Ahmed Rashid is stirring the pot in his interview on NPR All Things Considered yesterday.
While there is no doubt that Kashmir is in flames, the theory of “strategic depth”, explaining Pakistani involvement in Afghanistan and Kashmir through Islamist proxies such as the Taliban and Kashmiri jihad as a quest for balance against Indian dominance isn’t convincing. Pakistani foreign and military policies are not simply a negative corollary of India’s, and the notion that Pakistan is trying to compete with India for influence inside Afghanistan doesn’t explain India’s complete lack of involvement in NATO or the security situation in Afghanistan.
Rashid’s implicit plea for international involvement, just months after Kashmir has returned to perhaps its worst state in fifteen years, seems somewhat clever given his oustanding scholarship and perspective on South Asia (his Taliban remains the single most valuable book on the rise of the students). Following the cack-handed repsonse of the Indian Government to the Amarnath land dispute making a pitch for US mediation in resolving the territorial dispute between India and Pakistan couldn’t be more poorly times. As for the rumours that Obama may send Bill Clinton as special envoy, he did broker an end to the Kargil War. Whatever Indian nationalists may say, the logical outcome of becoming a nuclear state was an acceptance of international mediation when things get out of hand between India and Pakistan.
What of the Simla Agreement and the famous Indian rejection of third-party mediation? It hit the dustbin of history sometime in the late nineties when Clinton had Nawaz Sharif pull back from nuclear war with India, and Strobe Talbott and Jaswant Singh had their famous strolls in the Mughal Gardens to bring India to the high table of the great powers. After the Indo-US civil nuclear deal, not only does India get to keep its bombs, it can be assured of a pro-US tilt in any mediation, which will most likely strictly behind the scenes, protestations from the Indian Foreign Office notwithstanding.
