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Us playing india pakistan kashmir card Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.samachar.com/features/170403-features.htmlhttp://www.samachar.com/features/170403-features.html
Is US India’s true friend or masked foe?
M. V. KAMATH
Is the United States a true friend of India or a masked foe? Is Washington ever to be trusted? Consider this: ever since India, under Prime Minister Jawaharlal `Nehru’s direction took the Jammu & Kashmir ``dispute’’ to the Security Council in early 1948 the United States has consistently supported Pakistan under the tutelage of Britain. It is immaterial whether the step was taken by Nehru on his own or under the urging of the Viceroy turned Governor General Lord Mountbatten, but the fact remains that Nehru walked into a trap well set up for him. Never mind if the Security Council asked India to hold a referendum in Jammu & Kashmir once the state was cleared of the invader, Pakistan. Pakistan never vacated its aggression and to this day it is holding on to what is erroneously called Azad Kashmir. `Axad’ Kashmir is no more free than the Iraqis are under Saddam Hussain. But for over forty-five years both the United States and the United Kingdom have played Pakistan’s game much to the discomfiture of Delhi.
Bill Clinton, during his second term started the process of making peace with India, the evil empire of the Soviet Union having been broken and the Cold War had come to be a distant memory. But till then Indo-American relations had remained edgy. One does not have to quote what successive American Presidents and their Secretaries of State had said or how some of them, especially Nixon and Kissinger, treated India. The past is best forgotten. But all the old uncertainties are coming to the fore ever since Bush decided, all on his own, to wage war against Saddam Hussain’s Iraq. Bush claims to fight Saddam Hussain not Iraq on principle. One is reminded of what George Bernard Shaw wrote about Englishman in his play The Man of Destiny. ``There is nothing so bad or so good’’ Shaw then wrote, ``that you will not find Englishmen doing it; but you will never find an Englishman doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles, he enslaves you on imperial principles’’.
Bush and Blair are fighting Saddam Hussain again on principles. It is the same Saddam Hussain who was provided with arms and ammunition, missiles and technology for his decade long war against Iran, by the United States. The Hussain who fought the Iranians is the same Hussain who is now Bush’s Enemy Number One. Hussain basn’t changed. The United States has.
The United States has discovered new principles to justify the Iraqi War and the destruction of Iraqi cities and the killing of innocent Iraqis. Hussain is a dictator: but what else is General Musharraf? And what else were his military pre-decessors? There is no democracy in Iraq, but what kind of democracy exists in Pakistan? Iraq is supposed to have stored up Weapons of Mass Destruction. Forget the fact that a monitor appointed by the United Nations itself could find no such weaponry after detailed search of Iraq for over eight weeks. Forget the fact that both Britain and the United States have piled up weapons that together could destroy the entire world some forty times over. Forget the fact that Pakistan with the help of China and North Korea has stored nuclear bombs that could do untold damage, for example, to India. Forget the fact till to date even the U.S. Armed Forces in Iraq have not found anything resembling a weapon of mass destruction in Iraq. Forget the fact that not a single American or Briton has been killed by Iraqi terrorists and that most of those involved in the destruction of the New York twin towers were Saudis, not Iraqis. Then what is there for Bush and Blair to argue about: that Iraq has not obeyed a Security Council resolution? Before going to war did the US and UK agree to call an emergency Security Council meeting to decide what steps need to be taken to bring Saddam Hussain to heel? If Saddam Hussain isn’t listening to Bush, is Musharraf listening to him, pray?
For over a decade now Pakistani-sponsored terrorists have been crossing the Line of Control to indulge freely in murder and mayhem in Jammu & Kashmir and neither the United States nor Britain has been able to stop the bloodshed. Parrotlike U.S officials keep saying that ``ending infiltration into Kashmir remains a key goal’’. Oh, really? And what, gentlemen, have you done to attain that goal? Issue statements? Washington routinely calls on India to hold talks with Pakistan. Have Bush and Blair, either individually or together, made an effort to hold talks with Saddam Hussain? Why haven’t they? Was even parallel diplomacy tried out? When External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha said, quite rightly, that if ``possession of weapons of mass destruction and support for terrorism were the criteria for launching a pre-emptive strike against a country (like the one launched by the US-led `coalition’ against Saddam Hussain’s regime) India definitely has a better case against Pakistan’’ he is cent per cent right. But what has been Washington’s reply?
