India expects the US to take a stand on Pakistan

Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby’s telling off Pakistan for harbouring terrorist havens along the line with Afghanistan is a rather tepid way of putting Pakistan’s villainous role in the protraction of the conflict in Afghanistan.

Early this month, Kirby told a press conference “We’ve been very honest about our concerns with Pakistan for a long time, about the safe havens that exist on their side of the border along that spine. And those concerns are still valid today.”

For the deposed progressive regime in Afghanistan, and for Pakistan’s main adversary in South Asia – India, this may come as too little, too late. Perhaps the US is making a mole-hill out of the heavy price it has paid in Afghanistan, what with Pakistan’s overt abetting of the Taliban fighters there. For India, the spillover of terrorism from Afghanistan under Pakistan’s tutelage poses the gravest of security problems to the region in the future.

While the US is still focussed on the security risks emanating from Afghanistan, even after its withdrawal from that nation, it has said and done little about Pakistan’s role in destabilising India. Pakistan intelligence agency ISI’s relentless endeavour to stoke up militancy in India’s restive northern state of Kashmir is the cause for major instability in the South Asian region.

The fact is, both India and Pakistan are nuclear armed, and have fought three wars over Kashmir. While India has so far exercised the restraint that the US has so volubly impressed upon it to maintain, the US defeat in Afghanistan, and the resurrection of the Taliban there, has brought about new dimensions to problems of terrorism in South Asia and for India.

The problem between India and Pakistan over Kashmir arises from the time when British India was divided into secular India and Muslim Pakistan. During the British rule in India, Kashmir was a feudal state with its own ruler. In 1947, the Kashmiri ruler, Maharaja Hari Singh, conceded to join India on condition that Kashmir would retain political and economic sovereignty, while its defence and external affairs would be conducted by India.

But Pakistan felt that it had a right to rule over predominantly Muslim Kashmir. India and Pakistan fought the first of their three wars over Kashmir in 1947. It resulted in the creation of a United Nations-brokered ceasefire line that divided Kashmir into Indian and Pakistani territories.

Despite the establishment of that border, presently known as the “Line of Control,” two more wars over Kashmir followed, in 1965 and 1999. An estimated 20,000 people died in these three wars.

International laws and resolution attempts have failed to broker peace in the region, and Pakistan has been obsessed with stoking up militancy in Indian-administered Kashmir. India blames Pakistan for the militancy and terrorism in its part of Kashmir. Pakistan, on the other hand, claims that terrorism in Indian-administered Kashmir is home-grown. Both countries have continued attempts to embarrass each other at international fora.

While Pakistan considers the Kashmir conflict an international dispute, India says it is a bilateral issue and an internal matter.

In 2019, the Indian government abolished the 1954 law that gave Kashmir autonomous status and militarily occupied the territory. At least 500,000 Indian troops are in Kashmir today.

Pakistan’s government denounced the move as illegal and says India reneged on its 1947 accession deal with Maharaja Singh.

The UN still officially considers Kashmir a disputed area. But India has held firm that Kashmir is part of India, under central government control.

For India, the prevalence of what it believes is Pakistan-induced terrorism in Kashmir on its western flanks, and a belligerent China, that also claims Indian territory, on the eastern front, poses a strategic nightmare. And it has so far done without vocal US sympathy on the matter. Even though the US has always inferred that India is a strategic partner.

The US has so far played down the Pakistan military’s role in its defeat in Afghanistan, considering its own logistical needs. Instead of taking punitive actions against Pakistan, the US has weighed the conflagration of having a nuclear armed country falling into the hands of extreme Islamic elements. This has compelled American ambivalence in the Indo-Pak dispute, even as the US seeks to garner a more engaging role from India in the US’ new Cold War with China, and despite Pakistan’s taking advantage of its unique and pampered geo-political status and aligning itself fervently with China..

The US under the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue – Quad – consisting of the US, India, Australia and Japan, has gotten a so-far reluctant India to take a stand against China by including the subject of peace and security in the Taiwan strait in the dialogue. For India, to get embroiled in the Taiwan imbroglio, would mean reprisals from an already hostile China. If India is willing to make the sacrifices for US ideals, the least it expects is for the US to give up its narrow-minded approach in the India-Pakistan conflict and take a stand against Pakistan in return.