices to resolve Kashmir issue in its historic per-spective. Bilateral talks between India and Pakistan have failed to deliver in the past”. This wasn’t the first time when a Kashmiri leader tried to make a case for American intervention on Kashmir. In this context, it is important to review the scale of American role in Kashmir in the last six-decades and its inherent limitations based on historical facts. The painstaking research evident in The Limits of Influence sheds light on several key aspects of the US involvement in J & K. A veteran US diplomat who spent much of his almost four-decade-long career in South Asia (in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and as the US deputy assistant secretary of state for the region as a whole), Howard B Schaffer clearly had access to hard-to-come-by sources, as well as an experiential understanding of the Subcontinent. The most proactive intervention of the American establishment was during the era of John F Kennedy, when the president sent a State Department official named W Averell Harriman to gain a better understanding of the situation. The visit took place in the aftermath of the 1962 Sino-Indian war, at a time when India’s confidence in the international community was at its lowest. Harriman met with Nehru and General Ayub Khan in an attempt to lay the foundation for bilateral negotiations, buttressed by letters from President Kennedy to both of them. At the time, a solution in Kashmir was seen as critical for US interests, and cordial India-Pakistan ties were deemed likewise crucial in formulating a joint front against the communists. The famous 1962 talks between Indian leader Sardar Swaran Singh and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto were a product of this effort on the part of the US. The failure of those talks subsequently forced the Americans to revise their strategy, thereafter opting for limited intervention. Today, it is a vast understatement to say that Kashmir remains a sensitive issue for India and Pakistan. India is allergic to any kind of American intervention, while internationalization of the issue has always been the cornerstone of Pakistan’s preferred policy. In return for supporting Washington’s ‘war on terror’, Pakistan today wants the US to use its influence with India to facilitate a dialogue on Kashmir, as reiterated by Yousuf Raza Gillani since he became prime minister. President Barack Obama has thus far refrained from making public statements on Kashmir, though the US administration has consistently made pronouncements asking India and Pakistan to return to the negotiating table. In this context, Schaffer is quite hopeful. The possibilities for a breakthrough, he suggests, “though limited, are likely to be higher than they were in 1962.” It is largely believed that the contours of the broad agreements between India and Pakistan have already been reached on Kashmir. Among the accepted parameters is federal autonomy for both J & K and Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir, a reduction in troops levels, and the promotion of institutional links between both parts of Kashmir. The main challenge lies in persuading India and Pakistan to be realistic in their expectations, a feat that Schaffer is optimistic that the US can facilitate. India, he says, can be persuaded to give genuine and enforceable concessions, including autonomy. Pakistan, meanwhile, is likely to believe that it is getting the worst of the deal, so Schaffer stresses that finding a way to sweeten that bitter pill will be among the most important parts of any solution. Afghan connection Discussions of Kashmir cannot remain solely in the rarefied air of international politics, however, and at some point need to deal with the militancy that continues to rage on the ground. In researching Shadow War, the New York-based writer Arif Jamal gained good access both to the jihadi institutions in Pakistan and the prime actors of Kashmiri militancy. Only a Pakistan who had first-hand access to the jihadi institutions could have carried this kind of research, otherwise, one needs to bank upon secondary sources. Indeed, the author took considerable risks in discovering the facts that end up providing crucial information regarding key facets of the militancy, including recruitment, organizational structure, ideological base and its transnational character. The chapters on the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) and the Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) make up the core of the book. The former, founded by Maulana Syed Abdul A’ala Maududi in Raj-era India in 1941, was splintered into three groups following Partition, with separate organizations in India, Pakistan and J & K. Much later, in 1974, a unit was also established in Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir, which, according to Jamal, was set up to slow down the spread of secular ideas in the area. In early 1980, General Zia ul-Haq met with Maulana Abdul Bari, the leader of the JI wing in Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir. Jamal quotes Bari as stating that Gen Zia had decided to contribute to the American-sponsored war in Afghanistan, in order to prepare the ground for a larger eventual conflict in Jammu and J & K. Gen Zia reportedly told Bari that the largest share of international and American financial assistance would go to “whoever trains the boys from Kashmir”. Apparently, while Maulana Sa’adud Din, the founding amir of the J & K wing of the JI, was initially reluctant, he eventually struck a deal with Zia. Indeed, Jihad-i-Kashmir, a publication of the Pakistani JI, is quoted as saying that Sa’adud Din sent his son with the first group of volunteers to receive training. On 14 January 1990, representatives of all of the JI factions met in Kathmandu. There, it emerged that the leader of the J & K JI was against the organization’s direct involvement in the struggle, as it was likely to lead to an Indian assault on the group. However, in the face of JI cadres absconding to various smaller Islamist groups, the organization was in a bind. JI leaders were also in the midst of intense bargaining with the Pakistani intelligence, the ISI, which wanted “to connect Hizbul Mujahideen and other Islamist groups to Jamaat-e-Islami.” Subsequently, writes Jamal, a constitution for the HM was finalized in June 1990, allowing the J & K JI to nominate one of its members as the leader of HM — essentially turning the organization into the JI’s militant wing. Thus, the JI appointed Yusaf Shah, the district amir in Srinagar, as the first patron of the HM. That HM cadre exploited the institutional resources of the Afghan mujahideen becomes clear in Shadow War. Six HM operatives were trained in communications at a university outside Peshawar, though this fact was hidden from the ISI, as HM leaders did not want the spy organisation to plan their strategies. According to Jamal, the six came in contact with Afghan mujahideen leader Abdur Rab Rasool Sayyaf, who in turn met Ali Mohammad Dar, the deputy amir of the HM. Thereafter, Jamal suggests, hundreds of thousands of dollars, funneled to the mujahideen from the US, were transferred to the HM. Subsequently, many HM cadres were trained in camps in Afghanistan ’ including at the camp Abu Jindal, which Osama bin Laden used for his May 1998 press conference promising to launch attacks against the United States. In early 1991, a meeting took place between HM chief Syed Salahuddin and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. At that time, Hekmatyar, still a mujahideen leader and yet to become prime minister of Afghanistan, reportedly advised Salahuddin to eliminate all of his rivals within the HM. The latter evidently took this advice to heart, as evidenced by the 2003 killing of senior HM commanders. Ethnic differences among the militant groups also clearly played out in some of the internecine battles in Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir. For instance, the clash within the HM between Kashmiri-speaking Muslim Syed Salahuddin and Masood Sarwar, a local Pahari-speaking commander from Pakistan administered Jammu and Kashmir, though not mentioned in the book, was apparently a fallout of this cultural chasm. Though Schaffer and Jamal explore the Kashmir issues on very different levels, both of these new works make clear that an understanding of the ground realities is crucial to finding the long-elusive ‘solution’ to the situation. Luv Puri is the author of book-Militancy in Jammu and Kasmir: The Uncovered Face in India- and is presently a Fulbright Fellow at New York University |
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