[Peace-discuss] Holbrooke: We Won't Press India for Peace with Pakistan

[C. G. Estabrook]

[From <http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n07/ushe01_.html>]

India is one of Karzai’s few remaining champions. Delhi sees the new Afghanistan 
as a part of its sphere of influence. It has four consulates in Afghanistan and 
has given its government $1.2 billion in aid: a remarkable sum for it to donate 
to a country that is 99 per cent Muslim and with which it has no common border. 
Delhi has also put up the new parliament building and chancery, and has helped 
to train the army. India’s most ambitious – and, for Pakistan, most alarming – 
Afghan project is a new highway that will provide a route to the Iranian port of 
Chabahar. Not only will Afghanistan no longer need to use Pakistani ports, the 
road’s destination is a clear indication of India’s intention to consolidate an 
alliance with Iran in western Afghanistan in order to counter Pakistan’s 
influence in eastern Afghanistan. The road network, as they see it, is a new way 
to fight an old war. It’s precisely in order to resist the India-Iran bloc – as 
well as the emerging axis between Delhi and Washington – that the ISI has 
aligned itself with the Afghan Taliban and Haqqani.

Washington has tilted towards Delhi since 2004, lured by the size of India’s 
markets and its potential as strategic counterweight to China, Pakistan’s 
closest regional ally. Last year the US signed an agreement that allows India to 
buy civilian atomic technology, including nuclear fuel, from American firms, 
even though it is not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Pakistan, by 
contrast, has been criticised for developing a nuclear weapon...

...The Pakistan army believes India is responsible for the CIA’s new 
belligerence. Some even believe India wants to create such turmoil in the tribal 
areas that Nato forces and the new Afghan army are compelled to invade, destroy 
the ‘terrorist havens’, and wrest back Pashtun lands claimed by Kabul. Others 
think that India wants to dismember Pakistan because of the ‘danger’ it poses as 
the world’s only Muslim nuclear state. According to another source in the army, 
‘the Americans have decided India will be the regional power. And India thinks a 
fragmented Pakistan would reduce the threat level.’ It’s true that Washington’s 
nightmare is Pakistan’s nuclear materials falling into the hands of al-Qaida 
militants. Indeed war games have been staged in the Pentagon to work out what 
kind of military intervention would be needed to rescue them...

...three feuding Taliban factions have now joined forces against ‘Obama, Zardari 
and Karzai’ in an agreement brokered by Mullah Omar. One of the factions is led 
by Baitullah Mehsud. The other two are pro-Afghan Taliban factions based in 
South and North Waziristan, which had largely refrained from attacking the 
Pakistan state and army but may not do so any longer. The army is also worried 
that the surge could cause a further flight of Afghan Taliban and other 
militants into the tribal areas. If the army acts against them, retaliatory 
strikes may follow across Pakistan. If it doesn’t, US and Afghan soldiers might 
chase them inside Pakistan – as they did last September, killing 20 tribesmen 
‘by mistake’. Any such incursion would unite the Pashtun tribes behind the 
Taliban, deepen anti-American sentiment in the army and stretch 
US-Afghan-Pakistani co-operation to breaking point.

The removal of India and Kashmir from the strategic review makes clear Delhi’s 
growing influence in Washington ... ‘The army’s recent experience with India is 
very bitter,’ a Pakistani analyst told me. ‘After 2004 the army scaled down 
militant intrusions into Kashmir by 95 per cent. And India’s response was to 
refuse to talk about Kashmir. The army thinks it would be the same in 
Afghanistan if it abandoned the Afghan Taliban.’ In the last year Indian Kashmir 
has seen increased penetration by Pakistani militants and skirmishes between the 
Pakistani and Indian armies. The spike seems to have less to do with Kashmir, 
where violence is at its lowest ebb in 20 years, than with the proxy war in 
Afghanistan. And it would suggest that – far more than on strategic reviews – 
peace in Afghanistan rests on peace between India and Pakistan. The road out of 
Kabul goes through Kashmir.


Robert Naiman wrote:
> U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke and Admiral Mullen "took pains to make it clear"
> the US would not press India to negotiate with Pakistan on sensitive issues,
> AP reports: "We did not come here to ask the Indians for anything," Holbrooke
>  said. "We were not there, I repeat, we were not there, to negotiate 
> Pakistani-Indian relations." I hope, for the sake of U.S. troops and the
> people of Afghanistan, that Holbrooke was lying. Because if Holbrooke was
> telling the truth, the American people deserve an explanation.