According to a State Department official ``any attempts to draw parallels between the Iraq and the Kashmir situation are wrong and overwhelmed by the differences between them’’. Some cheek, that. According to the State Department official ``Iraq invaded, occupied and brutalised Kuwait in 1990.
And according to that same official ``A decade earlier Iraq attacked another neighbour Iran and used chemical weapons’’. The ``chemical weapons’’ incidentally were supplied to Baghdad by the United States itself. And if Iraq had done something so terrible in US eyes, why didn’t the United States step in then to stop the use of chemical weapons?
The truth is that the United States stands by no principles except its own good and dawn the rest of the world. Pakistan has continued to send terrorits across the Line of Control to kill, wound, maim and terrorise countless Indians but all that both Bush and Blair can offer are words, words, until one gets sick of them. The State Department official is reported to have said: ``The US recognises the very serious nature of the situation in Kashmir. Our joint statement last week with the United Kingdom made clear our repugnance at the killing of innocents that have been taking place in Kashmir with alarming frequency’’. Washington concedes that ``innocent’’ people are getting killed ``with alarming frequency’’ which it says is ``repugnant’’ to it. So what does it do to make its repugnance known? It writes off a Pakistani debt of one billion dollars, and makes it easy for Pakistan to repay the rest of its debts over many years in easy installments. Possibly, after some time, even the rest of Pakistan’s huge debts will also be written of even while it buys missiles and the rest from China and North Korea. It is not that the United States does not know of Pakistan’s perfidy or of the role of the ISI in fomenting trouble in Jammu & Kashmir.
It will be remembered that it was when former president Bill Clinton came visiting India that terrorists gunned down 35 Sikhs at Chittisinghpora in Jammu, no doubt to show their total contempt for the United States. And it is when US troops are waging war in Iraq that terrorists struck at Nadimarg, a village in Kashmir’s Anantnag district killing 27 Kashmiri Pandits most of them women and children. But India is not supposed to hit back. Why? Because Bush and Blair think killing is repugnant. At a recent meeting of the House International Relations Sub-Committee for Asia-Pacific, Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca was plainly asked how she would characterise the Paistani ISI’s involvement in the opium smuggling business on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border over the past six years. Ms Rocca’s unhesitating reply was: ``Substantial’’. But what does Washington do to halt it? Nothing. It would rather see the ISI using money earned from illicit trade in opium to encourage terrorism everywhere than take any meaningful action against Islamabad. We are told that Washington is in jitters lest India finally loses its cool and takes Pakistan on.
India, as External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha made it plain, has a strong case, if it wishes to attack Pakistan. But here comes the rub. Prof. Stephen P. Cohen, Director of the South Asia Programme at the Brookings Institution put America’s dilemma’ thus: ``And then, what do we do? Do we back the Indians? Do we play an even hand? Do we punish the Pakistanis if they are involved? Do we punish the Indians if they precipitate something? This is a nightmare for American policy’’. It is a nightmare only because America has no principles. How much more evidence does the United States want to prove Pakistan’s guilt? How many more hundreds of innocent people need to be killed in Jammu & Kashmir before the United States does something more than merely express its ``repugnance’’ at the killings? It is over a year now and the United States still hasn’t been able to lay its hands on Osama bin Laden. Surely Washington knows that it is Pakistan that is giving shelter to bin Laden? This is quietly forgotten. Musharraf must be having a grand time laughing at Messers Bush and Blair. He has perfected the art of blackmailing. One can safely presume that in any tussle between India and Pakistan, Bush will favour the latter. To think otherwise is to fool ourselves. This has been so from the very beginning of partition. Right from day 1. The United States is happy working with dictators. They can get away literally with murder as long as they do not cross Washington’s self-chosen path. In formulating its policy the government of India any government will do well to remember it. America’s interest is not in principles but in power. And it will do anything to hang on to it.
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