By Basharat Peer & Sasha Polakow-Suransky
(source: Boston.com)
Richard Holbrooke spent the final two years of his life struggling to bring peace to Afghanistan and Pakistan, but officially he was never allowed to touch the issue of Kashmir. In the wake of last week’s WikiLeaks revelations of the Indian government’s use of torture against Kashmiri prisoners, the time has come to put Kashmir back on the map and include it in discussions of a broader regional peace — one that would extend to Afghanistan as well.
The longstanding dispute over Kashmir, a predominantly Muslim region, has poisoned relations between Hindu-majority India and Muslim Pakistan for decades; spawned and sustained anti-Indian terrorist groups; prevented Pakistan’s army from fighting extremists along its border with Afghanistan; and proved deadly for the Kashmiris caught in between.
In early July, the bodies of three young laborers killed by Indian troops were discovered in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir, unleashing a wave of protests. Police fired tear gas at protesters in Srinagar and killed a 17-year-old student, who was simply passing by. Soon, young Kashmiris armed with stones were battling Indian troops, who responded with bullets. An intense military curfew followed. From July to September, the Kashmiri intifada raged on killing 110 and injuring at least 1,500.
India has long resisted any outside attempt to mediate in Kashmir. The Indian government panicked after Barack Obama’s historic election in November 2008, fearing that Obama might appoint Bill Clinton as a special envoy to Kashmir as he had suggested during the campaign. And even before Holbrooke’s post was announced in January 2009, Indian officials and their allies in Washington lobbied furiously to have the words India and Kashmir excluded from the veteran US diplomat’s portfolio. India did not want to be seen as paying the price for US failures in Afghanistan by being forced to negotiate on Kashmir
Read More »All roads lead to Kashmir
