Dear Editor,
I refer to Jonathan Power’s column ‘India is the key to peace in Pakistan and Afghanistan’ (Sunday Stabroek 1.3.09) wherein he criticises President Obama for limiting Mr Holbrooke’s mandate to Pakistan and Afghanistan and leaving out India. Mr Power is a journalist who churns out articles for a living, while the American government is fully informed of the intricacies of South Asia and is able to tap all sources of information before deciding on its course of action. Islamic prejudgments inform the actions and responses of the Pakistani government and this is especially true in Indo-Pakistan relations where Islam is writ large. Power does not give any prominence to this Islamic factor in his article and as such an important reality escapes him.
He does not recognize that Pakistan is not an organized state as India is and so he falls into the trap of equating the two states, which Obama’s government quite sensibly does not do. It is this poor state structure which makes Pakistan “the most dangerous country in the world” as Power describes it. His statement that “The ISI [ie the Pakistan Intelligence Service] matched the Indians by encouraging its Pathan extremists to aid the Muslim militants in Kashmir” is too facile. In 1948 when Kashmir acceded to India, there was not one Indian soldier there. Then Pakistan used Pathan tribesmen under Pakistan army command to invade Kashmir. The Indian army barely got to Kashmir in time to prevent Pakistan from seizing the whole state. And the Pakistan army has been there ever since, sometimes in its own right and at other times sending guerilla/terrorist detachments. This has been continuous from 1948 and it is not something the ISI have been doing in more recent times.
Kashmir is a state of 4 to 5 million of whom 80% are Muslim and India defends Kashmir as part of its territory. It has protected Kashmir’s cultural and Muslim identity by having a state administration which is Muslim and by preventing settlers from other parts of India settling in the state, otherwise the Muslim majority of 3 to 4 million would long ago have been outnumbered.
No government, and least of all, a coalition government, could solve the Kashmir problem since the Pakistan army would never allow them to do so.
The US government is fully aware of this. It knows what it is doing and that is why Holbrooke’s mandate is what it is.
Yours faithfully,
P.I. Peters
